Category Archives: Farm Life

Stone Cold Love

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Of all the myriad ways in which the birds and the bees woo and attempt to do the ageless dance, this old boy had chosen the most ludicrous. Although the end result was never in doubt and he was getting the coldest of shoulders, I had to hand it to him for hanging in there in his efforts. Except for retiring nightly to a nearby creek, he did not leave the side of his beloved for a full week. Thanks to that high level of predictability, he provided us the opportunity to create and execute a plan to break up this “coitus unrequitus.”

A picture taken by a neighbor during the winter storm in January.

It began, as most things do on our farm that require compassion and nursing skills, with Cindy getting a call. This one was received at the college where she worked. A Muscovy hen and her ducklings living in a much-trafficked area were in danger of being flattened by speeding students. After assorted consultations with staff and faculty (and perhaps interminable committee meetings), Cindy volunteered to bring the ducks home and raise the ducklings out before returning them to the pond on campus. So it came to be that mother, babies, and even the father of the brood were captured, crated, and loaded into her car one sunny spring afternoon.

At the farm, we unloaded the cargo and placed the ducks in a seemingly secure pen. We watered and fed them, then stepped back to watch … and watched as the drake flew over the fence, sailed low across the bottom pasture, and disappeared to the south in a creek bottom. Geese mate for life. The ganders are remarkably loyal, and if either partner is indiscreet, we’ll never know: they keep it quiet within the domestic circle. With ducks, not so much. The drake, while his mate was home raising his offspring, was off in the wide world looking for new love like a sailor on liberty in port. This lad found an unlikely paramour a mile down the road.

As in the saga of the three little piggies, word went out in our community of the wayward drake. Sure enough, he was spotted within days in the front yard of a small clapboard house on a neighbor’s trip from town. The male of the Muscovy is significantly larger than the female and sports a head-to-neck crest of feathers. He is easy to identify in all of his warty glory. Once notified, we spied him under a large oak tree next to the gravel drive. There he stood, danced, preened, in fact used everything within his toolkit to drive his intended mad with lust. His object of desire paid him no attention.

And it would be a cold day in Hell before her love was reciprocated: this statuesque specimen was cast lovingly in concrete, and although apparently created to the highest standards of molded realism, she had the sexual desire of, well, a slab of cement, sand, and water.

But our wandering Lothario was nothing if not persistent. From sunup to sundown he stood by his newfound love, carrying on his one-sided conversations (no, ladies, do not look for parallels) and dancing around her unmoved and unmoving countenance, only leaving at night to return to the safety of the creek. Every morning he was back at the wooing, giving his all to break through that stony exterior. Knowing in his heart that the apple out of reach is the tastiest, he persevered for seven days.

In the end we managed after several attempts to catch him in a net, at which time we clipped his wings and returned him to his family. Over the next couple of weeks, restless and bored with his growing children and preoccupied partner, he paced the fence and gazed southwards, convinced that if he had just one more day, his stone-cold love’s resolve would have finally crumbled.

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Reading this weekend: The Unforseen Wilderness, an essay on Kentucky’s Red River Gorge (W. Berry and G. Meatyard)

A Tale of Two Ewes

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Two stories, each with a death but one ending in hope.

Both accounts concern our role as caretakers in the nurturing of life and the inevitable taking of it that is ever-present on a farm. The stories are twinned together in this work, born in the blood and hope of birth before one day vanishing into decay and dust. There is no hiding from the harsh light of reality any more than we can avoid the reaper. For the farmer, no bureaucrat, politician, or soldier is on hand to shield him from weakness, standing ready to do his dirty work. No amount of ritual washing of hands while passing off decisions to a mob will absolve the choices made in his name. It is in the final accounting of what happens between those two events that matters for all living things. When, on some occasions, the “green fire” fades from an animal’s eyes, the farmer will have been on hand and watched it fade, perhaps having even been the agent of execution. Yet having been a good husband and shepherd to his charges, he will find his sad peace in it. And on better days (hopefully more often than not), through his care and nursing the light will flare back into eyes that had dimmed. Then faith and promise are renewed.

 

Killing a Ewe

No words. We both look at each other and nod agreement. I walk back to the house in the rain. This inescapable part of farming life seems never to occur on sunny days. Sad duties always require sad days for their completion.

Upstairs, next to the bed, leaning against the wall in a corner is a single-shot 16 gauge kept on hand for just these days. I pick it up and also grab a couple of shells of buckshot from a box. If an old shotgun sticks around long enough it eventually will accumulate an untold history of the most wretched uses. Killing a ewe is certainly among the most cheerless occupations for this instrument—and for the one who pulls the trigger.

