Five Green Acres

Munson-in-film exists only at arm’s length or closer; there shall exist no shots of him from any real distance from the camera because once your presence is detected, he’s at your side in a flash.  Steady, true Munson.  He’s a dear.  95% of his time is spent as a sheep, with the sheep on pasture, learning to graze.  In the slim 5% margin left, he’s at our side – drinking from the bottle, assisting Daddio in his garage workshop, climbing the trailers with the kids, or poking through the garden with Momma.  We’re so glad he’s here, despite his sad entry into our home. But now that he is, we’ve integrated him nicely into the workings of the farm, and we’ve discovered some interesting possibilities as well.  We’re a 4-H family now, gleefully, and we’ve just received our book of entry possibilities for the summer fair.  One entry in particular has gotten our attention:  The Class U Sheep Costume Class, which involves adorning a sheep in a costume.  I know I haven’t properly represented our collective love for creative costumes in this blog space, save for our yearly cowboy/square dance attire at the Sugar Maple Music Fest, so you’ll have to take my word for it when I say that we get into making costumes in a big way.  That we can apply that creativity to a sheep and then parade it around the show ring at the county fair?  Oh. Can’t tell you how it’s begun to capture our imagination.  Can’t even begin.  Stay tuned to this one, folks.  The outcome is quite promising.

It’s looking to be quite the farmy week, folks.  Join me vicariously, won’t you?

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Welcome back to The Vicarious Farmer.  It’s a bite-size serving of farmdom, featuring a fresh photo from the Acres and a pocket full of words to ruminate on.

The Vicarious Farmer is you.  Imagine yourself perched on my shoulder for a snapshot of the day-to-day goings-on of this little farmette -  the idyllic and the banal.

About this time of year, the lifeless bales of hay begin to take on the same tedious feel as the last bunch of root vegetables in the people-larder.  After a winter of eating nothing but pale, dried grass (or an endless parade of squash) any blade of green poking through the mat of last year’s growth is nibbled up in a heartbeat.  If you’re an ungulate, right about now is when you’ve reached your limit of boring dried hay, and right about now, any new grass peeking through is inhaled much faster than it’s able to grow.  Enough.  You’ll do anything to get at that lush greenery just outside of your confined area.  Now’s a good time to find a breach in the fence and bust outta there.  The yahoo shepherdess in charge will likely reward you with some dried corn, too, just to lure you back in.  Seems like the perfect way to spend the better part of a Sunday.  And Sunday night.  And Monday morning.

Maybe you vicarious farmers will more quickly see the urgency of moving the flock to fresh greens, and thus save yourself the hassle of rounding up the marauding flock again and again. It’s the route I’d recommend.

Here it is!  The Final Lamb Roster for the Fall 2011 season…five fresh new faces added to the Five Green Acres team.

Born first, Garnet’s little guy is now the Big Man About Town, appearing gargantuan in the midst of the other lambs, the way a newborn baby makes your however-much-older baby look nearly grown-up.  He’s full of energy, bounding about the winter pasture, and has likely grown an inch in the few minutes it took me to write this paragraph.  He’s a good, strong boy that shall remain nameless.  If you get my drift.

You may remember this sweet face from our little lambing adventure last week.  Now quite dry and fluffy and decidedly less yolk-colored, this sweet girl has been named Agnes.  She’s also a vibrant, strong little ewe, with a penchant for sneaking out the lamb-size hole in the gate.  Not that we intended for a lamb-size hole to be present in that gate; boarding it up is on the lengthy To-Do list, but until then, Agnes enjoys going on walkabout and returning at her leisure. (the very first pic in this post is also Agnes)

This wee little ram was born to Lily on Thursday afternoon.  His body is big, his legs are long, but he’s all bones.  The journey from womb to world seems to have taken its toll on him; he faltered shortly after being born, curling up lethargically (and still wet) and refused to start nursing.  Oh, he had me worried – I broke into my stash of frozen sheep colostrum gleaned from Garnet last Spring and administered it to him through an emergency feeding tube.  Then I brought him inside, wrapped in a blanket, and rocked him in front of the woodstove for a good half hour or more.  Really.  He slept the whole time, waking only after the kids discovered the presence of a LAMB IN THE HOUSE! Kisses were what he needed most of all, it seemed, after a belly of warm milk and a good snuggle, and after getting a good handful of them, he took to his wobbly legs.

