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59

Posted on 28 February 2017

I keep reminding myself that cute is a double-edged sword.

The barn is now full of adorable little wooly creatures, and it’s easy to let chores take way too long as an excuse to keep watching them bounce and explore. There’s been a dramatic uptick in visitors to the farm, all wanting to hang out with the new lambs. And I don’t know if evolution works quite this way, but I am strongly motivated to care for them.

The catch, of course, is that some of these lambs — the boys, mostly — are destined to become lamb chops. I’m not intending to write a defense of eating meat (not now, at any rate), but I believe that livestock are an important part of a healthy and sustainable agricultural system. And I believe that the tension — crudely, cute versus food — is important too. The personal relationship I develop with my animals is the ultimate insurance against their mistreatment, so I don’t want to harden myself against the contradiction inherent in raising animals for food. We’ll see if I can pull it off.

Categories: Hollow Oak Farm, preaching, sheep

Tagged: barn, contradiction, cute, Hollow Oak Farm, lambs, meat

58

Posted on 27 February 2017

Bravo’s reclamation tour began this morning. We moved both of the imminently-lambing ewes from the pasture to the barn yesterday, so there should be no lambs to temp him until some time in May. But when I released him from the tether he’d been on since last Monday, he immediately started chasing the flock; he clearly needed some kind of supervised parole.

Bravo seemed anxious to show me that fences — even 5-foot electrified fences — couldn’t contain him when he first arrived on the farm. He was jumping over effortlessly, and digging under almost as easily. A number of friends with guardian dog experience suggested that he needed to pull something heavy for a while, until he developed more respect for boundaries. I was a little uneasy with this solution (cruel?), but desperation led me to get him a tire. He was strong enough that the tire barely cramped his style, but it did put an end to his Houdini act. I unshackled him after a few weeks, and he’s seemed happy to stay in with the sheep since then. So today I redeployed the tire drag, hoping that it will slow him down just enough to keep the sheep out of his reach…

Categories: Dogs, Hollow Oak Farm, sheep

Tagged: bravo, drag, Hollow Oak Farm, livestock guardian dog, maremma, pasture, sheep, tether, tire

57

Posted on 26 February 2017

The previous owners of the farm kept Scottish Highland cattle, so I wasn’t terribly surprised to find a horned skull hanging in the pole barn at the back of the lower field. I don’t entirely understand the aesthetic appeal of displaying fragments of one’s deceased livestock, but I wasn’t surprised.

Then one day I looked up from splitting firewood, and I thought I saw another skull, considerably less old.

This one elevated my heart rate for a few minutes. It also got me wondering if my time on the farm would be punctuated by a macabre game of Where’s Waldo. I was slightly more prepared for the third discovery, but I’ll be just a little bit on edge until I’m sure I’ve looked carefully at all the trees.

Categories: barn, Hollow Oak Farm, Seen

Tagged: barn, macabre, Scottish Highland cattle, skull, surprise

56

Posted on 25 February 2017

It’s late February in northern New England, and it’s been in the mid 60s for the last three days. It feels glorious out, a wonderful respite from the cold, but it’s hard to ignore the little buzz in the background suggesting that unusually warm weather might not be entirely benign. Thankfully, Bill Clinton gave us the answer to all such quandaries: Don’t ask, don’t tell. Four little words to ease the mind and slice through moral turbidity! A vegetarian enjoying the delicious hot & sour soup at a favorite Chinese restaurant? Don’t ask, don’t tell. Your previously broke partner buying lovely gifts with a new credit card? You know the answer…

With my conscience thus assuaged, it was a lovely day on the farm. The south-facing pastures are now free of snow for the moment…

…and all the melting has brought the streams on either side of the fields to a full boil.

The last of the current rotation of barn ewes also lambed this morning.

Once again, the birth seemed to be stalled, so I pulled the lamb after an hour of nose and feet poking out with no further progress. This time, though, the little ram lamb was vigorous from the moment he joined the world.

Categories: climate change, Hollow Oak Farm, lambing, sheep, Winter

Tagged: Bill Clinton, border collies, Cass, Chloe, climate change, Don't ask don't tell, lambs, pasture, sheep, spring flood, warm, winter

55

Posted on 24 February 2017

Three days ago I made a passing reference to the brown ewe pulling a fast one on me, and then went on to conclude that she had not yet lambed. Veering toward solipsism, I decided later that it might be worth checking if the ewe was in fact still pregnant. Her udder was gone; she was clearly no longer pregnant, so where was her lamb? And so began a macabre Holmesian inquiry.

