At the border

At the border between sleep and waking, my mind plays with itself, frets, plan,s and worries. Some of the worries are ludicrous. Did I finish my homework for algebra? (Who knows – it was all irrelevant 50 years ago.) Will Simon like his birthday present? (Probably not as much as I enjoyed making it, but that’s okay.) Will my Muslim friends be safe? (I don’t know – all I can do is write letters and make phone calls to congressmen.) Do we have new lambs in the barn? Do we have new lambs that need help? Finally something I can actually affect.  But not by worrying. 

Most of the ewes are wandering around the pasture in the light of a half moon. I hear the lambs before I reach the barn. Inside I find two lambs being mothered by two moms. One lamb is up and trying to nurse, the other lies unlicked against a cold block wall. Our first two lambs! A joy and a possible problem.

I grab the step stool off the wall and unhook a heat lamp from the nail near the ceiling. I plug in the lamp over a jug and then go to get the lambs. The black ewe with the lamb who is nursing has amniotic fluid running down her udder.  The white ewe with the quiescent lamb shows no physical signs of having given birth. She has stolen a lamb. I pick up the quiet lamb, clutch it to my chest and then pick up the active lamb. Both ewes weave back and forth around me trying to stay close to their lamb. I open the door to the jug and lay the lambs under the heat lamp. Then I step back holding myself between the white ewe and the lambs, giving the real mother, number 27 orange, a chance to blunder into the pen. Then I shut the panel and tie the pen closed. Both lambs baaa.

Number 27 orange mutters, sniffs the lambs, and begins licking the quiet one. Satisfied, I retrieve a knife, several towels and Iodine from the barn cabinet. First I pick up the quiet lamb, hold her in my lap and dry her white curls then I cut her umbilical cord to about an inch and dip it in iodine. I place her in front of Orange 27 and dry off and dip the second lamb, a little boy who struggles to get out of my lap and return to his nursing.  The little girl still isn’t standing. I touch her nose. Cold. She probably hasn’t nursed yet. I express some of 27 orange’s milk into a cup and dribble it into the lamb’s mouth. She doesn’t even swallow. 

I dash back to the house, grab 60 cc gavage syringe, a short piece of plastic tubing and a thermometer. Back in the barn I fill the syringe with fresh milk expressed from 27 orange, slip the plastic tube into the lambs mouth, down its throat and then slowly squirt life giving warm milk into the lambs stomach. I slip the thermometer into the lamb’s rectum. The little red line stops at 97°. Too cold. A lamb should be between 102 and 104°.

I hurry back to the house for a bucket of hot water and meet Dave on the way out to find me. He gets the water, I return to the barn to feed and water 27 orange. Then I set up a new jug for the next family of new lambs.

Dave returns with hot water. He submerges the cold lamb up to her neck and we wait until she struggles to get out of the bucket, a good sign that her body temperature is up to normal - 102°. We dry her off with towels and a hair dryer. Then we feed her another two ounces of milk. She’s standing, her belly feels full, and no one else seems to be lambing. We return to the house and bed.

At the border between wake and sleep, my mind wrestles with itself. Sheep okay? Just checked. Grandchildren okay? Talked to them this evening.  Politics? Oh, that’s a hard one. But in the morning, after my first cup of Earl Grey tea, I’ll make some phone calls and share my worries –

White House switchboard 202- 456-1111

Congressional switchboard 202-224-3121

The switchboards have been overwhelmed with calls. If you can’t get through, try an email. Go to your Representative or Senators web page. It should give you an email address.

Finding peace

“Would you join Al-Shabab?” I asked a young Somali man. He helped us bale hay on our farm a few years ago and I felt I knew him well enough to ask that question.

“No!” He was amazed. “First of all, I’m a religion person. I love my religion. My religion teaches me to be nice to everybody. Even if somebody hurt you, be kind.” Anwar came to Pelican Rapids when he was 13 years old. He graduated from high school here, played on the football team both in Pelican and at M-State in Fergus Falls. Now he holds down three jobs.  “Before I came to America, I had a hard life. I grew up in the worst place you could grow up in, a war. I didn’t think I could have a job or ever be happy.”

Anwar is concerned about the terrorists in Somalia and other African and Middle Eastern countries, like we all are. “I think ISIS is corporate, not religious. They have their own interests, their own agenda,” he said.  “I ask my family, my friends, myself about what I see the TV every day. Islam is not like that. Islam is beautiful.”

Ayan, a friend of his, nodded her head. She is a young Somali American woman attending MState in Fergus Falls and working as a para in Pelican’s Head Start program. “Islam is peace,” she agreed, “That’s what I’ve been told since I was born. Islam does not teach people to be terrorists. You can’t kill people.”