I ushered him back out to the Sheep Hotel, where his worried momma and a heat lamp awaited his return, and headed off to the Open Sewing Night I was hosting, wrought with worry.  When I returned later to check up on him, I entered the sheep enclosure, and did the customary head count to make sure all of the lambs were accounted for.  Baby, momma and baby, momma and baby, I counted.  Wait.  One, two…three lambs out and about??  That’s one more than I expected, since Lily’s little guy was penned inside the Hotel.  Sylvia!  Unassuming Sylvia had birthed a lamb quietly on the pasture – a healthy lamb already standing and starting to nurse.  That was more than I bargained for!  I carefully led the newborn and Sylvia into the draft-free Sheep Hotel, set up another cozy spot for them to begin their How-do-you-do bonding time and went back to attending to Lily’s little guy.  Switching back and forth between the two newborn lambs, I had plenty to do – help dry off Sylvia’s new arrival (a ewe!), try to help the little guy find Lily’s generous teat.  I was quite distracted when Sylvia turned her backside to me and in my face was another lamb, in the process of being born. WOWEE!  What a night!  I gently eased the second lamb (a twin ewe!) onto the ground just as Andrew made his way to the Hotel.  In a single evening, lambing had come to a close.  Garnet, Gloria, Lily, and then Sylvia, done.   The combination of expectant ewes paired with the onslaught of The Holidays could have been hairy, but the timing was to our favor.  Pure luck!

Sylvia’s twin girls have been named Camille and Clementine and, as is befitting of twins and their competition for limited resources, are nursing almost constantly.  They are tiny, sweet things – seemingly fragile but determined.  I’m confident that they’ll be vigorous little ones, confident too that Sylvia’s a pro at this twin thing, having already borne one set in the Spring. (Violet and The Pharaoh) She’s a keeper.

Camille, the oldest and biggest, is on the left, resting her wee head on Clementine’s bony rump.  Fill out those wrinkles, Girlies!

Back to Lily’s little guy – I’m not quite ready to take him off of my Things to Worry About list.  He is definitely eating, at least enough to keep him alive, but he spends a lot of time curled up in a sleeping heap.

That makes this sight the most heart-warming and relief-laden of all.  I have great hopes for this little ram; his parentage of lovely, spinnable Corriedale (Lily) and super-soft Rambouillet (Sam the Sham) promises to be a lovely fiber mix.  My hands are twitching just thinking about it…

Having now experienced a handful of lamb births, I felt just cocky enough to head out to the latest with camera in hand.  Join me?  Note:  if you’re squeamish about raw, real things like the birthing process….then toughen up – this is good stuff!

It’s Gloria this time.  One look at her posture on the far end of the pasture (what alliteration!) tells us immediately that she’s deep in the throes of labor.  Shown here, she’s about to push, after which she returns to her feet to walk around, browse for greens to nibble, call out some chatty baas.

I had spied her from the house, looking out the window in their general direction as I’m now in the habit of doing.  She had separated herself from the rest of the flock, and when I headed out for a closer look at her tail end, I could see the front hooves and tip of a nose that had emerged.  Now, Rookie Midwives, (which I most definitely still am) you might think this “crowning” would mean that lamb is going to come sliding out in the very next push, you might get really excited and hold your breath and try not to blink in fear of missing it all.  Nope.  Not this time, not last time either, in the case of Garnet.  Those creamy white hoof tips and that eerily-purple nose will be all that we’re looking at for the next 45 minutes or so.  In the meantime, however, we pause and wonder if maybe we should give the momma some space and head back into the house for some time-killing busy-work.  Yes, let’s.