I slog through the cold rain and muck back to the barn and the warm, steaming, false comfort inside. Cindy has shooed the rest of the flock out into the outer corral. Given that privacy I approach the pen where the ewe, who has lost both lambs and has prolapsed twice, stands in pain and already dying. I raise the gun, and she obligingly nuzzles the end of the barrel. I say goodbye out loud as I fire one blast, and she mercifully falls dead.

I eject the smoking shell and place the gun on a feed barrel. We each grab a leg and pull the dead ewe from the pen and down the alley of the working chute, a smear of blood marking the path on the gravel. We load the still-warm carcass into the waiting tractor bucket. We return to the barn and pick up two healthy just-born lambs, then coax their mother into a lambing pen where we can keep an eye on all three. The late afternoon becomes evening. We finish our late-day rounds of feeding and watering the sheep, hogs, cattle, chickens, and even the greens in the hoop house before I find the time to dispose of the dead ewe.

Throughout the night and into the predawn we will take turns checking on the flock of pregnant ewes and nursing ewes and their lambs.

 

Saving a Ewe

“Breech,” Cindy said.

One of our favorite ewes, Bunny (you can always know a favorite if she has been named) is in labor. She had shown signs of lambing earlier in the day, but it wasn’t until evening that the contractions began. After another hour of watchful waiting without any lambs born, Cindy makes an internal examination and discovers a large lamb in the birth canal. It is breeched, butt-end first and back legs folded under the lamb’s body. Further complicating the delivery, a second lamb is crammed head-first alongside the first—like double plugs in a drain. It’s clear that nothing will pass through without intervention.

Bunny is a seven-year-old ewe with a slightly swayed back from many multi-lamb pregnancies and a Holstein udder that swings close to the ground. She still has good teeth, though, so she can still graze, and she delivers healthy lambs, mostly twins and occasionally triplets, year after year and mothers them expertly. She clearly has grit, but it is also obvious that she is now in serious distress.

Fortunately for both of us, even after twenty-four years of raising sheep, cattle, and hogs, our experiences with difficult births remain minimal. Most of our ewes have been able to lamb easily, a trait we have selected for in our breeding program. The downside of this good providence is that our skills in dealing with a breech or other malpresentation remains rusty from lack of practice. At risk of losing both mother and lambs, we agree: it’s time to call in the vet.

An hour and half later, at 9:30 p.m., we are on the ground in the barn with our large-animal vet. (Having pulled him from his daughter’s first birthday celebration, we find that the eventual bill reflects the inconvenience.) By this time, the second lamb has somehow receded from the vaginal opening and the breeched lamb has been partially expelled by painful exertions. The vet pulls out the now-dead lamb. Its back end is cold; the front end is still warm in the birth canal. He lays it on the hay floor. Taking the very large, well-formed lamb in hand, I carry it from the barn with a plan to dispose of it in the morning.

The birth canal now clear, the vet pulls two live lambs from Bunny in quick succession. Each is exhausted and the third lamb, the smallest, is barely moving after the long-delayed entry into this world. The usual practice with delayed or difficult lambing is to rub the lamb vigorously, stick a straw in its nose to stimulate breathing, and, if needed, grab it by the legs and swing it gently to clear the airways of mucous—all of which we do.

After another few minutes both lambs are breathing and already struggling to get on their feet and nurse. The smaller third-born, a ewe lamb (the other is a large ram lamb), is unable to stand. Her back legs are splayed out and almost appear to be disjointed. Triplets are packed in the womb tight, and this one must have had her legs back for much of her time in the birth canal. We work throughout the night, taking turns during barn visits, to massage the legs until, at last, the little lamb can stand on her own. (Bunny also experienced temporary paralysis in her back end from the difficult labor and was unable initially to stand. The vet and I each grabbed a side and held her up for a few minutes. She stood, wobbly, but remained on her feet and got to the immediate job of cleaning the newborns. The vet gave her both a steroid injection for the pain and a preemptive antibacterial shot in case there were tears in the uterus from the delivery.) The farm vet—an hour after arriving, makes a quick exit, shouting over his shoulder, “I’ll send you the bill in the morning.”