The week started with my finding Bravo snacking on the trailing half of a black lamb. I assumed that the lamb had been born the previous night and Bravo had done it in. I was a little unsettled by the fact that none of the ostensibly pregnant ewes in the pasture looked like they had recently given birth, or seemed distraught about having just lost their lamb. I convinced myself that their equanimity was attributable to lack of maternal instinct in first-time mothers, but this didn’t explain the absence of blood. Things got more complicated on Wednesday when Bruce crutched the flock: we got a good look at all the potential sources of the mystery lamb, and none looked anything like a ewe who had recently given birth, and in fact most showed no visible signs of pregnancy. The only possible source of the lamb, one of the Dorset-Border Leicester crosses, was very unlikely to have produced a black lamb for genetic reasons. I was almost ready to resort to supernatural explanations at this point.

When I realized that the brown ewe was no longer carrying her lamb, I jumped to the conclusion that Bravo was a lamb-killer twice over. It seemed clear that my urgency on that late-January day was well-taken but tardy — the brown ewe had lambed outside before we got her into the barn, and Bravo had gotten to the lamb before I found it.

When I shared all these threads of the story with Bill, he came up with a coherent and satisfying explanation that tied everything together. He suggested that Monday’s lamb breakfast was not a newly born lamb from the previous night, but rather the lamb delivered by the brown ewe in January. Bravo had either deliberately cached part of that lamb or lost it in a subsequent snow drift, and re-found it Monday morning. The cold conditions we’ve had since late January explain the fact that the lamb seemed recently killed, and Bill’s explanation fit with the fact that we couldn’t find a plausible mother of a Sunday-born lamb.

After convincing myself that I had lost 2 lambs to my guardian dog, I was almost happy to learn that it was probably just one. And I was enormously relieved that my instincts were somewhat vindicated, both my belief that the brown ewe was imminently lambing in late January, and that none of the ewes currently on pasture were close. A bad outcome from circumstances I was aware of feels less damning than getting blindsided.

Wednesday’s crutching confirmed that two of the ewes are somewhat close to lambing, and we plan to move them into the barn on Sunday. Today, to make some room, I led the brown ewe back to the big group on pasture, and she was received like a celebrity. Not every ewe gets to star in her own true crime drama…

Categories: barn, Hollow Oak Farm, lambing, sheep

Tagged: barn, bravo, brown ewe, dead lamb, ewe, Hollow Oak Farm, livestock guardian dog, mortality, pasture, sheep, true crime

54

Posted on 23 February 2017

The thistle has launched, if not a civil war, at least a skirmish in my mind. The fields around the farm are full of dried thistle plants, and as the snow melts, more are emerging. I find them photographically irresistible, and my naturalist side is delighted to have them. Their big flowers and ample nectar draw hummingbirds, butterflies, all manner of bees, and other winged pollinators; and their seeds are favorites of finches and other birds — a wonderful addition to a healthy and enticing grassland environment.

But I am already starting to think like a farmer as well, inheriting the confirmed enmity between shepherd and thistle. Sheep don’t like to graze near the spiny leaves and flowers, so lots of thistle in a pasture means less food available for the livestock. And the dried flower parts love to lodge in sheepswool, rendering it much less desirable to hand-spinners, the most lucrative market for a small-scale wool producer. Beyond these concrete drawbacks, farmers seem to harbor a less-rational animus, a fear that one ignored thistle plant will soon multiply and crowd out an entire field of grass and clover, leaving the sheep or cattle to starve.

I’m trying to remain unaligned in the thistle wars long enough to watch the plant for a couple of years (thistle is a biennial) and see if either reputation is deserved. It’s also a reminder of a bigger issue: I’ve moved to a gorgeous rural area, with nature voluptuously present all around, so it’s easy to forget that farming can be a profoundly un-natural activity. Learning to reconcile the two feels like one of my most important projects as the current steward of this beautiful place.

Categories: Asteraceae, Hollow Oak Farm, Invasive

Tagged: bull thistle, Hollow Oak Farm, noxious weed, pasture, pollinator, Thistle

53

Posted on 22 February 2017

Bruce Clement has shorn something beyond 100,000 sheep — he says he stopped counting a while ago — and is mostly retired, still shearing for just a few farmers he’s worked with forever. I’m not sure how I got lucky enough for him to take me on, but I suspect pity played a role, thinking he might guide me away from some of the more egregious mistakes of a very green shepherd. In any case, I’m grateful for his skillful work and the ancillary wisdom he shares as he maneuvers through my flock.

Today’s task was not a full removal of fleece, but rather an invasion of privacy. Shepherds around here call it “crutching”, removing wool from the belly, legs, and crotch of pregnant sheep so that it’s easier to observe their physical state in the leadup to lambing. Lambs will also have any easier time figuring out how to nurse if they don’t have to search for teats in a sea of dirty wool.