When we come out, 20 or so minutes later, we find that the head is much further out – good progress, Momma!  I think this is when we realize that taking some photos is in order, because how many people have witnessed this?  Too few, I decide, as I snap away.

The pattern for Gloria remains the same – lay down, push, gain a teeny bit of ground as the head emerges a bit more, stand up, lose a bit of that ground.  We decide to get closer, circle her for a better look.

As we snap pictures, we vacillate between pure awe and self-satisfaction for capturing these moments on film and a nagging, ever-growing realization of our profound ignorance – how long can a baby of any kind remain in that half-in, half-out limbo?  Still attached to the umbilical cord, breathing shouldn’t be necessary yet, even though the nose is emerged, but look how purple everything is!  Scary.  But Garnet’s little guy hung out in that very position for a while too, before I got worried and yanked him out.  He was fine, of course, and I admonished myself for not letting the momma do her work, which she was clearly capable of.  But this time – was it the same?  I carefully poked at the very still face.”Hey you – are you ok?” Nothing.  I see the tongue hanging out the side of the mouth in that classic cartoon portrayal of death and that was it.  Oh shit.  Have I just photographed a stillborn lamb?  Have we waited too long to intercede?  We race now to the doctor’s bag – yes, come with me and help me push this damn goat out of the way.  We pull on the shoulder-length gloves and lube up.

Gently, now we will pull.  Wait for her contractions; she’ll start pushing again soon.  There’s plenty to grab on to now, and just a little tug is necessary to pull the little one out.

We wait with held breaths, waiting for a sign that the little one is alive.  And it moves!  It wearily shakes its head as if waking up from a long dream.  Momma Gloria snaps into gear and begins the lengthy clean-up.  Lick, lick, lick.  Lambs, we see, are born with a slick coating that Momma instinctively begins cleaning off.  The little one opens its eyes and the very first thing is sees is a fuzzy haze of our ape-like staring and the mix of relief and awe on our faces.  We let out that breath now, resume our normal breathing patterns.

Each moment finds the little one waking up, gaining strength.  Now it begins to lift its head.

And in the very next moment, it begins to lift itself up on its legs.  So shaky.  Again and again it tries this, and within about five minutes of being born, it’s up on four legs.  It’s hard for us to gauge the time, though, suspended as we are in the sublime witness of new life.

Slowly, we emerge from this captivating trance and regain a bit more composure.  What kind of lamb do we have here? we wonder and carefully take a peek at its undercarriage.  A girl.  Ah, sweet ewe.    Carefully now, we pick up the now-quite-frisky little one and slowly, slowly, lead Momma into the Sheep Hotel, where the covers have been turned down, the heat is on, and a warm meal awaits.  Slowly, we make our way up there, remembering how that very same journey in the spring was a stressful and awkward transition, because we moved too quickly and Momma lost sight of her lamb.

Is there another waiting to be born, we wonder?  Peeking back behind Gloria we see the trail of what looks to be the placenta.  The red fluid-filled sacs that are slowly emerging now usually signal the end of lambing, so we surmise (correctly) that the little ewe had no roommates in the womb.  We help dry her off a bit with the mountain of clean, dry towels tucked into the doctor’s bag and wait eagerly to witness her nursing.  She does – gawky at first, trying every little protrusion of wool and skin till she finds the one that fits her mouth perfectly and releases pure warmth into her belly.  And we truly relax now.  Our work is done, all is well.  Everyone is safe and warm and healthy and gaining strength.  It’s a good day to start off the week.

kissing cousins

A ram lamb.  Born to Garnet at the stroke of Midnight.  On the waxing full moon.  Of course.  Sweet, vigorous lamb, oblivious to the cold.  He knows only his mother’s attentive caresses, her husky voice, the scent of her swollen udder, (which he has all to himself) the sweet warmth of her milk that fills his belly in little bursts.  Garnet is over the moon for him.  Over the full moon, whose pull is unmistakeable. Garnet.  Finally a Momma.