Another Successful Shearing Day!

Last Saturday we pulled off another one---lots of volunteers wrestling with uncooperative sheep, a shearer shearing 46 sheep, people milling about gates and fences and other sharp objects---and no one got hurt. That's our idea of a good day. We usually have 10-15 insane people---oops, I mean volunteers---who come down to help. For some reason we ended up with 27 people there at one time...not enough jobs to go around. "Give us a job," they clamored. I was tempted to send them down the hill to clean my house, but I resisted. Things settled down by noon, and we were back to 15 people.

My mom brought lots of WONDERFUL food, and some visitors added to the groaning table in the feed room.

Instead of the usual 25 or 30 degrees, the kind of weather that chills you if you're not working hard, the temperature was a balmy 65 degrees...unheard of in March in Minnesota...

Enjoy the photos---none of Melissa or me...guess we weren't working hard enough!

Here are the sheep BS (before shearing):


Here are the rams...."Why do we always have to go first?"...Because, boys, we're shearing in your pen, and need to kick you out before we bring the ewes in...



Our esteemed shearer Drew in action:



Here's one sheep who's glad she's almost done....Note the shearer's daughter in the background. Teenagers are always on the phone, even during shearing!



All eyes are on Drew all day long. It's fascinating to watch the fleece come off.



Jake in the wool bag:



Bonnie and Jackie bravely pulling poop off a fleece. It's called 'skirting' the fleece, but it could also be called "touching 'poopy' wool" or "getting your hands incredibly soft with lanolin."



Girl: I wonder if Zipper is going to try to eat my camera.
Zipper: I wonder if that camera is edible.



And finally, after two hours of farmer preparation, six hours of shearing, and another hour of clean-up, everyone went home, leaving two tired farmers, and a flock of entirely buck-nekkid sheep....(who are allowed into the barn in case it rains or gets cold!)

My New Position

For the last few years I’ve called myself Ms. Backup Farmer, happily puttering in the background while Melissa has taken the helm as Primary Farmer. For the next few days, however, I have been promoted to Primary Farmer.

It’s all because I had a birthday party yesterday. It was a lovely party and our house was filled with people we love. The afternoon flowed with food and soda and wine and conversation. Mid-party we pushed back the furniture, everyone found a place to sit or stand, then our friend Mary H, a professional belly dancer, took the ‘stage.’ (SEE PHOTO ABOVE.)

Mary dazzled us with her dancing, her smile, and her amazing teal costume with gold dangly beads that shimmied whenever she did. However, I ending up wishing I’d hit the wine a little harder before the dancing because at the end of her performance, she pulled the ‘birthday girl’ up off the sofa and made me dance with her. (SEE KNEE IN PHOTO ABOVE.) While I have a belly, I am no belly dancer. As Inigo Montoya said to Max the Miracle Maker in The Princess Bride, “Humiliations galore!” Thank goodness we have the ability to crop photos.

My friends took pity on me, and soon the living room was writhing with women as Mary gave an impromptu lesson in belly dancing.

Fast forward to later, when Melissa was outside seeing off departing guests. She was looking back at them, but her feet were moving forward. Bad combination. She tripped on our limestone sidewalk and went flying. Luckily her fall was broken by her forehead, and a finger on her left hand.

We’d had three doctors at the party: a family doctor (who’d just left), a Ph.D. specializing in geology/forest hydrology, and a pediatric oncologist. While the geology specialist could have told us much about the limestone that had split open Melissa’s forehead, it wasn’t going to help with the bleeding.

Friends helped Melissa into the stuffed chair in our bedroom. The pediatric oncologist sprang into action, and rattled off a list of what she needed. When I appeared a few minutes later with everything, found either in our medicine cabinet or our vet supplies, Dr. Cindy was amazed. Melissa smiled weakly. “I get hurt a lot.”

After applying a butterfly bandage to the patient’s head, Dr. Cindy was cleaning and bandaging Melissa’s finger when the patient asked, “Does this mean I can’t do chores for a few weeks?” Cindy looked at me, and wisely didn’t answer.

After everyone left an hour later, I began to worry Melissa might need stitches in her forehead, or at least something to bring the edges of the skin closer together. So a few minutes later we were at the family doctor’s house with Melissa stretched out on the kitchen counter, having her forehead glued together with some sort of derma-stuff.

While Dr. John was looking at the finger, Melissa asked, “Does this mean I can’t do chores for a few weeks?”

I threw up my hands. “Alright, already. I’ll do chores.”

So I’m now Primary Farmer, at least for a few days. Melissa is a little nervous, but she has nothing to worry about. I understand my job. It’s kind of a rush. The animals need me! Nothing stands between our animals and certain death but me! I control the fates and destinies of 50 sheep, 3 llamas, a steer, 3 ducks, 45 chickens, and 10 peacocks! I can do whatever I want! I’m in charge! I rule!

I just hope my new position doesn’t go to my head.

Accepting Cobwebs

If you meet me on the street and ask me how I am, I’ll tell you my hip hurts, my kitchen floor hasn’t been cleaned in months, and I am coming totally unglued over the idea that I will soon turn 50.

We memoirists love to tell the truth, even if it makes us look like total imbeciles.

For example, the other day in the barn I happened to look up at the exposed floor joists of our hay loft, and was stunned by the cobwebs. And then I remembered...

Before Melissa and I started our farm, we visited lots of other farms. While I have a terrible memory, I distinctly remember my reaction on one farm when I looked up at the floor joists of the hay loft overhead. Unsightly cobwebs covered everything---they were draped over buckets hanging on the wall, coating light fixtures and pitchforks, dangling in doorways. I fully expected to find a slower-moving farmer encased in a white, dusty web.

So when Melissa and I built our first barn, and those floor joists were fresh and clean, I resolved then and there never to let our barn be overcome by unattractive cobwebs. I would stay on top of those pesky spiders and not let them turn our barn into a cobweb museum.

Isn’t that adorable? Of course my goal was totally ridiculous. I can’t even keep the house clean, let alone two barns and one shed. The barn walls and ceilings and contents are coated with cobwebs. The cobwebs have cobwebs. So much dust has settled onto them that they look like works of art.

Cobwebs serve as a good metaphor, however. Farming can be so complex, so physically exhausting, that many farmers do not, and cannot, have those perfect farms you see in movies or magazines—the sparkling white picket fence, perfectly groomed pastures, spotless animals. We may have a pile of scrap metal by the driveway, waiting to be loaded up and taken away. We may have, on a bad day, a dead animal behind the barn, waiting to be loaded up and taken away. The lawn may not be recently mowed, and there might be hunks of duck poop on the sidewalk, if we even have a sidewalk.

So, yes, I admit it. We have cobwebs in our barns. That’s because on this farm, the animals come first. Everything else–mowing the lawn, moving that pile of rusty metal, washing the kitchen floor, clearing away cobwebs—comes last.