Urban Sheep

It was time to leave the isolation , as much as I loved the area. Bummer and I were fortunate to find a spot zoned as county though it is well-connected to incorporated city amenities, like food shopping, a hospital, restaurants.

Bummer took some time to adjust. He must miss all the trees, ferns, and poison oak to eat down. Maybe he misses the deer. I doubt he misses the mountain lions. I know he misses Moses, who passed away in his sleep June 3.

The new place is fully fenced. Bummer has the shelter of a spreading cedar, though right now it is taken over by nesting birds and the constant chatter and activity has driven him to lie down on the grass and stare at the tree from a safe distance.

The backyard was overgrown when we moved here in December. Bummer has chomped down and cleared out the wildness. We discovered a French lilac, now blooming, in a corner, and that has to be surrounded with something to save it from destruction.

He is curious ... and took his teeth to a wire on the house wall. The result was that I was out of landline phone service for about two months because the constant storms kept the phone company busy. Meanwhile the fence was routed in a small section to protect the wire. Lesson learned.

I am able to clean off the paving stones around his manger and friends help cart the spoiled hay and droppings to the garden area. The yard is riddled with gopher holes. I put up a couple of wind chimes, which they are supposed to hate. I wanted to encourage hawks and barn owls that love to eat gophers and more large birds do seem to hang out on the telephone wires. But their focus seems to hover on the chicken coop in the front yard so I am afraid to let the small hens out until they have a run that is fenced over with hardware cloth. The run that I ordered from mypetchicken.com is inadequate. It is way too small. The entire coop need a bit of adapting to my disabilities. I can't bend so a contractor is raising it onto a platform. Hopefully I will be able to care for the hens myself, without bending.

Do what you can still do. That's what I think. With help from friends, you can do a lot.

The Color of Rain

January 11, woke to the color of rain.  Such a storm of hail for me to walk through along the length of the deck to the covered porch.  I called Bummer, and called and called, while hail and rain pounded off the the roof.  Maybe for twenty minutes I stood out there, hunched under my orange rain hat that makes me look like  I'm under a toadstool, calling.  I was becoming hoarse.  Still no Bummer.  I began to be afraid.  I begged, "Please don't make me go out there looking for you."  I thought about all the hungry critters that might have carried him off during the night.  I thought about the people who sneak around, chase him into a corral, and close him off, where I will find him shivering and hungry, unable to get to his feeder.

Still no Bummer and still lots of rain.

It lessened  and I yelled out that it wasn't raining so hard and he could come out now.  "Bummer, it's stopping!  Bummer come on!"

I kept looking around, scanning the slope, becoming ever more fearful.  Had someone closed the gates on him, the way they had before a few weeks ago?  Had dogs gotten through the fence?  Had some creature eaten him?

I thought maybe if he heard me opening the door of the shed, heard  the metal can banging around, and heard me rattling pellets into the pail, then, maybe . . .

I was halfway down to the shed when I thought I saw movement.  I thought I saw his little black head, his sweet little face, poking between the bars of the gate on his shelter.

Yes, there was Bummer.  He was a smart little guy.  A very smart sheep who knew I would be coming to feed him at the same time I fed him every day.

Usually when I call to him, he answers.  Maybe he did and I didn't hear him over the storm; the hail and rain were overwhelming. As he ate his pellets, I stroked his ears and talked to him.  "Smart sheep.  Nice and dry."

Nadia, the Great Pyrenees, refused to leave the house.  When I went outside, she ducked out, sniffed, and backed into the kitchen. Moses the St. Bernard also went inside.  I had to mop the floor . . .

What do wool growers do with the wool they don't sell?  They hoard it.  I wash almost all the fleeces and store them in cardboard boxes.  When I do start spinning them up, I put the yarn in a bag.  The shawl pattern I have been using takes a lot of yarn.  But if a friend comes over, I like to give her a hank.

The Cosmos Chocolate Blooms

I've been broken hearted and in mourning.  Due to continued harassment of the sheep and declining health, I chose to give away my flock of Icelandic sheep.  Degenerative disk disease and osteoporosis made the daily chores of feeding and cleaning life-threatening activities.

I kept only the bummer lamb.  He still thinks that I am his mother, only now he thinks that he is the boss.  He has given me three bags of wool.  Each fleece is fuller, loftier, and softer than the last.  His first fleece was solid black.  Now it is more silver than black.

