Farm Days in July

Does it ever really get that dark in summer because it sure seems as if the sun keeps coming up at around 4:00 a.m.? I resist rolling out of bed until at least 6:30, by which time the cat has walked across my back, the dog has stuck his smelly face in mine and given me a lick just for good measure, the horses are starting to fidget and squeel in their paddock, lambs are crying out for their lost mothers, and, of course, the roosters have been crowing since 2:00!

Ah, the farm days of July, when despite an increase in activities, nothing ever feels fully completed. Take water, for instance. It's Oregon where people think it always rains. But we have a secret up here. It stops raining about mid June and doesn't start again until the middle of September. All the photos with green grass in the fields? Those are from the winter. If you look closely you will notice there are no leaves on the trees. The photos of brown fields. You guessed it - summertime. You may or may not have guessed the next part. When the fields are brown, our grazing animals are not happy and search the creek banks for any green leaf they can find. If farms are set up for it, and ours is, they will irrigate their pastures, either to grow a second cut of hay, or, in our instance, strive to make the animals less grumpy.

It's Greg's job, for the most part, to take care of moving our irrigation pipe because I have the bad habit of breaking it, and then everyone is mad. I'm not sure if he sees this as Zen therapy, but once the sun starts baking the earth he will go out first thing in the morning to move the 14 20' pipes in the hay field, open the valves, shut other valves, struggle with the Big Gun in the barn field so that it is moved and level, and then head down to the creek to prime and start the pump.

I help at the beginning and end of summer. In the late spring, Greg solicits my assistance loading the pump into the bucket of the tractor. We have stored it in the barn over winter and the first thing to do is clean out all the mouse nests and bits of flotsom that have found their ways into the openings of the pipes. The pump weighs too much for either of us to lift more than 6" so we have to get the bucket under the majority of it and make sure as Greg raises it off the ground to look for parts that might get caught and break off. I also keep track of where I put my hands.

Once down at creek side we have to remember how to wire the pump into the main electrical panel, find a flat spot for it to rest, line up the intake pipes with existing pieces, and finally (and this is the tricky part) throw the washing machine basket into the deep part of the creek as we balance a 20' 4" pipe on its end to suck the water from the creek and out to our fields. It's pretty monstrous how much water we can actually move through the system - most evident when something blows up and water goes spewing all over the place. At the end of summer, I help with the reverse installation.

With added water come weeds. Besides taking care of the animals, our irrigation system waters the vegetable gardens, the flower gardens, the lawn, and anything else within reach of the 50 or so sprinkler heads we have on grounds. You all know I hate weeding. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't come right back two-fold. So July days are filled with weeding as far as I'm concerned. Sure, there are veggies to pick, and fruits,and then the kitchen counters are filled to overflowing as I consider my expensive past-time of blanching and freezing, or cooking and canning, to preserve all the bounty for the winter, and maybe next year, and maybe the year after. No wonder farm wives didn't have jobs out of the house. They could never get out of the house except to pick more veggies and fruit!

But, July days, with all the goings on between the animals and the growing things and the water and the heat of the sun, is a bountiful time of warmth and the rich smell of the earth. The wasps buzz around the eves of the house looking for a place to create a paper hive as we sit back on the deck at the end of a long day with a cold beer and maybe a friend or two who have helped with our massive endeavors. It really takes a village to run a farm, not a pair of 50 year olds. We are still doing things because we can, or maybe to prove we can, not because we absolutely need to. It's time to make a decision for the next summer whether it is worth stocking in 100 pounds of potatoes or freezing 25 bags of corn, both of which took considerable time from beginning to end. Small farming is inefficient in the modern world, but do I get just a little joy and satisfaction knowing where my food comes from and what was or was not put in the soil? It's a bit like trading my best friends in Arizona for the more habitable climate of Oregon. The end result is bittersweet.






Top photo: Produce in the kitchen
Bottom photo: Greg moving pipe in the hayfield

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2007 Scottie Jones
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21 Tons of Hay

This year, on a cloudy day in the middle of June, we loaded 21 tons of hay into the second storey hayloft of our barn. There were eight of us to start and six at the finish, although Greg and I combined were worth one teenager by the end of the day, so make that five. Haying is a young man's sport and I have started to wonder what we will do when our boys graduate high school. They aren't exactly our boys, but they are the kids who have shown up for the past three summers to toss bale after bale onto the trailer, onto the hay elevator, and at each other as they stack our hayloft full to the rafters. To be fair to our daughters, this was the first summer they were justifiably absent (school and a job).

The day started around 11 a.m., which I am sure was just fine with these kids, who had probably stayed up way too late the night before. It was early in the summer break and these were teenage boys in the prime of life, outdoor kids with plenty of chores during the day, and plenty of energy left over for the nights. There was Zeb, a handsome young man with a lady-killer quick smile and an aptitude for directing the others. There was Russell, a friendly kid who spent time before and after school working on the family farm, in addition to helping out the locals when haying season started. There was Trevor, a brawny red head whose mother works at the general store; and Dustin, who was maybe related to Zeb, or to Trevor, or maybe they were all related in one sense or another because they had the surnames of the old logging families from the area. There was Tyler, the only 'city' kid, who asked how heavy the bales were going to be, before he took the job (50+ lbs.); and, there was John, the youngest and quietest in the crew, our neighbor's son, who had grown into a bean pole at 6 ' and looked older than his 14 years.

I didn't call an 11 a.m. start to humor these guys, however. We need to wait for the sun to dry the dew off the bales from the previous night. You don't want to stack a barn full of wet hay or you run the risk of a hay fire and burning down the barn. The wet hay breaks down and causes a chemical reaction, producing lots of heat that will eventually ignite. When you hear of hay fires, this is often the cause. There are only two solutions I have heard about. If you have loaded your hay in with too much moisture, you spend the entire summer stacking and restacking it until it is dry. I can't imagine the labor involved in this! If you have already determined your hay is too wet, the other option is to spead lots of rock salt over each row as you stack it to absorb the extra moisture. And, yes, we had to use rock salt last summer.

The big challenge haying in the Coast Range of Oregon is to know when is the right time to cut and bale: when it won't rain; when the hay is at its prime before the shafts start to shatter; when the farmer is free to cut our hay after he has taken care of his own. This year we got it right. On top of that, the sun didn't feel as hot as other summers and a cloud cover came over the valley in the afternoon to keep us from overheating. Usually it seems we pick the hottest day of the summer to pull the hay out of our field, so we counted ourselves lucky the hay only scratched our arms and didn't stick to the sweat, which has the effect of making you really itchy.

The first year, I think we loaded about eight tons of hay. Last year we were up to eighteen. This year we blasted past twenty one ... which is a lot of hay for 12 acres...about 850 bales in all! I guess 850 bales doesn't sound like all that much compared to some of our farming neighbors who bring in hundreds of tons, but it is far more than we can use and it's, honestly, a pain in the ass to get out of the field and loaded into the barn. Last year we bought the hay elevator to carry the bales one by one up to the second storey opening of the hayloft; this year we bought the heavy-weight trailer to handle 100 bales at a time, from the field to the barn.

The system, as we have devised it, works like this. I drive the truck in low 4-wheel drive, which keeps it at a steady pace, and Greg and the guys walk along behind throwing bales on the trailer. One or two of the boys take to stacking the hay higher and higher until the guys on the ground are tossing 50 lb. bales up over their heads and trying to knock the stackers off the top. I think we might have actually made it to six bales high this summer. It always seems to be a challenge as to who can stack the highest, tightest load so I don't tip half of it off driving back to the barn. Oh, yeah, and someone always insists on sitting on top of the stack for the ride.

Once back at the barn, Greg and I unload the trailer onto the hay elevator while several of the boys stand in the large doorway of the second floor loft and grab the bales to either throw or carry over to the crew responsible for making clean, neat stacks up to the rooftop. I have a photo of the barn piled high but it really doesn't do justice to how much hay is stacked or what 21 tons looks like. It's the stuff kids dream of jumping off of or playing hide and seek in ... or sneaking out to for a game of spin the bottle late at night.

This year I didn't embarrass myself trying to back the trailer up to the barn on every run. I actually refused to back the trailer, but instead figured out a way to pull in a large arc to line myself up with the hay elevator. Greg didn't embarrass himself by putting out his back or tripping over bales. By the end of eight hours, I thought we were doing well to even still be lifting bales. Well, I wasn't exactly lifting them by then. I had devised a method of dragging them across the ground or, better yet, letting gravity drop them from the top of the trailer.