Why do we talk about Muslim terrorists? People don’t seem to realize that it is just as offensive to write “Muslims convicted in (World Trade Center)  Case” as the Associated Press did in a headline, as it would be to describe Timothy McVay (Oklahoma City, 168 dead) or Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook Elementary School, 26 dead) as  “Christian terrorists”. 

Our Muslim neighbors struggle daily with the increased tensions in their lives due to their neighbor’s fears. “The media is making people fear Islam more,” Ayan said. “I have a lot of friends who are Christians. I ask them ‘If an explosion happens, who would you blame?’” She shook her head. “The person who looks like a Muslim.”  

Between 1990 and 2010, there were 348 murders in the United States committed by white, right wing extremists. That is twenty times more murders than were committed over the same period by Muslim-American extremists.  Simple, scary stories sell better than complex, thoughtful stories and so our national media is all about selling fear. Recently, that fear has been directed at Muslims. If white guy goes to a school and kills a lot of children, the media describes him as mentally ill; they don’t call him a Christian terrorist. If someone who looks Middle-Eastern or African goes to a school and kills a lot of children, he is a Muslim terrorist, period. Perhaps we  need to look at the definitions of the word “Muslim.”

Ayan is not an expert, she is a Somali Muslim, and our neighbor. “The media are sensationalizing Muslims being terrorists,” she said. “They should not be listening to those people saying this is what Islam is. Islam teaches peace and love, not hate or killing. I encourage people to study it more, not listen to bad people like ISIS who are advocating bad stuff about Islam.”

“We are not thieves or terrorists,” Anwar said. “We immigrated to America to find peace.”

A larger world than the farm

Pelican Rapids on a summer day

I’m a shepherd. My blog Sheep Notes allows me to write about our sheep, our land, and occasionally my grandchildren. It gives me a place to talk about the things I love. But shepherd is only one part of me, actually, a small part. Since our kids have grown up and moved away from home, our community has become one of those things I love, partly because I have invested myself in it, and partly because of the amazing people who live here and the ways they have chosen to live their lives. I think it is time for my blog to expand to encompass all the things that I love. I’m not sure what my title, Sheep Notes means anymore. Perhaps I will comment on activities that we seem to rush into without much thought, like my sheep rushing for corn when the gate is opened. Perhaps Sheep Notes will be more of a report, notes on the world around us as seen through the eyes of a shepherd. Whatever direction it goes, Sheep Notes will continue to be a blog about the things that that are important to me. First, let me introduce you to Pelican Rapids.

Pelican Rapids is a small town in west central Minnesota. Over the last thirty years, our community transformed from a collection of farmers and small businessmen with Scandinavian or German ancestry (population about 1800) to a village including refugees and immigrants from Somalia, Bosnia, Vietnam, Ukraine, Iraq, and Mexico (population about 2500.)  Fifty years ago in Pelican Rapids it was sort of iffy if a Norwegian married a Swede. Today in Pelican, people speak at least 8 different languages. Mixed race marriages are not unusual. In fact some of the Bosnians living in town are here because there is nowhere for them to live in their home country.  Two Catholic brothers married a Muslim woman and an Orthodox woman before the war in Bosnia. They are not welcome in Bosnia or Serbia today. They are welcome in Pelican Rapids. 

The major similarity between these disparate peoples at first seems to be employment at the turkey plant in town. However, people are just people all over the world, no matter what color their skin, what religion they follow or what political party they support. Residents in Pelican Rapids have struggled to create a new definition of community that includes bridging between people with very different life experiences, building useful conversations between people who don’t even speak the same language, and imagining a set of goals which address and then solve the barriers to community, that replace the word “stranger” with the word “friend.”

Loss of focus

It only takes a second of not paying attention to create complete disasters at the worst, or hours of work at the best, when you wash wool.

I wash my fleeces and my yarn in my home washing machine. I load the machine, add a little Dawn detergent, and then turn it on, keeping the lid open so that the machine doesn't agitate. When the tub is full, I set the timer for half an hour. Then I turn the dial to spin and the water empties. I repeat until the water in the machine is clear. It works well for both fleeces and yarn, as long as I pay attention to what I'm doing.(For the awful possibilities, see the directions for felting a wreath in the chapter on washing wool in my book  From Sheep to Shawl)

Yesterday, I wasn't paying attention. I put four skeins of intricately variegated yarn, each the result of over half an hour of painting the wool and another half hour of simmering , into the machine, closed the lid, turned the machine on and walked away.

Several minutes later, I heard the machine agitating. I rushed to the laundry room and opened the lid. The yarns were tangled, a little puffier than normal, but not felted. Felted would be an irreversible disaster.