I so wanted a lamb from his mother.  MaJoie was thirteen and had never had a lamb.  She was a spotted gray badger face.  Her mother came from Yeoman Farm in Canada to Thistledown Farm in Portland, OR, and on down to my place.  She died at a farm in Fortuna.  I lost half my flock at that farm, one year when I was recovering from surgery.

The sheep are spirit creatures.  Like llamas, they want to get close to you, exchange breath with you.  My huge sheep dogs, the Great Pyrenees and Anatolian Shepherd, are the same way.  To keep peace on the farm, the sheep dogs become one with the flock and with the shepherd.  It's a special bond.

That is part of why I have been so sad.  I dream of the sheep and miss them but I can no longer safely muck out.  In fact, I can garden only in containers.  I have a number of pots on the deck.  One has the cosmos chocolate; it's blooming now.

Friends installed hand rails and, using a walker, I am able to make it down to Bummer's stall to feed him.   He loves to bang his gate and to protest loudly if I am late.  Then he will let me scratch his ears.

Sometimes the isolation here does get to me.  The neighborhood is car dependent.  During the rainy season, storms knock out electricity for days.  When there is no power, there is no running water; I am not able to use the phone or the computer.

When that happens, I talk to the dogs and live like the Amish folk who choose to live without electricity.  Electricity and running water, especially hot running water, are such great luxuries.

Of course Bummer doesn't care.  He cares only that his meals are on time and that he has clean drinking water.

How Wars Get Started

I consider myself peace-loving and I am anti-war but I understand how wars get started.

People in the cities think they will move to the country and live happily ever after, with few diesel smells, hardly any blaring from horns and sirens, expecting the stillness of antelopes and immense blue skies and over it all, at night, the absolute wonder of stars.

It doesn't work out that way if they move into a zone that accepts agricultural activity.  Agricultural activity includes livestock.  Livestock are smelly and noisy and you either learn to adjust and accept this or move back to town.  Otherwise, you might be starting a war, if not just making country people unhappy.

I heard one story about city people who moved into the country.  The farmer who owned land next to them for years kept his donkeys pastured not far from where the city people now lived.  At five every morning, the city people woke to the braying of the donkeys. To them it was a nuisance, and they insisted the donkeys be moved far away.

I have neighbors who don't like the smell of sheep.  No matter how clean the shelter is, there is a distinctive odor.  Sheep farm just like people.  For a sheep breeder, I love the smell of the raw wool.  And they are noisy.  When they hear me moving around out doors, they talk to me; they wail, they get lonely and are often begging for more food or more attention.

The sheep dogs bark constantly at whatever they consider to be an intruder.  That is their job.  It has been bred into them for centuries. They are territorial.

On Tuesday, my friend Annie and I were cleaning out my upstairs.  She was hanging out clothes, sheets, and sheep skins to air out on the died fence just a few feet from my room.  Nadia my Great Pyrenees was up in the sheep pasture and barking.  Nadia is a quirky dog, with her own logic and sense of duty toward the farm.  But this neighbor comes out and starts screaming at her to shut up and then starts throwing rocks at her.  Nadia is on my land and she is doing her job.

Annie calls to Nadia and she stops barking for a moment.  But the guy starts scramming at Annie and throwing rocks at her.

This is a Tuesday evening before darkness settles in.  I wonder, "Is he drunk?"  Or is he so absolutely self centered that he thinks the world turns around him.  Dog bark.  He is about an acre away from the dog and an acre away from my house, so what's his problem?

Was I supposed to start throwing rocks back at him?  Get out my rifle and start shooting?  This creep had just assaulted my friend and screamed profanity as he did so.  If he racked like this to a mere dog's barking, what was he thinking when the lambs complained, especially Bummer, who wants to be among people and not with the flock of sheep?

Annie and I kept on cleaning my room, with the door open for ventilation and the coming and going of house cleaning: shaking the dust mop, smacking the sheep skins free of dust and then bring everything back inside, some things going to the washing machine, others back on to shelves and dressers.

After about a half hour, the neighbor comes back out and yells over the fence, "Sorry for losing it!"

I was glad to hear this.  But I also remain concerned.  In his nasty mood, this guy could have hurt my friend when he hurled rocks at her.  It was a totally unprovoked attack.  I hope it doesn't happen again.