The trick to shearing, Bruce explained, is mostly in learning how to handle sheep. When I do it, the activity looks like a messy game of tackle football, with the ewe struggling to get over the goal line. Bruce turns it into something more like judo as he smoothly guides the sheep onto its backside.

And then the crutching itself takes less than a minute.

In the course of the shearing today, we got some more insights into the fate of Monday’s pasture lamb, but the true crime narrative will have to wait for a day or two…

Categories: Hollow Oak Farm, shearing, sheep

Tagged: Bruce Clement, crutching, ewes, Hollow Oak Farm, pregnant, shearing, sheep

52

Posted on 21 February 2017

I was in a fair panic a month ago — the brown ewe was going to lamb out in the pasture because I didn’t have the barn ready. Either she pulled a fast one or I seriously misread the signs, ’cause she still hasn’t lambed. Veering into anthropomorphic hoo-ha, I imagine her to be frustrated at her prolonged wait, and she seems to take it out on all the new mothers. Each time I declare that a ewe-lamb pair are ready to leave their jug and rejoin the larger group, brown ewe challenges the newcomer.

I’m not exactly sure what gets communicated in these outbursts, but the fireworks usually die down after an hour or two. I take this as further evidence to rebut stereotype: sheep are individuals with strong opinions; ignore it at your peril.

Categories: barn, Hollow Oak Farm, lambing, sheep, Uncategorized

Tagged: barn, brown ewe, conflict, ewes, head-butting, lambing, lambs, opinions, sheep

51

Posted on 20 February 2017

Yesterday’s post was either prescient or fate-tempting. When I brought Bravo his breakfast this morning, I found him eating a lamb.

I tried to take the remaining half of the lamb away from him, but he snarled and lunged at me; I returned with a T-post to help Bravo understand that his cooperation was not optional.

Once I had gotten past the chaotic moment — lamb remains out of reach of the dogs and Bravo tied off to the fence — I tried to think about what had happened and how I had contributed to the morning’s disaster. It seemed clear that one of the ewes in the pasture with him had lambed overnight, and Bravo availed himself of the easy meal. I knew that Bravo shouldn’t be trusted around small lambs, but I had assumed that the ewes with him were not so close to lambing. In retrospect, this was wishful thinking, motivated by already having a barn full of sheep; I was hoping for a little more time to finish the current round of lambing before the next round began. I should also have taken the smaller incidents with Bravo more seriously. He’s been antsy and bored and taking more liberties with the sheep than I should have tolerated, but it’s so easy to let magical thinking creep in. Bravo had been showing signs of calming down and getting more serious about guarding his sheep, so I wanted to dismiss his recent behavior as a little hiccup in a generally positive trend.

I’m now left wondering whether I have a typical adolescent Maremma who needs more structure and guidance before he emerges as a mature herding dog, or if Bravo has taken some darker turn from which he may not emerge. His aggression toward me left me pretty unsettled. I’m struggling to operate with the clarity of hindsight while looking forward.

Categories: Dogs, Hollow Oak Farm, lambing, sheep, Uncategorized

Tagged: bravo, eating, fuck-up, Hollow Oak Farm, lamb, livestock guardian dog, maremma, predation

50

Posted on 19 February 2017

No drama in the barn today. All five lambs are eating as they evolved to (though the oldest one is trying to poach from ewes other than her mother), the ram isn’t head-butting anyone, and the two pregnant ewes held on to their offspring for another day.

Bravo, though, is always good for some drama. Maremmas are known for being aloof to humans their know, unfriendly to ones they don’t, and fiercely protective of their flock, but Bravo seems committed to re-writing this script. He sometimes hangs out with the sheep, but I can only photograph this behavior from a distance; as soon as he sees me, he abandons the sheep and comes running over.

And if I need the border collies to do anything with the sheep, I have to take Bravo out of circulation or he’ll run in and out of the flock, creating a level of chaos that neither Cass nor Chloe can overcome.

He also has a funny sense of possessiveness about things I bring to the sheep. The other day I when I brought water out to the flock, Bravo watched them drink for a moment and then decided he needed to take control of the water basin, though he didn’t take a drink himself.

I’m not sure how much of this sort of thing he does when I’m not around, so I haven’t figured out if it’s a show for my benefit. I’m sure there’s a special section of the DSM reserved for people who spy on their guardian dogs, but I’m seriously thinking of getting a trail camera… Bravo also insists on taking (symbolic) possession of any hay I bring out to the flock.

While this is all penny-ante stuff probably aimed at getting a rise from me, he’s also under suspicion of less benign behavior. A couple sheep have turned up with torn ears, and I found one of the fainting Romneys out cold in the field with Bravo nearby. No permanent harm has been done, and I haven’t caught him in the act of anything more serious than running at the sheep to scatter them, but my faith in my guardian is teetering.