Relieved, I moved the dial on the machine to spin and closed the lid. The water rushed out of the machine without agitation. I filled the machine again, standing in front of it until the tub was full. Then I moved the dial to spin and closed the lid.

The yarn came out of the rinse in four impressive tangles. Grandma Alice and I spent over four hours untangling each skein and rolling it into a ball. If we hadn't put so much effort into dyeing the yarn, I would have been tempted to give it to BC, the barn cat, for a nest. As it is, Grandma Alice will crochet the skeins  into a beautiful, variegated baby blanket for some future great grandchild. And I will remember, for awhile at least, to always focus when I'm washing wool.

Simple gifts

We are spending a quiet Christmas at the farm this year - just Dave and I, his Mom, Newton the dog, Oolong and BC the cats, thirty eight sheep, one alpaca, and six chickens.

We give the gifts of corn and hay to the sheep and alpaca, cat food and dog food to the cats and dog, and chicken laying mix to the chickens. The sheep will soon gift us with their fleeces and their babies. The cats and dog share our lives on a more intimate basis. Oolong spreads herself in front of the wood stove and decorates the living room with her elegance. BC and Newton vie for floor space within stroking distance of either Dave or me.The chickens gift us with three eggs nearly every day. I love reaching into their nest box to find the smooth, brown ovals, cool to the touch and beautiful within. The egg yolks are firm and dark yellow, almost orange, with a wonderful flavor.

It has been raining most of the day. A thin crust of ice coats the snow drifts. As I write, the lights flicker once, twice, and go out. Probably ice on the electric lines. I find the candles and light them. Dave cleans the chimneys on the kerosene lamps and sets one beside each of us. Grandma Alice continues her crocheting. She knows the pattern so well that it doesn't matter that she can barely see.

The wood stove keeps us warm; we have ten cords of wood in the back yard. We have water stored in the basement. I'll cook our sweet potato casserole in a cast iron fry pan on the wood stove and ham slices on a griddle on the wood stove. After Christmas dinner, Grandma Alice and I will sing along as Dave plays  carols on his fiddle. We have no internet access, no radio, no TV. It doesn't matter. We have warmth and food and family - simple gifts.

The fox and the chickens

I enjoy having chickens around. They are industrious, not bothered by much, colorful, funny, and they lay eggs. Pretty good for something that costs less than $5 at Farm and Fleet in the spring.
We've had chicken off and on for years, but rather more off than on until lately. Several years ago, we delivered two lambs to a friend and came home with half a dozen chickens.

They were fine for a week or two, and then over a three day period, they all disappeared. Something had discovered them.

Dave  built  a chicken vault,  a wonderful coop, in the barn with corrugated steel on the bottom three feet, and hog panels on up to the ceiling. As I was filling the feeder, our barn cat jumped to the top of the corrugated metal wall and wove his way back and forth through the spaces on the hog panels. Obviously, hog panels weren't secure enough to keep the cat out.  I shooed him away and laced chicken wire to the hog panels.

The next morning, half  the chickens were gone. I searched for openings and tightened up a couple of spaces between wall and wire that might have been the problem. The next morning the rest were dead. Dave found one body stuck in the barnyard fence, but the rest had disappeared.

That night Dave set a trap. He put the dead chicken back into the coop and at dusk, he hid in the barn with his rifle hoping to catch the culprit in that act. It wasn't until full dark that he identified a soft , persistent background noise as chewing. "It must be out on the compost pile," he thought. Dave walked silently to the barn door and stood there, watching and listening. No, the sound came from above him. Dave pulled the door shut and a racoon fell to the ground in a litter of chicken bones, dashed across the barnyard , through the fence and up a tree.

Completely disheartened, I emptied the feeder and waterer. Dave filled the hole in the base of the racoon tree with chicken wire to discourage the coons. We gave up on chickens for the year.

In the spring we ordered an automatic chicken door and Dave installed it. Our grandson Jasper and I went to Farm and Fleet to buy chickens. Jasper chose two each of four varieties We released them into the coop with a brooder lamp to keep them warm. The chicks prospered until I began thinking that they were just about big enough to lay eggs. The next morning, half the chickens were gone. We checked the chicken door. It closed at dusk and opened at dawn. It should be working. The next morning, the rest of the chickens were gone. Obviously, whoever was eating our chickens worked after dusk or before dawn. Again we gave up on chickens for the year.

 Last summer, when grandsons Kieran and Simon came to visit, we decided to try chickens one more time so that the boys would have a chance to select them and play with them while they were still cute and cuddly. We  tightened up the coop again and unplugged the door. We would manually let the chickens out when the sun was well up and put them back into the coop in late afternoon while the sun was still out. One day, we were late putting the chickens back in the coop. By the time we thought of them, there was only one hen left, cowering in a corner.The next morning, six more appeared, but the eighth one didn't ever come home.