Greg was doing better, but he had made the mistake at the beginning, of trying to keep up with the lads, so his muscles were sore and the sweat was dried in dirty streaks on his face. As for the boys, at the end of the day with pay checks in hand, they spoke of parties by the river, of meeting up and hanging out. I looked at Greg. I figured a hot bath, a cold beer, some cheese and crackers for dinner, and that would be the extent of our party for the evening. Not so bad when you look back at the barn and realize you have all the hay you need for the winter, plus some to sell, and 365 days until the next harvest!

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2007 Scottie Jones
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Frankie and Johnny

Frankie and Johnny started off life under Boston's warm, feathery belly in the old chicken coop; however, they ended up in a cage in our kitchen, under a warm desk lamp. I'm not quite sure why Boston is not a better mother. Maybe this has something to do with her own young life beginning in the same cage, in the same kitchen, under the same lamp, almost three years ago.

Frankie and Johnny, aka Tuxedo (I will explain later), are about a week apart in age, but both were rescued from their hardened shells. It's a tricky thing to extract a chick from a shell. It's interceding in the natural course of things, but hard not to do when the peeping inside the shell begins to weaken. Our daugher, Annie, and I had sat on our hands for three or four chicks that never made it and there was a pattern emerging. It seemed a waste to grow a chick to term only to have it fail to emerge. And, Boston wasn't helping.

Frankie turned out to be a yellow chick who uncurled his scrunched up legs, once free of his shell, and attempted to toddle around within hours. His feathers turned downy, his large knees grew stronger, and soon he was cuddling towards the warmth of the house lamp. A week later we introduced a small, black chick with white on his breast (ergo, Tuxedo), broken from his shell in a similar fashion, smaller, more frail, but free. We placed a piece of cardboard in the cage to keep him safe from Frankie until he could stand on his own and get out of the way if necessary.

Around this same time, we brought in four Heritage Bronze turkey chicks, the only survivors of an incubator malfunction at a local hatchery. Maybe the turkey business wasn't such a bad idea. Of course, one of the four immediately keeled over for no apparent reason. Of course, it keeled over while friends were watching our place for a night. We had a sad note about the bird's disposal. They had buried it in the back yard. I informed them I usually just throw the dead birds in the trash or out in the woods for the scavengers. We save the back yard for pets. Does this seem callous? I don't know, turkeys aren't that cute as poults, so there are no real endearing qualities until they develop some personality as teenagers.

Our daughter was home on a college break. This meant Frankie and Johnny had someone to play with. Annie would make sure the birds were handled by placing them on her lap, on top of a paper towel since Frankie had the bad habit of pooping within the first minute. She also saw to it they were taken for walks on the lawn. She informed us they would follow in a haphazard formation as she strolled through the soft, spring grass, chirping for her to slow down, chirping to keep up, chirping if something looked hazardous. It seemed a bit like the pied piper or something out of Gulliver's Travels, at least from the chicks' persepectives, I'm sure.

Soon enough, Annie was headed back to school and the responsibility of the chicks fell to me. As with previous kitchen-raised chicks, Frankie and Johnny were not that particular whose legs they were following around as long as it meant a belly rub at the end and some soft cooing to encourage them. The turkey poults were not a part of this process. They were too old to bond when we got them. Instead, everytime I went to change the water and the food in their box, they screamed as if they were about to be eaten. Do they have an inkling?

And then one day it was time to kick the chicks and the poults out of the kitchen. One day the place smelled fine; the next morning the strong smell of 6 week-old chicks was overpowering. If it was overpowering for us, I wonder what our friends thought even two weeks earlier! We secured a small section of the coop for the youngsters and held our breathe through the first few nights. Would it be too cold? Apparently not. Nor did they have to be taught to roost. I guess that part is hardwired in. Within a day, both chicks and poults had figured out how to jump and fly up to the rather high and large roost over their heads.

Just this week, Frankie, Johnny, and the turkeys were set free into the general population of the chicken yard. They hid when necessary from the fat, yellow hens; Peeps seems to have adopted the chicks as his own outcasts, although he is gaining quite a following these days; Rudy II could care less. Every morning when I open up the gates, Frankie will come running out to be picked up and stroked for a bit. Johnny is not quite so eager to be held, but he/she still streaks over. And, that's the next big question: hens or roosters? It is still too soon to tell.

This week we also had small children at the farm who were enthralled we could actually pick up one of the chicks. The oldest, Megan, held Frankie until he had had enough. Megan and her sister were as excited to find the eggs in the nests around the chicken yard. It seemed like Easter and took the pressure off Frankie and Johnny, who probably needed some child downtime. Too much of a small thing can become alarming.

I think I may need to find the book we grew up with called Play with Me and keep it in the cabin for families to read. It is about a small girl who runs towards the animals in the wild and cannot figure out why they run away. Finally, when she sits quietly, all the animals approach her and sit down beside her. It is a good story for the farm. It's actually a good lesson for all of us. Being quiet and calm can often get us closer to what we desire than chasing after something and never attaining it at all.



Top photo: Frankie is on the left; Johnny is on the right. Both were wiggling in Karen's hands and pecking at her rings. Bottom photo: So, I guess this turkey poult is a Tom!

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2007 Scottie Jones
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Cougar!

Two weeks ago I learned that cougar tracks don't show claws. Think of your cat's muddy paw prints on the windshield. No claw marks. Seems cats walk on the soft pads as they stalk their prey. Everything I learned about cougars reminded me of Bubba's killing techniques for the local small fauna around our house, except cougars go after larger prey, like lambs. Four lambs to be exact.

If you have ever tried to count lambs, it takes two people and about five tries each until the numbers jibe. I hadn't been in the habit of counting our 23 lambs because I didn't realize we had a problem. I had thought the biggest problem was going to be the birthing part this year. Were the lambs coming out forward, or backward, or stuck, too big, too small, rejected by their mothers? ...problems like that.

On reflection, the lambs were probably picked off one at a time. On further reflection, the ewe, as wide as a house one day and seemly not pregnant the next, probably had her lambs snatched as soon as she gave birth under the old cedar in the back field. These lambs weren't even part of the count of four.

I'm not sure I would have noticed the trouble we were in, even with four missing, except for the lamb hobbling in from the field as we came back from our walk. Allen saw him first. Just a week earlier we had had another injured lamb, but I had chalked that up to playground antics with her siblings twice her size. We had actually named Bambi at birth because she stood out from her coal black brother and sister. She was small, but fiesty, having to scavenge milk from unsuspecting ewes because her brother and sister hogged all the teats at her own table, so to speak. And, then one day, she couldn't put any weight on her back leg and she lived in the barn for a week until she could, and she took the place of Snickers for awhile.

Now we had a large, white lamb hopping on three legs, following behind his mom. Again, Karen and Allen were there to help me. Always seems they are around when I most need them. Even so, it took all three of us to catch the injured lamb. Amazing how nimble he was on just three legs! We made a soft bed of hay for him and his mother in the same stall Bambi had left just days ago.

I couldn't tell what was wrong with the leg, except it was horribly swollen, especially around the knee. Lambs don't wince or cry out so I could only guess. Broken? Sprained? Was I even looking at the right place? It was when I checked the chart, I realized there should have been two lambs with this ewe, not one. Allen was looking out at the sheep herded around the mangers. He asked how many babies I was supposed to have because I seemed short. That's when we started counting and counting and re-counting.

We spent several hours hiking the property looking for signs of lost lambs, maybe caught in a culvert or lost up a trail. There was absolutely no sign of them. I think I was still hopeful when I went out again in the afternoon. Maybe we had just missed them. Annie and I saddled the horses for a different view of the woods. The trails were slick, the leaves filling in the forest and making it hard to see ahead. Our dogs came with us and, at one point, Cisco disappeared into a dense thicket. Not a place we could follow on the horses, or really even on foot. Full of blackberries, thimbleberries and snags hidden under years of leaves and rotten brush. In hindsight, we might have had an answer sooner if we had followed him. In hindsight, we should have been carrying a gun.

It took me several days to figure out which lambs were gone. Mostly, I looked for ewes with singles, tried to get a look at the number on the ear tags, tried to figure if there were lambs with identifying markings that were gone. I tallied my sheet: two females and two males; two were woolies, two were Katahdins. I closed the gates and kept the sheep near the house day and night, until the grass was short and we hadn't lost any more lambs. Then I started to let them out in the daylight, hoping the cougar only worked at night.

