City Girl and the Lamb

I sometimes think about my current posts on gardening, plants, and animals, and their relation to The Blue Bells Chronicles.  They really are very directly related, as I'm going back to, and experiencing, something much closer to the way Niall and those around him lived in the 1300s. They depended on the plants they grew and the animals they raised. Chris and I are learning to do the same thing. 

Hey, our rolling Appalachian hills are even similar to the rolling waves of Scottish hills. There's a reason the Scots settled here.

The memoirs I'm working on (High on Spirit Mountain and Up Above the Hollers, in addition to the six Ivy Leake mysteries in various stages of production) are about our change of life in the last 4-1/2 years from complete suburban living to greater self-sufficiency. We have learned many skills in a short time, and are even now working on many more, including hide-tanning, bee-keeping, candle-making, and more medicinal herb skills. I have a decent indoor garden in several areas of our house, some in big windows and some under grow lights. 

My biggest obstacle has been dealing with animals--picking up rabbits who don't want to be picked up, especially to breed them; getting near sheep who flock around me for food yet run at my approach. I have a scar on one hand from a rabbit scratch that appears to be with me forever. I am also a little more wary of shep since being flattened on my back and run over by one of the rams. It was entirely because I panicked him--it wasn't aggression on his part--yet it's left me with a caution I didn't have before.

Plants are easier: they either grow, or they don't. But they don't scratch you or trample you (I'm lookin' at you, Amenhotep!) In that vein, I quickly learned that sheep don't just agreeably get on a milking stand and let themselves be milked just because you set up a milking stand.

Marshell, who helps me with the work around here, grew up with animals, excels with them, and is very comfortable with them in a way I am not, after my lifetime on military bases, in suburbs and in practice rooms and teaching studios where sheep were just not abundant! Sheepiano is just not a thing. No matter how much italiano you speak! No matter how baaaaa-dly students might play.

A few days ago, "we" by which I mean mainly HIM, were able to get the calico ewe and her lamb into the sheep shed a few days. A few sheep had wandered into the sheep shed and the idea was to let the rest out and get a leash around the neck of the one we wanted to lead her into the holding pen. She leapt at Marshell, who was in the doorway. Surprise for city-folk: sheep can leap surprisingly high. And do. She hit him almost in the face, but, deciding he was going down anyway, he gave her a big bear hug and they went down together. We got her to the holding pen by the milking chute. She almost immediately managed to leap over/crash through the five-foot high fence. We later got her and her lamb back together in the shed, where they were happy together. (So happy togeeeeeether!)

Buttercup is what I call calico, but she is the offspring of a St. Croix ram (pure white) and an American blackbelly ewe (lighter to darker beiges with dark brown streaks). Some of the offspring of this pair are almost pure white but for faint patches of light brown around the legs.

The original idea was to milk her. It still is. The intermediary plan is to let her and her lamb be together in the shed and get used to us before moving them back to the holding pen.

Marshell's brother named the ewe Buttercup and today Marshell named the lamb Reese's (ie peanut buttercup and Reese's.)

We've been spending time with them each day, getting them used to our presence and being handled, part of the goal being to be able to begin milking the ewes for milk and cheese. It was an exciting thing to be able to hold Reese, the lamb, today. More than a year ago, my sheep Maisy got sheep polio. My friend Amanda and I were able through sheer force of will and some miracle, to haul her a long way up a steep hill, and up the ramp into the sheep shed, where I sent time with her every day for more than a week, multiple times a day, giving her shots of vitamin B, and feeding her by hand until she could get up to feed herself again. More than a year later, I can see by her behavior that she remembers that time. She and I are friends.

We will continue spending one on one time with Buttercup and Reese and we have seen that each day gets a little bit better.

Then, day by day, I get bits of writing done. I think this is a horrible picture of me. My hair is a mess from being under a hat and my face is red from being out in the wind. But I think of a friend's question when we started this new life: Are you really happy? Yes, I'm red in the face and my hair is a mess but...I'm holding a lamb! Yes, this is when life feels right.

~ ~ ~

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