Neither lamb is yet nursing; neither is standing well on its own. We prepare a substitute colostrum (the high-nutrient first milk) replacer, insert a tube down the throat and into the stomach of each lamb, and feed them. Cindy repeats this procedure twice between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. I arise at 4:30 and find a note on the coffee pot alerting me that the ram lamb is now nursing on his own. I tube-feed the smaller, wobbly ewe lamb in those early hours and again around 7.

By the time we get back out to do our morning chores, both lambs are up and walking around and both are nursing on their own. Later in the day, as well as the next, we continue to give poor Bunny a steroid shot to ease her pain. A couple of days more and she is fully recovered, albeit with some continued bleeding from the traumatic delivery. Her lambs are also fully recovered: they come to their mother when called and nurse frequently and vigorously like healthy lambs do.

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Reading this weekend: Down and Out in Paris and London (G. Orwell); A Voice Crying in the Wilderness: Notes from a Secret Journal (E. Abbey); and Great American Fishing Stories (ed. L. Underwood).

 

Three Tales From the Farm

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I Am a VIP

August haying

It is true, yes, that there are moments as a farmer when my status as a VIP is confirmed. After all, I am known to multitudes. That these moments happen only between me and my livestock makes them no less important. So, for any of you yearning for that most modern of currencies, celebrity, for those of you who desire to feel valued, follow along with me as I fill up a bucket of feed near the barn.

The ewes who have been let out of their pasture to graze among the buildings hasten to my side from all points of the compass at the clanging of the lid. They form a tight scrum around me, like bodyguards protecting a pop star. The ones behind keep nudging me to move faster, perhaps afraid that my time in the open may expose me to assault, while the ones on either side stay firm against my thighs. The lead ewes keep turning around, making sure I’m safe and with them still. We march in lockstep across the grass, through the gates, to their feed trough. Only as we approach do they cease to see me as someone to protect. Like Roman legionaries who have missed a payroll, they abandon their post and impatiently begin to jostle, demanding that I yield if not an autograph then at least the contents of my bucket. Celebrity is such a fickle mistress.

Fowl Pox

We both looked at the small blisters covering his face, the eyes that were milky white and unseeing. Two days earlier he had stood next to me in the equipment yard, shifting his weight from foot to foot, head tilted as he listened closely in what we now know was the posture of the blind. But even seeing I saw nothing. The next day he stayed in the coop, in a corner, unable to defend himself against the younger rooster. I noticed, vaguely aware that something was wrong, and continued my chores. On the third day I bent down and picked him up by the feet, avoiding the three-inch spurs with difficulty, and cupped his back with my hand. Cindy examined him and recognized the blisters and unseeing eyes. He had fowl pox and needed to be removed immediately from the flock. It was possible he could recover, but old age would be working against him. I continued holding him on his back with feet grasped and walked to the barn. From the rack over a work table I removed a hatchet. I laid him across a railroad timber outside, stretched his neck over the side, and lopped off his head. His head and body in a five-gallon bucket, I placed the remains in the back of the pickup truck.

Cowboys and Ranches Belong West of the Mississippi

When I think of the habits of emigrants from our Western states, I’m reminded—likewise frequently and comically—of zooming down a sidewalk on my bike as a kid, then tumbling over the handlebars when I reached a section pushed up by the roots of an oak: both bring me up short. So when I say that the big man wearing a cowboy hat, his brand new dark blue jeans tucked inside fancy cowboy boots, stopped me cold, I understate. That he was also wearing spurs that stuck out a good three inches prompted me to ask the ladies behind the counter at the farmers co-op, “Are they filming a Western nearby?” How he drove away in that jacked-up fully-loaded brand new Ford F-150 Lightning with those three-inch spurs on his boots … well, I still both wonder and admire. But he did.

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Reading this weekend: the children’s book A Wrinkle in Time (M. L’Engle) and One Man’s Meat (E. B. White). I never had read the first till now, and I found it charming. Regarding the second, I had only read White’s children’s books. His essays, written from his Maine saltwater farm, are warm and funny and perfect for these cold December nights.

 

One Good Day: Part 1

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A really good day on the farm slips its way into being, sly and unnoticed. The day is planned—only the how-it-will-turn-out remains uncertain.

Lake Bistineau, Louisiana, in draw down.

When I step out on the back porch at 5 a.m., coffee cup in hand, the morning star is locked in a tight embrace with the slim crescent moon. Staring at the heavens is a longtime practice of mine that informs even as it inspires. On this morning, once again, the sky is clear of clouds: rains are but a dim memory shared in travelers’ tales, September and October having left behind only dusty footprints at the doorstep of November.