Several days ago, while walking in the woods looking for downed trees to bring in for wood next winter, our neighbor Dave lost his dog Tyke into the very thicket where Cisco had disappeared. Dave dove in after his dog and soon called to Annie, "You better get over here." She crawled in far enough to see patches of wool and a leg bone. It was enough. She's a tender-hearted girl when it comes to the lambs.

As cougars don't usually eat their prey all at once,this was a perfect spot, with dense foliage above and a den-like understory below, protected from the visual and olfactory senses of our resident vultures. For lambs and humans it was spooky and hard to get to. Also hard to get away, if one needed. My lesson on cougars had included their technique of killing - taking the quarry by surprise from behind, snapping the neck for an instant kill, dragging it out of the open and into the woods. Maybe Annie wasn't just being tender-hearted. She knew when to back out of a lion's den.

It's happened again. After two weeks of counting lambs morning and night, I came up one short yesterday. I counted and re-counted; I walked around the barn and looked in all the lamb hiding places; I made the sheep walk single file past me at the gate. Always the number was 19, not 20. Today, I finally tallied the lambs I had and the lambs I was missing. This last was a Katahdin again, a male. Funnily enough he was white, just like the others. Are the white ones easier to see and, therefore, easier to catch?

I can't rest easy now until we have a solution, since we can't sit around and let the lambs get picked off one by one. Will it be dogs or traps or snares? Does anyone even care to trap this cat alive? What a waste of a beautiful animal. For now, the radio will play rap music at the barn (because I can't get the classical station to tune in) and we will keep a light on at night. I've rounded the sheep up as close to humankind as possible. Our neighbor's llama has been suggested as a defender. Another friend has a Great Pyrenees, but the dog is 10 years old and past her prime.

None of the solutions seem ideal. But, I can't keep losing lambs. We are at that point where the 'rubber hits the road', or in this instance, where the cougar needs to hit the road, because the alternative is sad and gruesome for either the lambs or the cat, and there can be no happy ending to this farm story.

...to be continued...

These two lambs were born after the first cougar attack in the loafing shed. We kept them in the barn for two weeks just to be safe. Lucky for them, they are brown!

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Chaco the Warhorse

"A War Horse." That's what the vet called him after the last visit. Chaco, the War Horse. However, rather than the stately Nez Pierce Appaloosa, bred for fierceness in battle, then all but annihilated by the US Cavalary in the 19th Century, Chaco is a homely distant cousin from Arizona. But, boy, can that horse jump! Either over fences in an arena with me clinging to his back or straight up in the air as a bucking bronco at a rodeo, Chaco is a supreme athlete.

Maybe he did have a little bit of the war horse in him after all; although, I don't think that is what the vet was refering to at the time. More likely the vet was wondering how the same horse, out of our three, always seemed to be placed in harms way, while the other two remained relatively untouched. Of course there was that one time when our Arabian cut herself on a rusty car part buried in the undergrowth, as only an old farm can have. The vein blew blood all over us until the vet was able to close it off.

But that's Moralecia's story, and this is the story of the war horse, Chaco. Chaco, who tripped through a barbed wire fence in search of greener grass; who fell in a trench in the middle of the night, after jumping out of the paddock and sliding down an incredibly steep hill; who stood in the loafing shed with his leg hanging loose from the hip and us with no idea what had caused it. And Chaco didn't say and it didn't seem to faze him and we never knew. Except, looking back, I now know Chaco was going blind long before we realized.

It began at the beginning. I know that sounds like a funny sentence. Maybe I should say, "the beginning of the second half of our lives when we moved to a rural farm in the Coast Range of Oregon." Phew. Arriving in Oregon from Arizona, our horses were stressed and nervous and cold. The trip had taken two days in an unfamiliar trailer, with other horses and stops along the way. I hadn't thought to send blankets along because we hadn't used blankets in months in Arizona. The horses had shed their winter coats long ago and now we were changing everything. The temperatures had gone from 95 degrees to 35 degrees in the morning, the fields from one acre to 40, the landscape from dry and deserty to lush and green, the stabling from open air stalls to a dark, scarey barn. Who wouldn't be freaked out. We certainly were!

Our first summer was filled with more vet visits than we had had in all our horse years in Arizona. Farm visits took on an entirely new meaning since we were 25 miles out of town now and privileged to pay not only for the visit but for the mileage. Accidents only happened on weekends so there was that weekend charge as well. I had to explain to vets I didn't even know they couldn't wear cowboy hats or my war horse would be too hard to handle for any of us. Not sure this was a cowboy hat crowd anyway since most of the vets that summer were female and the guys wore baseball hats, if they wore any hats at all. Why cowboy hats turn Chaco from a war horse into a mule, we will never know, but this muley behavior wins him no favors either with vets, their assistants, or me, as he would as soon run over you as stand still.

It's been almost three years now since we saw the vet who called Chaco the "War horse". Chaco's black coloring has been replaced with grey. He is skinnier and a little less muscled than before, because, as I have come to realize, farmers don't often have time to ride for pleasure and, if they do, they feel guilty about all the projects remaining unfinished. (Note to self: start riding the horses...there will always be weeds!)

When Dr. Bergen showed up last week for some preventative health care on the animals, I asked him to take a look at Chaco's eyes. They seemed to be growing more cloudy. Since you can't ask which way the E is pointing, it's hard to say what a horse can and cannot see, but Dr. Bergen was not encouraging. The small, subtle signs I had started to notice: startle responses, hitting his head on the fencing and the stalls, night blindness, all added up to loss of vision.

Dr. Bergen's advice: Best to keep Chaco on solid trails. Best to keep him on familiar ground. Best to keep him locked in at night. But, as I said in the beginning, Chaco is an old war horse and still game for a ride here and there. He and I have worked long enough and hard enough together over the years, he will do whatever I ask.

We shouldn't take that kind of trust for granted. It has something to do with time and familiarity and maybe, just maybe, the reward Chaco gets when he comes trotting into the barn at night to the banging of the feed cans on the side of the stalls. "It's time for dinner; it's time to eat! Wait, lady, that's not enough for a donkey! I am a war horse. I am the son of a son of a son in a long line of war horses. I am Chaco!"

As I close the barn door for the night, Chaco will often add some emphasis to his point by picking up his feed bucket between his teeth and hurling it against the side of the stall, as if to say, "Nobody mess with the war horse or you will be next!" I say, "Cougars beware!"

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Eau-de-Lamb and Snickers

I was expecting lambs any day. But the days dragged on past the earliest possible due date as I checked and rechecked my gestation chart. March turned into April and on and on the days passed with no lambs. And then it rained and the sheep were scattered to the farthest corners of the pastures, and, of course, we started to have lambs.

The first ewe to lamb had triplets! What a start. The problem with three, besides the ewe only having two teats, is that it is hard to pick them up all at once to bring into the barn, from far away, in the rain, in the mud. Sorry little rag dolls, still damp from birth. I had help with this first lot, though. It was Easter weekend and our daughter and boyfriend were visiting. Always ready to take one of the ATVs out to explore, Randy was the first to discover the newborns in the back pasture underneath cover of some large alders near Honey Grove Creek. He raced back to the house with the news. Greg and I walked out to check, scooped the unsuspecting lambs off the ground, and hiked back to the barn with a worried mom circling our legs. It had started.

These first lambs looked quite healthy and handsome: two black boys and a fawn colored girl. When Karen and Allen, my cow herding neighbors, who were on their way to becoming lamb nursemaids as well, stopped by the next day, we (Karen and myself) simultaneously came up with the name 'Bambi' for the little girl. So, Bambi has a name, even though it is bad form to name a lamb meant for slaughter.

To answer the question, "How do you pick up three lambs at once by yourself?", something I had to do within the next several days, this is the trick. You stick one lamb inside the front of your jacket, zip it up as tightly as possible and hoist the other two under each arm. I have to stay crouched over as I walk to the barn so the ewe will not lose the smell or sight of her little ones. It is by the grace of God we all make it back to the cozy stalls, me heaving and ready to drop a lamb at any moment; the ewe circling and grunting and trying to trip me up; the lambs wriggling and calling out; the dogs only adding to the confusion.

