Potential

By the end of January, our sheep are very pregnant. They spend most of their time laying around and eating. When I look at them, I see potential.

I spend the last weeks before shearing skirting and washing fleeces. The wool shed must be mostly empty so that we can store  35 garbage bags full of newly shorn fleeces there.

Last years unsold fleeces will go to the woolen mill to be transformed into yarn. This year, I'll combine gray and white fleeces to produce  a light gray two ply 100% wool yarn.  I spread each fleece out on my skirting table and reassess it. Is the fleece clean or is it full of tiny bits of alfalfa or weed seeds? Does it have a lot of little short pieces of wool, the second cuts that the shearer makes to clean up how the sheep looks when he's done with her? Is it full of manure tags or fine dirt from a windy day last fall?

I can't fix any of those flaws for last year's fleeces. By the time we reach shearing day, I can really only change the way we skirt this years fleeces. I just hope that we coated the sheep early enough in the fall so that their fleeces aren't full of little bits of veggies, that we kept the pastures weed free, that we had no dust storms, and that Tom, our shearer, remembers that we don't care about bits of extra wool on our sheep but that we do care about those second cuts in our fleeces.

Next Saturday, we'll shear our sheep, releasing all that potential. Shearing day is sort of like my birthday crossed with the days when we were kids and our report cards came out. The clean fleeces without seeds or veggies or manure or dust give me such pleasure. The dirty fleeces remind me that next year I can do better.

As Tom runs his shears across a ewes belly, down her legs, and around to her backbone, I watch breathless for the minute he steps aside, shoos the sheep to her feet and out of the way. Her fleece lies on the floor, inside out,  glistening in the shadowed light of the barn, beautiful, fragrant and full of possibilities.

Our connection to Nature

                                                                                    photo by Morning Bray Farm

Dave and I listen to the Thomas Jefferson Hour on North Dakota Public Radio. It is a weekly conversation with President Thomas Jefferson and then a conversation with Clay Jenkinson, the Jeffersonian scholar who channels Jefferson. It is always a fascinating program, either for the history we learn or for the political questions discussed.

Yesterday morning, Thomas Jefferson told the story of a Christmas when as a young man  he slept in the attic of a friend's house. Water dripped through the roof and ruined his pocket watch and the rats carried off his garters and some sheet music. Jefferson commented that although it was unfortunate that those things happened, they weren't unusual, the people of that time were closely connected to Nature.

Today, most urban and suburban people have lost that connection to nature, but in some ways, rural people haven't.  We certainly don't have leaks in the ceiling of our bedroom or rats carrying off articles of clothing. But we do interact with nature on a daily basis. Someone has to feed and water the sheep no matter what the temperature or wind chill. The radio announcers have been warning against going outside all day because of dangerous cold, but we walked the dog and went for a run. This evening, because there was a full moon and the sky was clear, we dressed in our warmest clothes, took a thermos of cocoa adulterated with Grand Marnier, and sat out in the yard to watch the moon rise over the hills and the trees.

We set a timer to remind ourselves to go outside because even in the midst of nature, we often don't really see what's happening beyond the walls of the house. As we sat, just around the corner from the bite of the wind, we relaxed, sipped cocoa and chatted. We discussed possibilities for the section of field that has been too wet the last few summers. We tried to figure out exactly where the moon would show through the trees, and we appreciated the light mist in the air - a low, fast traveling cloud that dissipated just as the moon rose. Then we admired the view -  the golden globe of the moon shining through stark, black trees, and were thankful for our connection to Nature.

Tangled Web

I have written two adult books about our sheep - Shepherdess: Notes from the Field, and From Sheep to Shawl: stories and patterns for fiber lovers. Shepherdess was about my learning curve as a shepherdess. From Sheep to Shawl  was a celebration of wool and the people who create beauty using wool as their artistic medium. I really didn't have anything more to write about, but I love to write. Writing instructors always tell you to write about what you know and sheep are what I know. So, over the last ten to 20 years, I have written a novel about sheep. Tangled Web - a novel, was finally published last month.