I set six foot hog panels around the coop, sectioning off an area of the barn for chicken use only. It wasn't as fun as giving the chickens the run of the barnyard, but it was still nice to step into the barn and hear them chattering.

  A few days later while we were washing dishes, Dave said "There's a fox in the pasture." Then he threw down his dish towel. "He's got one of our chickens!" We both rushed outside. The fox disappeared through the fence, but the chicken was already dead. Her warm brown feathers moved a little in the breeze, but her neck was broken, her head limp. When we stepped into the barn, six chickens flew back into their pen. Okay, so they could fly over a six foot fence.

Dave and I stretched three lengths of the temporary electric fencing that we use for the sheep when they are grazing our hayfield around the inside of the barnyard fence. That night, Dave woke to the sound of a fox crying, little short barks that went on and on in the darkness. In the morning, the fence was pulled out of the ground and tangled. The fox must have come through the woven wire and gotten caught in the electric fence.  Two days later, the entire fence was lying on the ground or leaning against the old woven wire fence, covered in ice and snow. If the wind blew the electric fence onto the woven wire fence once it was electrified it would short out immediately. This was not a good solution either. We tied the woven wire fence to the electric fence, hoping the extra wires  would produce a more impenetrable barrier.

That was a week ago. We still have six chickens. They still fly out of their pen and roam the barnyard. Yesterday we had a blizzard, restricting the animals to the barn. The chickens will be out again as soon as the sheep walk a path into the barnyard.

Hopefully, the fox learned it's lesson. But probably not. Yesterday we found two eggs in the barn garbage can. What a thrill.  We are agreed, we really enjoy having the chickens in our life.

For the rest of this winter, we'll appreciate every egg, every encounter with the chickens for as long as they live. Next spring, as soon as the ground is thawed, we'll wrap our barnyard in fencing with smaller holes so the raccoons, the foxes and anything else that threatens the chickens can't get in. It's worth it for the fresh eggs, warm and brown, but mostly, it's worth it for the enjoyment we get from the chickens.

Not noticing much

I walk the fields every morning with our dog, Newton. BC the barn cat  follows us. Each day, I look for something new, some change. In the spring I see the first furled alfalfa leaf rising through the grasses. In summer, I watch for new flowers in the prairie. This fall I've been listening to bird calls, trying to identify them, judging which birds are moving south by the calls I hear in the air.

Every morning, I write a haiku as I walk. Haiku are a form of short Japanese poetry, generally with a natural theme. Traditional haiku are 17 syllables long, set out in three lines of 5 syllables, 7 syllables and 5 syllables.  Seventeen syllables of noticing the world.

This morning Newton and I heard gunshots in the distance as we walked up the driveway. It's deer hunting season and the shots mean we have hunters beyond the edges of our property. I won't risk taking a deer colored dog further than  our driveway. He'll get the rest of his outdoor time sitting with BC on the deck.

Then I began to worry. Would a hunter see just a glimpse of Newton and not notice the human walking behind him on our driveway and shoot thinking he'd seen a deer?

What would I do if Newton got shot? Would it be better to shout and scream so the hunter knows I'm there? Or to rush silently back to the house and call 911 to report a hunter shooting across our property without our permission so that the police could arrest him? Should I pick the dog up and carry him down to Dave in case he's dying (as if I could carry a 100 pound dog) or should I just shout for Dave and hope he hears me above NPR?

A car was parked across the road from the top of our driveway. A hunter in the neighbor's woods.
What if the shot came from that direction? If I ran down the driveway after the shot, I could tell the police all about the car.

Wait a minute, what could I tell the police? The car was white, no, silver. Maybe it was a light gray. Do they make light gray cars? It looked like a station wagon from behind, but hardly anybody has station wagons anymore, so with no other cars to judge size by, it was probably something bigger. I think I made out  the letters KIA on the back of the car.

Newton BC, and I turned around and headed back down the driveway. If Newton got shot from behind on our way down the drive, I could tell the police that I saw a white, silver, or gray car that might have been a KIA and might have been bigger than a station wagon, but with the same kind of square shape, with Minnesota plates of which I could read none of the numbers or letters without going a lot closer. I wasn't getting any closer.

In the mystery novels I enjoy, someone always gets the color, make, and license plate number of a car speeding away from them. I obviously would be a useless witness if a crime was committed with a car. No crime was committed at all while Newton and I returned to the house, but I edited and tuned my story all the way down the drive just in case. Back at the house I sat down to write my haiku and realized that I had spent the entire walk inside my head, not even really seeing the car which was the one thing I had actually noticed.

obliviousness

I walk this beautiful world

not noticing much