Such close quarters as wrapping a lamb in one's clothing, or placing it on one's lap for various veterinary duties required within the first several days of birth, carries a certain essence with it. I have named this essence "eau-de-lamb". I am not particularly fond of the smell of sheep, being more accustomed to that sweet smell of horses, yet, at this time of year, with lambs popping out all over, I wear eau-de-lamb on my jeans, in my hair, on my hands, that even a good wash with essential oil soap can't kill. Eau-de-lamb is not a fancy french dish made with mushrooms and wine, instead it is a farm perfume blending lamb poop, colostrum milk, lanolin, and a little baby pee added to the mix. It's a wonder people don't give me a wider berth down at the Mercantile as I wander around looking for baby nipples to fit on my old, scratched, baby bottles from last year's bummer lamb crop. But then, this is a town of loggers and farmers, up before dawn, and, after a hard day of sweating, smelling worse than any eau-de-lamb. Well, not worse, but not really any better either.

In all, this was a good year for lambing (so far). What this means is I didn't have to intercede in even one birth. We had three sets of triplets and several singletons (one of which weighed 18 pounds!). The rest were the normal twins. Total number: 23! My vet neighbor, Liz, had even said she wanted to come down just to pull a lamb (help with a difficult birth), and then it wasn't necessary. Wouldn't you just know I get a fantastic offer like that and don't even have a use for it?! At least I can invite her down to watch the lambs leap around as they play tag in the orchard. I think if Liz hadn't been a vet she would have made a good obstetrician since she loves baby animals...although lambs, with their soft curly wool, seem cuter than babies at this time of year.

There was one surprise death and one bummer lamb out of the group. The death happened so suddenly I wasn't even aware there was a serious problem until it was all over. One of my triplet sets had been out and about for several days with their mom. As I gazed over the fence to watch them race back to the barn, one of the lambs fell down and didn't try to get up. I waited a moment because lambs and sheep have this peculiar habit of getting stuck lying down, and I thought a few wiggles and the lamb would set herself to rights. When she continued to lie there, I decided to go over and pick her up. She felt light and weak to me. I place her next to her mother only to watch her be pushed aside as the ewe walked off with her other two lambs. I knew this routine. It looked like a classic rejection, so I decided to bring the lamb into the house for some milk and a good dose of vitamins. She was small and white and figured out how to drink from the bottle almost immediately. Not gulping, not hysterically hungry, just sucking until she had downed about 6 ounces. She lay down and made several mewing noises as I left her to sleep and went on to finish my own dinner. When I came back 5 minutes later, she was dead. I have no idea what happened.

Snickers became our 'bummer' lamb, a lamb whose mother rejects it despite all efforts on my part to keep this from happening. Snicker's mother was the wildest of our new Katahdins and Allen, Karen and I had been unsuccessful catching her right after her twins were born, to place in a stall for the night until adequate bonding had taken place. The lambs hung with their mother until the third morning when I came out to the barn and Snickers was lying in a prone position, head over his back, shivering with the cold, his mother and sister nowhere in sight. I picked him up and hurried back to the house for a heat lamp and some warm milk. The inside of his mouth was cold (death is imminent). I left the water to run hot in the sink as I read the back of the 25 lb bag of Milk Replacer. How could I forget the formula after using up two bags of this stuff only 6 months earlier?! Like most young lambs, Snickers had no desire to suck on a baby nipple until he tasted the warm, sweet milk trickle down his throat. One fear for a lamb suffering hypothermia is the lack of either will or strength left to suck on a bottle. No problem here! Snickers would have inhaled the stuff if he could have. 4 ounces later and he was ready for a nap in a box of straw I had set up in the kitchen with an old clip-on light attached.

Rather like the ugly duckling in the fairy tales, Snickers was an ugly lamb. I didn't actually think something like this could happen but all my friends agreed that he was indeed ugly. His pink skin shone through a light dusting of wool; his legs were long; his head small. We actually discussed how he looked like the leg of a turkey after it has been plucked! He needed a name but all we could come up with was Tom, Turk, Hairless Wonder, none of the names really seemed to fit. In the course of living in the house with us, the lamb had taken to Greg and, as he lay at Greg's feet in the study in his make-shift diapers (no, you cannot let a lamb just wander around without some sort of protection or the carpet will smell like eau-de-lamb forever ... sort of like cat pee), Greg suddenly announced he knew the lamb's name. Snickers had told him. I will admit there are times when names just present themselves for animals, and they are the right name, and Snickers was definitely the right name.

Snickers stayed with us in the house for several nights, sent out to play with the other lambs during the day. It is still cool here and we didn't want a repreat of the first time we found him alone. Too soon, Snickers had learned how to climb out of his box and the tap of his hooves on the wood floors made it hard to sleep at night. He would curl up next to the bed, but soon we had all had enough. The cats on the bed were edgy; the dogs didn't know what to think. Besides this, the lamb was growing so quickly the diapers not longer fastened and I had had to fashion a Safeway shopping bag into a wet suit raincoat, with a diaper thrown into the bottom for absorption, to try and contain any damage. I never knew a lamb could pee so much, or directly forward (boy thing).

Our rescue, from becoming overly besotted with this little lamb, came this week in the form of a small 4-year-old girl and her grandmother who live up the road. Snickers has been adopted into their famiy as a project on care-taking and responsibility. Both Snickers and the little girl now have a new best friend as they follow each other around during the day. Soon he will have two young kid goats to play with in the back yard too, and we will visit from time to time, but I think our ugly duckling has already turned into a beautiful white swan.

Of course, it has started to rain again and just this morning I found a new lamb lying in the mud, barely moving, the ewe baa-ing and circling. I picked up the limp white body with black markings on its nose, tried to wipe the dirt from its face still covered in yellow amniotic fluid, and carried it into the barn. There is fresh hay in the stall; the red heat lamp is turned on; I made sure there is clean water and some grain for the mom. I'll check back later in the day to see how the pair are doing. Right now I need to go down to the post office, perfumed in eau-de-lamb, hoping I will not have a Snickers II to deal with when I return, hoping all will turn out well and, soon enough, this small one will join the other leaping lambs in our orchard.



(Snickers fell asleep on the lamb rug which seemed appropriate. He also liked to curl up next to Cisco in front of the wood stove, although Cisco didn't really like to be touched.)

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Frog Snacks

The Honey Grove Valley has a resident blue heron and, in the spring, a host, a plethora, what sound like a gazillion young frogs croaking through the night. Maybe this is why we have a blue heron at all. Meal time has never been so easy, with a snack in every stream bed and standing pool of water.

When we first moved to this valley in the middle of the Coast Range rainforest, the croaking of frogs was deafening and I was sure we were surrounded by hoards of bull frogs, large and toady looking, sitting in the irrigation ditches, waiting to jump out at some inappropriate moment and make me jump in turn. Gisela laughed as I described what I imagined to be prehistoric, over-sized amphibians lurking in the dark corners of the waterways. "Why," she said, "you are only hearing a very small frog, no bigger than my thumb." She smiled and shook her head as she opened her palm and cupped it to demonstrate.

I haven't actually seen one of these frogs yet. I've tried, but there is an invisible line - at a distance of 4' the frogs will sing all night; at 3' they are as silent as if they were never there. Frankly, my eyes are not good enough, even at 3', to distinguish the frogs from the watery murk, lined with dead grass and leaves, plant life and a water dog thrown in here and there for good measure. They say the water dogs are poisonous so I doubt they fit into the snack diet of the heron. This seems a shame since they are everywhere, swimming, snoozing, crawling through the mud, probably around during the dinosaurs, part of the primordial ooze - alternatively called Oregon mud.

The blue heron does not appear to have the same problem as we do spotting the frogs. He loves to haunt our small, seasonal pond in the chicken yard. For Greg, it's a real conflict to see such a magnificent bird, probably 6 feet from wing tip to wing tip, cool gray in color and slow to lift off the ground, picking off our frogs like veritable ducks in a shooting gallery.

I think they say frogs are a true sign of a healthy environment. But, it should be added, they also make for a fat heron. There have been times when the dogs have rousted him from snacking in the waterways around the farm, and he seems to barely get off the ground in time, his long legs dangling perilously within reach. He will glide to a nearby cedar trees, land on a branch that bends under his weight, and peer down at his earth bound tormentors. It's quite a sight to see.

The Honey Grove Valley blue heron is a fixture and has been for years. Most of us assume it is a male, but just the other day we wondered why we had made this assumption. We have also assumed it is the same blue heron, but none of us know how long a blue heron lives. Is this really a decendant of the first bird we saw, and if so where is the mate? No sooner had we started to ask the questions than Allen saw two blue herons fly overhead. So, this is the deal: either there are always two birds and we can't tell which one is snacking in my frog pong while the other is fishing at the neighbor's, or the birds are loners except in springtime when love is in the air and it is time to hatch a new brood of heron to continue the tradition of large, soaring figures gliding down the valley, scouting the pools for frog snacks as they go.

