Sometimes when the moon is full, the sheep stay out all night to eat. Their breath crystallizes in the still air and their shadows run across the snow behind them.
Last night, the moon was full, but because the temperature was way below zero, we shut the sheep in the barn and spread a bale of hay across the barn floor for a bed time snack. The lamb born at 10:00 pm had ice crystals in the tight curls of his wool and his umbilical cord was frozen. He was nursing when I found him, so I just rubbed him well with a towel and hung two heat lamps over the pen where he and his mom would spend the next two days.
The orange glow of nine heat lamps lit the barn and 80 sheep warmed it. When I stepped out into the barnyard, the cold caught at my throat and the moon lit my path home.
It looks like my prediction of a lambing storm during the blizzard didn't happen.
ReplyDeleteAh! A cold winter night checking on the sheep, I can hear your footsteps on the snow. The musty hay thrown on floor with just a hint of summer greenest. The sheep digging though the hay looking for that very best morsel. The Ol' shepherd