With my gaze lost in the limitless depths above me, I sense nothing malevolent at the tail end of the bright night. Taking that as a sign of celestial goodwill, I leave the porch and walk to the barn, as is my wont at the beginning of each day. I grab the three-tine hay fork and a scoop of sweet feed. A shifting of heavy feet at the far end of the chute system indicates the presence of the Angus cow and her daughter, a Charolais cross. Hearing me, they let out a muted lowing. If you have been around cattle, you know the difference between that sound, one of contentment, and the more full-throated bellow for action that hurries a farmer’s steps.

These two had arrived at the farm a few nights earlier, delivered by friends paid with cash and a dinner of crawfish étouffée, who in turn repaid in conversation and good company. Having cattle return to our farm, even in this small way, after a four-year hiatus feels like a homecoming. The cow is bred and will deliver next May. The six-month-old heifer will be fattened for our freezer and friends’.

I pour a little feed into the cattle trough, winning me if not love then at least attention. As the cow and her calf busy themselves eating, I fork a half-dozen loads of fresh hay into the large manger inside the barn before scattering a couple of forkfuls on the floor to cover the overnight deposits. Out in the dark corral the sheep are sleeping islands. I navigate among them, listening, then check that they have plenty of water. (When sheep or cattle move to eating hay, their daily water intake increases.) I also make a mental note to bring them a fresh bale of hay later in the day. The extreme drought of our county has had us feeding hay 4-6 weeks earlier this year than usual.

Back in the barn’s breezeway, I seek out two five-gallon buckets near the feed barrels. The buckets are for the hogs. The first is for the three feeder pigs. It is filled halfway with hogmeal and topped off with the last bunch of overripe bananas. To the second I add a couple of large scoops of hogmeal destined for our sow, Ginger, and her latest beau, Jack. This mating is (and I mean it this time) her last chance to conceive.

As I feed, I watch with both appreciation and predatory interest as the three pigs destined for a January date with the grim reaper demolish their breakfast. When they are finished, I once again gaze skyward and find that the moon has moved away from her partner, the pas de deux having ended. In the time it took to complete the early morning chores, the dawn hours have closed in and the stars have begun to fade. Yet I am still in the dark when I return my buckets to their hooks before heading inside for another cup of coffee, a bit of reading, and breakfast in preparation for the coming day.

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Sorry for the late posting this week. I have been hanging out with my brothers, nephews, and great-nephews in Louisiana the past few days.

 

Threads

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A ham just removed from the salt.

When two or more of my fingers poke through the ends of a glove, or the cloth or leather has torn or frayed so that even duct tape no longer makes it serviceable, the glove is retired, nailed to the joist at the entrance to the barn breezeway in the shade of a large maple.

I recently nailed up another glove, to join its well-used relatives in the ranks. As I climbed the ladder, a cluster of long threads floating in the air brushed across my cheek. Only at eye level with the joist was it apparent where the threads had come from. The nail from which formerly had hung a glove now held only a remnant of fabric. I gazed down the line of gloves and spotted two nails that were missing theirs.

For years birds have put the cloth to good use, unravelling it bit by bit to build their nests. We have seen nests in both trees and bushes, held together by colored canvas threads (and sometimes, unfortunately, bits of plastic string from weed-eaters and synthetic feed bags), but it was only on this day, up on the ladder, that I realized how far the expectant parents’ patient recycling efforts extend.

My discovery was one more small insight into our natural world, an act of resilience and adaptation that I applaud. Yet it is also just one example of my endless and ultimately futile fight to hold back the forces of nature that would reclaim the progress I’ve made in harnessing this land to suit my own purposes: a recognition that the infrastructure—the result of years of sweat labor—is so frail and fragile when measured against the forces of time and nature and all of her creatures seemingly marching in legions against this farm; that the loss of whimsies like my glove museum are minor when compared to sagging fence posts or depredations in the gardens. This endless course of work is all done merely to maintain my place on the treadmill, and when I am gone, unless someone shares my vision, the fruits of my labor will also disappear one thread at a time.

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Reading this weekend: Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking, and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way (L. Mytting). The Farmer’s Wife, My Life in Days (H. Rebanks).

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A personal favor to my readers: My book, Kayaking with Lambs, is set to be released next weekend. If you have ordered it (and thank you if you have) please take the time after reading to leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. For all books—but more than ever for books from small presses like Front Porch Republic—a comment from the reader means the world to any effort by the author to bring the book to a wider audience. Thanks!