 Tangled Web joins Jenny Johnson at the low point of her life when her enjoyment and connection to her children, her husband and her sheep have lost all their charm; when even attending a New Years party feels like a string of bad decisions. In an effort to break out of the routines of her life, Jenny apprentices herself to a charismatic fiber artist and business woman. But the routines of Jenny’s life follow along behind her. She is still working on a sheep farm, baling hay and caring for lambs; and her children and husband do not disappear from her life just because she disappears from theirs.

Many women have midlife crises, even those living on sheep farms. But not every crisis involves being suspected of murder. 

The following is an excerpt from the opening pages of Tangled Web. The book is available at the Northcroft Store on my blog, and in Pelican Rapids, MN at Pelican Drug, Riverview Place, and Mercantile on Main. It is also available at Victor Lundeen Co. in Fergus Falls, MN.

"The chicken water froze. The sheep water froze. The dog water froze. Every day I hauled four buckets of water to the sheep, a bucket of water to the chickens, and a bucket of water to the dog. Every day I returned the frozen buckets to the house to thaw out for the next day. The snow in the air cut at my exposed cheeks and brought tears to my eyes that froze on my lashes. Even the truck was frozen. I hadn’t been able to start it for six days, ever since Michael left for work.

God knows a week of below zero temperature would do that. The wind rushed across the open fields carrying clouds of drifting snow around the corners of the house and produced a wind chill of forty to fifty degrees below zero. The wind had been blowing all week. Nothing worked in that kind of cold.

My main fear was that I’d go out to the barn one morning and find Stupid frozen. Stupid the goat learned early in life to stick her head through fences to eat greener grass or tastier hay just on the other side of the fence. She hadn’t unlearned the habit when her horns grew too big for her to slide her head back out. Today, Stupid was once again stuck in the feeder. She had managed to force her head through a six by six inch opening that was only inches away from a much larger rectangle designed for large sheep heads. Snow had drifted up over her back until she was lying almost completely covered. Her legs and feet had dug trenches in the snow, trying to wrench herself out of the feeder. The snow was scraped away to dirty ground and littered with her frozen feces.  She’d been there for a long time.

I walked up behind her and grabbed her horns. Stupid jumped to her feet and tried to ram her one hundred pound body through the feeder.

“Stupid, stupid.” I dropped my mittens into the snow and grabbed her horns again. As we struggled, the backs of my hands scraped across the frigid wires of the feeder. The horns that imprisoned Stupid in the feeder also allowed me to control her. I slipped one horn tip through the corner of the square opening. Then, I rotated her head slightly, lined up the second horn tip and… she surged forward, jamming both horns against the far side of the fence. Again.

“Damn you stupid animal.” Cursing under my breath, I sucked my bloodied knuckles and began again. First, I clasped Stupid’s muscular little body between my legs, holding her steady. Then, I grabbed her horns and maneuvered them one after the other through the feeder. When her head cleared the opening, I turned her to the left, released her body with my legs and let go with my hands. Stupid tore away from the fence, then stopped, and pawed at the snow, looking for food. She shook her body and her lustrous mohair curls reminded me of why I put up with her personality. Stupid returned to the feeder, slipped her head through the proper opening and began to eat ravenously, as if she hadn’t been trapped with her head in the hay all night long.

I picked my wool mittens out of the snow drift, shoved red and numbed fingers into them, and walked around the barn to make sure everyone else was content. The odor of warm sheep and manure washed over me as I stepped inside. Most of the sheep were here, out of the wind, patiently waiting for me to refill the feeders with hay. I climbed the ladder into the shadowy hay loft and disturbed four gray and white pigeons that fluttered around my head and then out into the cold air.  I threw five hay bales into the feeders. As I pulled the strings off the bales, the sheep and goats rushed around the corner of the barn, shouldered Stupid out of the way, and stuck their heads into the feeders. The sound of their chewing was loud, even against the wind."