Either way, there are still frogs croaking through the nights so there must be gobs of them ... or a few that make lots of noise. One heron or two in the Honey Grove Valley are not able to decimate the population. It's more like a survival of the fittest. The valley is healthy with frogs; the frogs that survive are the fittest; the heron keeps his (or her) territory in balance and, maybe this spring, there will be a nest full of heron chicks to take up where and when the parents leave off. Yum, regurgitated frog snacks for the youngsters. What better way to start off a cool, wet morning?!

(The blue heron's favorite snacking pond and runoff ditch is in the middle of this photo, but hard to see. This is a shot up the valley looking over part of the hay field and the trees in which he would roost when his frog feast was interrupted)

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Not an Animal Tale...But About a Friend

A month and a year ago, the small community of Alsea, Oregon lost a friend. Craig touched many lives in many places, with his fiddle at the ready, his willow branches soaking for the next basket design, his "Bright Moments to you" goodbye. He touched ours personally in a way that soothed the worries of dealing with an old farm where things were always seeming to fall apart, or down, or away. We were all deeply affected by his loss, some because he was family, others because he had been gone so long and only just started to put down roots again in the community. I came face to face with his passing only the day after when I was asked to help dig his grave. Following is the diary entry I wrote last March, never completed, mostly cathartic. It is time to let it go now where it will.

Last Wednesday, in the rich loamy soil of the Oregon Coast range, I helped dig a friend’s grave, 3 feet wide by 7 feet long by 4 ½ feet deep. We are still new in Alsea but have already been folded into the fabric of this small community in ways that bring us joy and ways that bring us sorrow. Our perch here is so transitional, I wish the sorrow had held off a little while longer. And, why was I trading shovels and stories with people I never even knew three years ago, on a wintry day threatening rain, in the middle of the Alsea cemetery, with more graves than current residents; all for someone who had welcomed us to our new homestead with the gift of a widget and the offer of help?

Widgets are wonderful things. Craig wove them from willows, planted and harvested off his property, to trellis wayward roses and climbing sweet peas. If you looked closely, they were earth goddesses in disguise. A testament to his love of women and his love of willow. Earth mothers to the core. We put our widget in our front flower bed, to train the gangly rose away from the driveway, and we we took Craig up on his offer of help that day and for all the days for the rest of his life. He helped to restore our 1930s barn, and he and Greg built the only bridge over the Honey Grove to survive last winter’s rains. The boys worked well together in their own way, separated in age by a day, in experience by a farm.

Craig had only just returned from his annual six week Mexican fiesta, with tales of tequila and art on the beach and old friends and warm nights. He had already shown up to say "Hi, I'm back. I had a great break. I have $27 in my pocket. I'll see you Monday morning for work!" He was going to add those "Craig" touches to complete our cabin he and his fellow craftsman, Bert, had started in the fall. Now I would see the transformation of our simple structure into a piece of artwork, so distinctive and organic, Craig's style was recognized by all who appreciated and admired his craft. Craig never made it back to our place. He died Monday morning, ready for work, a cigarette in his hand, a cup of coffee beside him on the arm of his chair.

Dammit, I had other plans for Craig too, although I guess we all did. He would rebuild the Green Creek bridge with Greg this summer, a seemingly insignificant bridge that is anything but insignificant during high waters. He would make cane chairs for our new deck facing over the hay field, so we could all sit out on hot summer evenings sharing a cold beer and a good story. He would teach me how to dry my corn for next winter’s feed, because mine ended up moldy and discarded this year. He would respond once again with, “We can do that,” to the never-ending laundry list of building woes around the farm.

But most of all, we had thought to share many more years getting to know this carefree soul who saw life for its opportunities and bright moments. Damn. Digging a grave for Craig was never part of any plan I imagined for any of my friends, ever...

As I reread this entry, it still seems like only yesterday. Spring is settling over our valley and our world and, quickly, we will be overrun with growing plants and lambs and blue skies ... and life. The daffodils have bloomed around Craig's grave and soon I expect to see the Easter lilies his daughter planted, bending in the wind, on the graveyard hillside above the highway, overlooking our town. We talk of projects never completed and those we only now imagine working on with him. We miss the gap-toothed smile, the cigarette hanging off knarled fingers, the baggy jeans held up with a colorful, old, Mexican belt knotted at the waist. Such a shame to lose a soul; such a shame to lose a light; such a shame to lose our way a little bit, out here in the country.

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The Chicken or the (Easter) Egg

The question was this. "Do chickens see in color?" We hadn't been on the farm that long and it was an honest question. You would think Gisela and Dave and Janet and Nancy, all owners of chickens, might have known the answer, but they shook their collective heads. It had never come up, this question. Why did it matter if chickens could see the color of the worms they ate or the flowers they scratched out of neatly planted garden borders and window boxes? Even if they only saw in black and white the damage was the same. I sighed, mostly about the dead flowers.

I did ask the question with good reason. I thought I might have found a loop-hole in my newly acquired farming practices. We had inherited ten chickens when we moved to our farm and several of them had the bad habit of hiding their eggs. My mentor, Gisela, had shown me how to substitute white plastic eggs every time I raided the laying boxes in the chicken house. This made the hens think their nests were undisturbed, so they kept laying in the same place. The other option was to always leave an egg or two in the nest, marked with an 'x'. The next day the marked egg was removed and a newly laid egg marked.

Always remembering to carry a marker was a problem. The marking thing was not going to work. The plastic egg deception seemed reasonable, nothing like a little switcheroo as payback for the plants. Until the day my last fake-out either disappeared or was crushed underfoot. I don't remember the circumstances, but I did foresee a trip to the farm supply store for more plastic eggs.

Talk about sticker shock. The price of white plastic eggs was $1 a piece! I was remembering my city days when I was sure we had not paid more than $2 for an entire dozen plastic Easter eggs. This was rural living robbery! I coughed up for several of the fake eggs to tide me over ... until Easter, close to five months away. Since there was no consensus about chickens seeing in color, I figured if the chickens took exception to green, blue, pink and orange eggs, I could always dip them in some left-over white house paint from the workshop. For the first time, I was actually happy to see early merchandising in the grocery store for Easter, right after Valentine's Day.

In March, with the longer days that chickens like, the laying boxes on our farm were decorated with a myriad of pastel colored eggs. I decided to reserve the blue, green, and orange eggs for later, as they seemed a bit bright for the trial run. Would the gloom in the chicken house mask the pastels of the plastic? Did it even matter? Apparently not. The chickens laid where there were plastic eggs and they laid where there were none. In fact, it may not have mattered whether I had fake eggs in the boxes after all. The two wilder chickens with the bad habit of wandering off and reappearing with a brood of ten to twelve chicks had been killed the previous fall trying to defend them. The rest of the girls seemed perfectly happy to use the supplied boxes filled with clean straw.

I inherited new chickens this past winter. The colored plastic eggs have mostly been kicked from the nests and lie under piles of straw in the corners of the coop. Even the extras I took trouble to collect and place in egg cartons on a shelf in the coop have been scattered across the floor in some scuffle from the winter. It seems like years ago I wanted to know if chickens saw in color. In the end, it didn't really matter. We always had more eggs than we could eat, even when a hen or two would sneak off.

The Easter eggs are almost funny now too. I mean, I have a chicken that lays blue-green eggs all on her own! No plastic infusion molding technique. No need for dye tablets dropped in a glass of vinegar. No need to wait for Easter. But, beautiful, large, perfect blue-green eggs, standing out against the speckled browns, the light tans, and all varieties of eggs I collect each day. And, when you crack the shell, they look like any other farm-fresh eggs with the tell-tale rich yellow yoke of birds that free range on a diet of bugs and grubs mixed in for good measure.

These days I have a different question about chickens. "How do you keep them from jumping in the window boxes and scratching out the young, spring flowers? Spilling dirt across the entry way? Digging up perennials just peeking above the soil?" The chicken yard gate is shut; the fence has been scoured for holes. I guess it's time to sit out with a cup of coffee in the morning after feeding to find the way out ... and maybe use some of my extra, colored, plastic eggs for target practice!