It was on a Sunday

It was on a Sunday morning that Xerxes did not come down to the lower sheep shelter for breakfast.  It had to be serious.  Xerxes does not miss breakfast.

I let Xerxes and two of the ewes roam where they like on the fenced seven acres.  They sleep in the woods and browse as they like.  I had no idea in which direction to go hunting for him.  I figured that if he heard me calling him, he would make enough noise and so I would have a hint about where to start looking.  Neither of those so-called sheep dogs were giving me any help.  On the other hand, their complete lack of anxiety was reassuring.

I started hiking in a southeasterly direction and soon gave up.  My arthritis was not going to let me climb around the slopes.  Lunch came and went and still no Xerxes.  I tried to get help from friends but no one was reading their email, or they were out of town, or they were working a three-day shift.

Dinner came and went and still no Xerxes.  I sent email to Keith Hamm who usually works on the fences.  He was going to come out on Monday morning with a helper to fix the front gate of the sheep shelter.  Xerxes had smashed it in and broken one of the hinges.  Keith and Danny would also go look for Xerxes.

I had an anxious night.  But people with livestock and a lot of land to cover do the best they can.  And when Keith and Danny came, they found Xerxes right away, in the opposite direction of my hike.  He was entangled in fencing.  They cut him loose and he high tailed it for the feeder.  They had to corral him and catch him again because he still had wire around his neck and one leg.

Xerxes is generally a calm guy and he lay without struggling while Keith held him down by the horns and Danny carefully clipped away at the wire.  At last, Xerxes was free.

He has been fine.  His appetite has not been affected.  He is back to bashing the gate.

Sometimes a very young am with horns will get his horns caught in the field fence but Xerxes is almost two years old and has never done that.  I did once have a ram that did this a number of times.  Each time I had to hike up a steep slope and cut him free and then had to patch up the fence that I had had to cut.  I got so disgusted with this that I told him in no uncertain terms in my most annoyed-mother tone that if he did that one more time, he was going to the you-know-where USDA approved facility.

He never did it again.

I have no idea how Xerxes got stuck in the fence.  Maybe something spooked him and he ran into it, became more frightened, and then could not get out.  But however that happened, I don't think he will get into it again.  Besides, he is supposed to go to a new home soon.  There was a very pretty boy born on the farm this April.  I want to keep only one ram and have decided to keep this new guy, who will be named Hobbes.  His fleece is spotted and has a lot of crimp.

And he hasn't bashed in any gates yet or caught his horns in any fencing.

Rules for Rams

My first Icelandic ram was a movie star ram.  Churchill would have been famous if he had made it to Hollywood.  He would have been more popular than Lassie Come Home.

His behavior was astounding, especially during breeding season.  I had him in a corral with a tall physical fence of field wire and metal T posts, then a dead space, then another physical fence with another dead space; and around all of this was electric netting that was charged all the time, at 6,000 volts.  Most of the time, Churchill took out his energy on Rainier, one of his sons, who was penned with him.  But his patience was thin and he finally calmly walked up to the first fence, clamped his teeth on the metal clip that supports the field fence on the metal T posts, snapped off the clip.  He proceeded methodically down the T post.  Clamp teeth, snap off clip, and so on until he decided he had gone far enough.  It was a cinch for him to pull down the wire after it was loosened from the clips.  And so he stepped over the wire and walked purposely toward the next physical fence.  He did the same to this.  In a matter of minutes he had gone over the second fence, and then he tackled the electric fence.

To a real sheep like Churchill, a 6,000 volt charge was nothing.  He kept his eyes on the prize.  I had barricaded the ewes in a pen near the house.  Unfortunately, Churchill used his horns to tear out a hole in the back, just large enough for him to daintily step in and wreck my breeding program.

He was a gorgeous ram with a deep moor it fleece and his lambs were also beautiful.  His disposition was sweet toward people.  When I went out in the early morning to feed them before I, myself,  had breakfasted, or washed, or brushed my teeth, Churchill was all kisses when I showed up with flakes of alfalfa hay.  I certainly didn't have to dress for daddy.

Since then,  I have had a number of rams.  But now I have rules.  They must have gorgeous fleeces, have sweet tempers, never charge me, have a minimal impact on fencing, and not break into my orchard or rose garden.

And if I get one that breaks the rules?

Let's hope he's penetent.

