When I first sat on a tractor — just four months ago — and tried to get it to behave the way I intended, it felt impossibly awkward.  Bob Jones, my friend and guide to all manner of machinery, assured me that in time I would be able to pick my nose with it, though he employed a less-genteel metaphor.  I still buy toilet paper, but the tractor has fast become a partner, helper, and sometimes extension of self.

I’ve been meaning to modify part of the barn to make it work as a safe space for winter lambing, but the ewes didn’t look particularly pregnant, and there’s always something more pressing.  I also wasn’t especially looking forward to lugging around all the materials I’d need to do the buildout.  Well, this week a couple of the ewes started looking alarmingly big, and the barn project suddenly became the more pressing thing; looking for half-frozen newborn lambs by headlamp in a snowy pasture seemed like a very bad way to start my career in animal husbandry.

I was still dreading moving the lumber and plywood for the project, and then I remembered that I have a tractor (this happens much more frequently than it should).  With forks on the loader, I picked everything up, brought it to the door of the barn, and got it all inside with only a little grunting.  I’m hoping I can turn the almost-empty barn into a proper lambing facility in the next couple of days.  Updates coming.