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Lambing 'Season'

Lambing 'season' is almost here again. We actually experienced a suprise mini-season at the end of September, but the planned births will start at the beginning of April, if my calculations are correct. This will be my fourth year and it needs to be better than the third, last year. When I look back at year one and two, my ignorance was lucky and thank God the ewes lived, as well as their tiny charges. Once I had taken a lambing class and had a better idea of what I was doing, that is when all hell broke loose. Last year was a small disaster in lambing at our farm.

I hadn't thought to write of this because the death of newborn lambs is so sad and so final. It is even more final when we drive their small remains up the logging road, in the back of the Gator, to a steep ravine, where we throw them down into the tall ferns, the trees, the pitched forest floor covered with rotting wood and pine needles. This is the way we keep the predators far from our farm and our baby lambs, but it's brutal and doesn't seem to account much for the small lives I held in my arms, if for only a short time.

First I lost a ewe to a hernia caused, I now know, by large lambs pressing on her internal organs. Then we experienced the ewe with the prolapse. Why was lambing season starting so badly? Was the ram the cause, or something else? We had used Toby this year, a stocky Suffolk ram, with the manner of a favorite dog. I hadn't noticed his confirmation, but I suspected he was throwing large babies and large multiples besides. My ewes were experienced at birthing and things seemed to be starting terribly wrong.

I decided to bring the girls in close to the barn so I could keep an eye on them. I set the barn sheep stalls up with clean hay and heat lamps in preparation for new lambs. Just to get them in for a night or two of warmth. Just to get them established with their mothers, before they became a part of the flock.

A year later, I don't remember the easy births from last spring, only that there were some. I exhaled with relief when I could count strong babies holding close to their mothers' sides. Strong enough to stand within the first minutes. Hard to catch within the first 24 hours to put iodine on their umbilical cord, to give a shot of Bose, to dock tails and castrate, if necessary.

It was the others I remember more. The multiple births up to four, when one or two or three would start to fail within the first 12 hours. Hardest were the ones that lasted several days. The ones where I interceded with tubing, with milking their mothers for the colostrum, with placing them on soft beds of straw, with holding their small bodies in my arms and caressing their small heads.

There was Poodle. I called him this because he was so small and black and looked just like a miniature poodle. I called him this because I was so sure he was going to live. He had a gimpy leg and three siblings who pushed him out of the way in his search for milk. I milked his mom, something most ewes are not keen to allow, and fed him from a human baby bottle bought from the grocery store. Then, I would chase the other lambs away and hold him up to his mother's teat. But Poodle was so small he could barely reach. The day he became too weak to stand, I brought him into the house and placed him in a box in the kitchen, surrounded with blankets and old sheets, a heating pad and light to warm him. I held him on my lap with a bottle and felt his will to live ebbing. The next morning, when I snuck down to check on him, he was dead.

Then there was the lamb I tubed and bottle fed and held to his mom. And worried over for several days after they had been outside with the flock and I had found him weak and wobbly one morning at feeding time. I brought the ewe and her lambs back into the barn. Why, when I went to feed this lamb did his jaw seem hard to open? Why was he always standing away from the others. Was I imagining a stiffening in his body? I scoured my Sheep Raising book for answers and came upon one that horrified me. Was I seeing signs of tetanus? The book mentioned the problems of raising horses and sheep together. There was likely tetanus in the soil.

I tried to feed again and the lamb's mouth seemed wired shut. He was uncomfortable when I tried to place the nipple between his lips. The diagnosis, if correct, described an agonizing death. No hopes of survival. I needed to end the pain, but I couldn't face shooting such a small animal. I lay him across my lap and placed a plastic bag around his head. No struggling, just shallow breaths becoming less frequent until they stopped. It was a sad end to a short life, but better than the alternative. Another lamb for the ravine.

There were others that failed last spring. Some never took a first breath despite repeated brisk rubbing of their bodies or swinging in the air to clear the lungs. The huge ones invariably survived; their smallest siblings never had a chance. One was suffocated by a mom lying too close; another abandoned to become a bummer by a mother who only had eyes for one lamb, not two, despite a week-long attempt on my part to convince her otherwise. Of course, one feels like Mary Had A Little Lamb when this baby thinks you are its meal ticket and walks into the house, goes nose to nose with the dogs, and becomes the little darling of visitors to the farm who love to hold a bottle for him. Peter Rabbit. We named him Peter Rabbit because he had floppy ears...once I was sure he was going to live.

Lambing season is almost here. The ewes are looking fat and hungry all the time. We have a new ram we hope throws smaller babies. He's a different breed, a Katahdin, we brought in last summer with eight Katahdin ewes. They are known as hair sheep because they shed their wool, instead of having to be shorn. The breed are known as easy keepers, with good hooves and uncomplicated births. I was attracted by the promise of uncomplicated births.

We need a better season than last. I am hoping my old, wool ewes will have an easier time this spring and we will have an orchard full of leaping lambs by May. Lambing season is part of spring on the farm, filled with new life to match the greening of the grasses. It shouldn't be a deadly time, except that life and death seem so inextricably linked on a farm. Lambing 'season', a special time of year, when hope is eternal and little lambs remind me of the characters in the classic books my mother read me as a child.

(Peter Rabbit loved to follow me around. Here he is going nose to nose with Bezel. Not sure the cat really appreciated the close quarters.)

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Peeping Toms

I think it was No. 17 we ate for Thanksgiving. I don't name anything we are going to eat, but somehow the number became a name anyway. No. 17 was a Heritage Bronze turkey we had raised from an egg, along with twelve of his brothers and sisters. The intention was always to raise the birds for market; however, this meal was bitter sweet because, by the time Thanksgiving was upon us, I enjoyed my peeping toms.

Turkeys are actually hard to raise from an egg, something we didn't really pick up on when we first decided to go into the business. We started with two females and a tom and quickly started counting eggs, at one time up to 36! Unfortunately, the survival rate for just-hatched chicks is dismal because they are often suffocated by their large mothers, pushed out of the nest by accident, or wander off. Then, our first hen to lay keeled over and died for no apparent reason and left her babies to us!

At this point, the second, smaller hen began to lay. She would poop several eggs a day until she had a nest full. Once she was finished laying she missed the next part of the assignment. She had no intention of sitting on these eggs for the requisite 20+ days. The tom stepped in and barely moved off the nest until the eggs started to hatch. He was so dedicated to his job, I worried he might die from starvation.

While hens can unintentionally smother their off-spring, the tom had no idea his chicks had even hatched before they started dying. This could be the reason we became attached to our turkeys. Annie and I would check several times a day for fledgling babies, trying not to get bitten by the tom. One would distract while the other would quickly reach for a wobbly body going limp and cold, either pressed between the unhatched eggs or kicked out onto the dirt floor. A fair number of the chicks did die, but others we were able to warm under a lamp in the house and feed with a dropper until a life force took hold again. Two were so near death Annie and her friend held them next to their beating hearts for several hours while they watched Animal Planet, warming them with their body heat. Amazingly, it worked.

The kitchen became the infirmary. It was warm and bright and we could keep an eye on feed and water. The cats, especially Bubba as a kitten, had the bad habit of sitting on top of the large cage just to watch. Rather like eyeing goldfish swimming in a bowl. Every now and again he would see how far his paw could reach into the cage - just for a little feel, rather like the game he liked to play with Bezel when he pretended not to touch him. The birds might have been young, but they had an innate sense to stay towards the center of the cage whenever Bubba was around.

It's a funny thing about raising chicks in a kitchen. One day everything is fresh and smells of dinner and desserts; the next, the pungent smell of grown chicks, no longer small, downy wonders, becomes overwhelming. It was time to send these gangly teenagers into the big, wide world of the chicken yard to fend for themselves. While the dangers of the outdoors seemed harsh, the stink in the kitchen seemed harsher, so out they went.

As the turkeys grew through the summer, they alternatively harassed the chickens, scared the dogs and cats, and hung out with us on our chores around the farm. They could be found looking through the fence rails at the horses, dodging the sprinklers near the road, or begging a handout from our work crew when they took a smoke break. Where the hens were wild and lacked in personality, the toms spent their days running around as a group, tussling and gobbling, showing off to each other in a display of tail feathers, and, even, for a brief time, sidling up to Fred, the peacock, a bird of similar size but even more exquisite beauty. Fred, of course, was more interested in the hens, for whom he displayed on a regular basis.

Of all their antics, my toms were funniest in the early evenings of our hot, dry summer, when we would find them looking into the dining room windows while standing on our ice chests stored on the back deck. Granted, these windows were almost floor to ceiling, but we would regularly have three to four toms peeping into the house. Who knows, maybe all they could see was the reflection of more turkeys. More brothers! Whatever was going through their pea brains, it was a pretty comical sight, all these large, decorative birds standing in a row. It's one of my fondest memories.