A Lamb in the House

Bummer Lamb learns how to get out of his box before he learns to et his nourishment from sucking on a Pritchard nipple.  He was too weak to stand up to nurse his mother and was in danger of drowning in the rain and dying from hypothermia; and so all the emergency lamb survival equipment was dug out of the drawers and a lamb milk replacer was purchased at the feed store.

He was wrapped up in towels in the newly remodeled kitchen, which was soon to undergo more changes due to the most exhausting examinations of a curious lamb.  He was so much like a puppy, soon exploring the insides of cabinets, pulling cans off the shelves, and, of course, puddling.

He had a terrible case of scours.  I took him to the vet and gave him something sure to cure him but didn't.  This diarrhea was so noxious and sticky; it was  like cement once it dried.  I had to keep prying it off.  I learned that if I did not monitor this stuff, the lamb would be in danger of dying due to "pinning," which meant that it would block his anus and he would be unable to poop.

I tried giving him Pepto Bismo but this did not work well either.  Finally I tried cutting his formula in half and adding a half dose of electrolytes.  This worked.  What a relief that was for me and for the lamb.

However, once Bummer learned to investigate the kitchen, he wifely learned to investigate all the other rooms of the house, puddling as he went.  He quickly developed a taste for literature, tossing books and manuscripts helter skelter and moving on to the computer cables, the telephone lines, and my knitting.  All had to be removed from lamb level.

He greeted visitors at the door and checked them out.  He was not shy.  He did detest the vacuum cleaner and hid out in the closet in the bathroom when I turned it on.

I had to barricade the stairs to my bedroom because he wanted to be near me all the time, puddling wherever he went, and I needed to minimize the housework

He graduated from sleeping in a box to sleeping on the carpet under the computer.  The home office soon became his headquarters.  This was becoming difficult because I did not want my home to be a barn.  But still the weather raged and refused to settle into a warm calm and I was reluctant to make him sleep outside.  I knew the other sheep would reject him as well.

But the day came when he had to move out onto the deck with the dogs.  When he realized  he could not come inside, he was terrified and ran around the house in circles.  Then he settled down with the dogs and watched the kitchen door.  He curled up with Moses, the St. Bernard x Great Pyrenees and hung out with both of the guardian dogs.  They watched over him; and so I did not worry  about raccoons swooping down to carry him off.  He stayed warm and dry.

He learned to nibble on green things instead of chewing on everything plastic, though he did not care for alfalfa hay for a long time.  He liked to eat the ram and ewe pellets I put out.  He tackled a fern leaf now and then.  But he especially liked roses.  He found the path to the blueberry bushes, the strawberries, and the fruit tree orchard.

And I still could not bear to put him into the jail of a corral.  I watched the plants disappearing and wonders if the sheep WOULD, maybe, accept him but knew they would not when he did accidentally wander into a mothering-on pen with an ewe and her newborn lamb.

I so enjoyed his companionship while I walked around and did chores.  But I did get tired of having to sweep the deck several times a day.  And I wanted the roses to bloom.  I wanted to smell the fragrance of the Butterfly Bushes that had been pruned quite enough.  So I did the right thing and put him in a pasture where Marissa and her twins are, separate from the rest of the flock.

Marissa does not accept Bummer most of the time but he has made friends with one of the twins.  They are younger than he is but they are larger.  Bummer is deformed, looking like a bull dog, with his front legs bowed, squatting forward like a bull dog, and he pees from his belly button instead of the usual way.  The vet said that the bowed legs are a birth defect and the urinary problem happened when the umbilical cord separated improperly.  His mother, a grey badger face Icelandic ewe named Ma Joie, is 13 and has never had a lamb.  She probably should never have become a mother and did not know what she was doing.

But Bummer is running around, relatively happy, feisty, and learning to be a sheep.   His identity problems seem to be correcting themselves.  He may have wondered for a while if he were a dog or why his momma is on the other side of the fence but he seems to be adjusting.  He still comes to me when I call him and he is still insatiably curious about his environment.

I still have to keep rescuing him from his curiosity, as he investigates a tiny space that leads to a larger pasture and then he can't figure out how to get back to the smaller one where the real food is.  But now he has a partner in crime: one of Marissa's twins, the smaller one.

He is black and she is white.  I look forward to knitting with their wonderful wool.  And at least they are still easy to find.