The day the truck came to pick up the lambs and turkeys for market I had mixed emotions, even more so after we finally had them all in the trailer. Loading the lambs was the usual nightmare because they acted like sheep and had no interest in getting into an unfamiliar van. They knocked over the 12-year old girl brought along by her grandpa to help with the herding, and several escaped the pen all together until the dogs were called in to help. This behavior always breaks any bonds I may have thought I harbored towards these animals. By the time the lambs were loaded, I was visualizing them in the freezers of all those people who love the flavor of a good lamb chop.

The turkeys, on the other hand, did not have a clue what was going on and allowed us to scoop them up and put them into the next section of the trailer as if we had lost our minds. They stood huddled in a tight group, wary of the new space and the sounds of the shuffling lambs. But the silly, beautiful, hilarious birds didn't even try to escape. I actually swore I wouldn't raise turkeys again after that day. It was just too sad.

No, no more turkeys. Until this year when our meat supplier mentioned how many requests had come in from the previous season. The turkeys had been the best they had ever tasted. It was like being a pilgrim...or at least eating something that was actually real, had come out of a fertilized egg, and had lived a good life. That was the part of which I was proudest. These were healthy birds that had been allowed to wander our farm, to dig for grubs, to chase the cats, to be curious about the birds reflected in the dining room windows. They had provided the first graders from the Alsea school an up-close-and-personal experience that required Wikipedia to answer all of their questions. "How many feathers do they have?" "Why do they gobble?" "Why is that red thing coming out of their nose?"

So, I guess, we will try and raise turkeys again, but, this year, I swear those chicks need to make it on their own...at least until I find one out of the nest, struggling to survive, in need of a heat lamp. It's the circle of life all over again. It's just that this circle will probably, once again, include the kitchen.

(The photo shows one of the toms standing on the ice chest looking in. "Can I come in for a visit?")


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A Three Mouse Night

What is a "three mouse night", you say? I suppose you need to have a cat like Bubba to understand. Bubba is an Alsea cat, born and bred. The kind of cat, with genes for speed and ruthless behavior, designed for barnyards and fields and a countryside full of rodents and small, furry things.

The phrase "two mouse night" was actually first coined when Bezel, our old cat from Arizona, moved to Oregon with us and found the rodent population so plentiful he would sometimes disembowel two mice in one night, often under the family bed. Alternatively, he would leave a decapitated mouse or two for me to step on with bare feet first thing in the morning. I'm not sure we ever had more than a "one mouse night" in the desert, so this increased activity was significant. Greg said it was surely a sign of love and affection. I felt the truth was closer to shooting fish in a barrel. I took to throwing the corpses out the second-floor window of our bedroom, into the dense bank of rhodedendrons below. This is also where I threw the dead birds.

Bubba came into our lives as a small, black kitten pulled from a box of littermates at the blue house across from the Mercantile in Alsea. Greg had complained to several local mates the chipmunks were decimating our raspberries and kiwis. He was advised to find a local cat breed to quell the nonsense. Alsea cats for Alsea problems. Greg wasn't looking for a friend for Bezel; he was looking for a natural born killer. After the initial irritation wore off, Bezel became content to curl up in Greg's lap in the evenings and sleep on the bed at night. What was the point in competing for mice if the cat bowl was always filled and Bubba was in town?

The "three mouse night" happened mid-autumn when the temperatures were cooling, but the rains had not yet come. To be more exact, Bubba presented us with a three "rodent" evening, as he is a non-discrimating predator when it comes to voles, moles, and field mice. I had never run across a vole until we arrived in Oregon; however, the best way to describe these furry creatures is they look like sharp-nosed mice. They are the bane of farmers in the Northwest since they eat the roots of the grasses grown for seed and hay used for feed. Not totally "up" on my rodent varieties, I originally thought Bubba was playing with moles. I have since learned moles are larger, flatter-fatter, web-footed, slit-eyed, and much more difficult to catch because they rarely surface above ground. I think Bubba has only caught two, which is too bad because my orchard and lawn have large mounds of red-brown dirt everywhere (although they say this makes excellent potting soil).

The first "treat" was dragged into the house around dinner-time. It was a fairly dead-looking vole, small and probably quite young. Bubba tossed it around for a bit and then left the body in the middle of the carpet. He flopped down next to the fire to clean his paws. I picked up the vole by the tail and threw it out the door, to Bubba's apparent disgust. He was just taking a break. He quickly exited out the dog door to begin the hunt again.

The second treat was produced a little later. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the catch and release game going on in the other room. What a miserable life to be a mouse, especially that mouse. We heard the scampering of cat claws racing across the wood floors, in and out of the dining table legs, saw area rugs no longer lying flat but bunched as if for playing hide-and-seek, heard the squeek of the mouse as it was caught again, and then silence. My friend, Gayle, recently witnessed a similar episode and was surprised we don't interfere. Sometimes I will. It depends on the day; it depends on the ease of being the saviour. For the mouse, it is serendipity whether this is a lucky day or not.

The third mouse arrived in the bedroom after the lights were out. There was a great deal of scuffling, made louder by the quiet of the night. We tossed and turned. I put the pillow over my head. Then all was silent. Had the mouse found refuge out of Bubba reach? Was this to be a new resident in our house, like so many before that Bubba chased, watched for, and then forgot? I have an ongoing joke with friends about the mouse population actually increasing in the house because the cat drags them in from outside and loses them. It's a common problem. They nod their heads.

The next morning I watched where I put my feet, but there were no signs of either Bubba or the mouse. When I find the sorry little creatures hiding under a flower pot or behind a piece of low furniture I will often grab a tail and redeposit it out the back door. In this case, it is survival of the fittest rodent. Just as Bubba is a natural born killer, we probably house the top of the food chain in the mouse world. It's a cycle of farm life I don't much like, not when I am wiping up parts of animals deposited in the middle of the floor. But if it weren't a cat, it would be an owl or some other predator.

Don't get me started on bird kills, though. As deft as he is at catching rodents, Bubba is a menace to the bird-feeder population. I am usually unable to save them, and he doesn't care. Most people frown when I mention this other side of Bubba's nature, except it really isn't anything other than his true nature. He's an Alsea cat and you get the good and the bad when you hire the best killer you can find.

(This photo shows Bubba in the shape of a "C" doing that childish thing that drives Bezel crazy "I'm not touching you. Really, I'm not touching you". Yeah, right!)

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2007 Scottie Jones
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An Inconvenient Trap

We were walking in the rain. We walk every morning whether it is raining or foggy or cold or clear. Rain in the Oregon Coast Range is often what I would call an English mist. Today we were walking in an English mist.

We walk to keep fit, to chase away osteoporosis, to clear the brain for the day, to chatter about whatever comes to mind - books, families, community, gossip, even weather. We also, or maybe here I should say "I", walk for the dogs. Patches and Cisco live to walk. You can tell it in the way they yelp when I grab the keys to the truck or my walking buddies arrive at the front door. It is a yelp of excitement: "You're here! Yippee! Let's go! Hurry up!" These are happy dogs.

I have never quite understood this level of excitement. It would make sense if the dogs were kept inside every day, but these dogs have their own dog door. They can come and go as they please. They can eat sheep poop in the orchard, chase chipmunks hiding in the raspberry bushes, surreptitiously herd sheep, run down the driveway to bark at passing cars on the gravel road - mostly all without being scolded. But, look like you might be going out for a walk and our dogs start to bounce around, underfoot, at the door, pleading and whining, "Me too; me too!"

When we walk in the woods, it is not like the "walkies" of that funny English lady on TV years ago. It's the off-the-leash walks up the logging roads, some recently rocked to keep the trucks from sinking in the mud; others left unused and starting to cover with soft grasses and fallen pine needles. This day, we chose a logging road with more tender footing and no trucks. We call it the 'Graveyard' road because the locals have the bad habit of dumping fresh carcasses of game they have killed, either legally or illegally. There are bones everywhere. Archaeologists a thousand years from now will wonder if the 21st century residents of the Alsea Valley practiced ritual slaughter. To bring us sun? To bring us oil? To bring us closer to God? We call it the Graveyard road because it is peacefully quiet...and dead.

Not so peaceful. One of my dogs was shrieking. Shrieking in pain or fear. Whatever it was, he kept screaming and screaming. I couldn't see him, but I started to run into the dark, dank woods. Off the road. Towards the terrible noise. My first thought was the dog had had an encounter with a porcupine. I saw him in the gloom, at the base of a large snag. Why wasn't he running back to me? Did something have a hold of his face? My mind raced next to thoughts of a badger or a raccoon, jaws holding him tight. But his face turned toward me from time to time as he screamed. His paw was caught. In a hole? Under a root? Cisco is such a baby about his feet and anything touching them. I crouched beside him throwing off my gloves and reaching for his paw. It was only then I realized Cisco was caught in the vise-grip of a leg-hold trap, baited with the very bones that named our road.

As I pushed against Cisco to stop him pulling harder against the trap, I thought about coyotes, known to bite off a foot to get out of a trap. Cisco was panicked. What would he do? I put my arms around him from behind and tried to keep him secure while I struggled to press down on one side of the trap. I could barely make it move and, by pressing down on only one side, I pinched Cisco's paw harder. He screamed. I was not strong enough to hold the dog and open the trap. I wasn't sure I was even strong enough to open the trap at all.

My friends had stayed on the road as I bounded thoughtlessly into the woods to save my dog. After all, it could have been a cougar attack, though this never crossed my mind. I yelled for help. Nancy came running. Janet hesitated, still unsure about the wisdom of entering the forest. Nancy crouched beside me and called to Janet again. I knew now how the trap worked and babbled what I needed. Both women looked at me in confusion. I tried to explain. Cisco yelled and struggled, his large teeth just inches from their faces as they bent over the trap. I grabbed his muzzle and pointed his head away. "Push! Push hard!" The first attempt failed. Were none of us strong enough? "Try again! Lean down on it! With all your weight!" Now I was panicked. The adrenalin kicked in for all three of us as Nancy and Janet pushed hard on the springs. The trap opened enough for me to pull Cisco's paw free; then it snapped shut again, this time on itself.

I let Cisco go and stood up shaking. He sat down to lick his paw, then looked up expectantly. "Can we go now?" There was no three-legged hopping. Cisco scampered toward the road. "I'm okay. My feet are okay. No, you cannot take a look. Let's get out of here!" I figured his adrenaline was probably so cranked he couldn't feel pain yet. I thanked Nancy and Janet and realized I was still babbling. I needed to get Cisco home to take a look at his paw and then to a vet. I needed to sit down. I needed to calm myself. I don't even remember saying good-bye as I started to walk back down the road to the car.

As I walked, I was surprised my hands had become so cold so fast. I had put my gloves back on and was now aware of that tingling sensation you get when you warm your hands too fast next to the fire. I pulled my gloves back off. My right hand was covered in blood mixed with the grimy dirt from the forest floor. There was some on Cisco's face too. Where had he been cut? I didn't see any blood on his paw. Slowly, I realized I was the one who was bleeding. In the confusion, Cisco had bitten me and I hadn't even felt it.

Four weeks later, I still have purple under my thumbnail, a mark from one tooth on the side of it, and a prescription in my wallet for antibiotics I never had to take. Cisco ended up being the luckiest of dogs. The vet was amazed he had no broken bones, although getting a look at his foot was a trick in itself, requiring a muzzle, a blanket and three people. Our youngest daughter returned with me to find the sprung trap, except it had been reset! It took two of us, but we were able to pull out three feet of rebar holding it in the ground and then carried the trap back to our house because it had been set illegally. I had already checked with the logging company that owned the ground. Yes, they had trappers, but this was not one of them. They didn't want to tell me what to do about the trap, but did say, come spring, there would be active trapping in the area for beaver devastating their recently planted Douglas fir forest.

I have since warned my neighbors. Most of us hike in the woods with our dogs. Most of us don't think about traps as a hazard on these outings. I'm not sure how to proceed with this new knowledge that there is something called a fur license to trap beaver or coyotes or bobcats or any other animal that trips the metal jaws. I can't understand it myself because it's not in my nature, this trapping thing.

I call more often now for Cisco and Patches to stay close when we walk, especially when we near the Graveyard road. As they dash into the dark of the forest, I hold my breath and wait for the sound of screaming. I whistle until I see the bounding bodies, the wagging tails, the frosted breath as both dash towards me, "We're here. What do you want? Why don't you trust us? We're happy dogs!" I exhale, then rejoin the conversation with my friends, as we continue down the logging road.

(Cisco is standing next to the leg-hold trap we yanked from the forest floor. It was bigger than I remembered. Oh, yeah, the name of this chapter is an intentional play on Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth...sign of the times)

All rights reserved. Copyright 2007 Scottie Jones
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A Prolapsed What?

This is one of those graphic farm stories you might want to skip, unless you raise or take care of animals on a regular basis. I certainly would have passed on this experience if I had been able, because even describing the events as they unfolded still sounds so incredibly impossible...and unforseen. Apparently, I should have read my How To Raise Sheep book with more diligence and care. If you are a vet, this story may have some interest and you will nod your head in understanding and probably furrow your brow once you hear how we handled it. The one thing that all agree who have dealt with sheep - they are a hardy lot and what you think should kill them often does not.

Of course, as an interesting side note (and one that may save a sheep in the future when you find yourself driving through the rural countryside, so I shall add it here), there are things that kill sheep, little things that don't seem quite fair. Getting stuck on their back in a ditch in the field will kill sheep soon enough if no one tugs on a leg and turns them right-side up. That's your part, or at least to notify the owner of the sheep. The multiple stomachs don't like to be up-ended for any length of time. They twist and then bloat. It can get pretty ugly. And, yes, this has happened to us several times (the sheep on their backs part).

I have received calls from neighbors on their way to work, "I think you have a dead sheep in the pasture." Sure enough, I can see in the distance a downed ewe, her legs sticking straight in the air, as if rigor mortis had set in. I am sure she is dead, wondering how I could be such a bad shepherd ... until I see the slightest twitch of an ear and know we are lucky this time. Thankfully, it doesn't take much to right a sheep. She will sway for a bit until her head clears, then move off to find the rest of the flock as if nothing has happened ... except she could have died.

All things being equal, a sheep on her back is a walk in the park. That was not the problem here. I should have had an inkling lambing season was going to be difficult when I started having troubles before I ever saw a lamb. I didn't actually know I had trouble until Salty, one of the former owner's of our farm, stopped over to fill his water jugs and, looking out the window, thought he saw a ewe in distress.

Why was it, every time either Gisela or Salty came over, we had some animal down or birthing or dying? I think Salty asked himself the same question. I, on the other hand, was thankful he recognized we had a problem, as he obviously had better eyes and more years of experience at this. Salty said he thought I had a ewe with a prolapsed uterus and we needed to catch her and fix it. Fix it? In my defense, I didn't know what I was supposed to be looking for and, once pointed out, what I was looking at either. I followed him out the door and grabbed a rope from the wood shop for good measure.

As we trotted down the orchard, I scanned the flock for a prolapsed uterus. A what? Salty informed me, "A big, red 'balloon' hanging out of the back side of the sheep." I saw it. The ewe looked around at us and then at her backside. Oh, my God, where did that come from and how were we going to get it back in? We needed to catch the ewe, that, while in some pain and hobbled by the prolapse, seemed quite able to run, avoiding our outstretched arms and poorly flung lasso.

I am quite the girl when it comes to catching sheep. It is not a natural act to fling myself upon a fleeing animal in a body tackle. I would rather wrap my hands in wool and hang on, if I could ever get close enough to grab onto anything more than air. Salty chased the ewe down to the river's edge. If she crossed into the cold water, we would lose her since there was no easy way across in that area. Luckily, I found them both on the ground, leaning into the wet moss and mud of the river bank, Salty's legs wrapped around the ewe to hold her down. Then, I listened to his directions.

I was going to need some warm water,soap and rubber gloves. He couldn't quite remember how Gisela used to do this because he was always on the other end, but somehow, I needed to push the prolapsed member back into the ewe. I ran to the house and decided on the way to call my sheep mentor, Russ, and ask his advice. This had happened to his sheep before. It wasn't pretty, but it was possible to correct. His voice was calm and cool as he went through the procedure. My former city life seemed farther away than ever.

With the directions in my head, I rejoined a now soggy and tired Salty on the banks of the Honey Grove. I washed the ewe, put antiseptic on my gloves, and grabbed the offending part. With steady pressure, I started to push, breathing slowly, whispering cooing sounds to the ewe that had ceased to struggle, but grunted softly. All of a sudden the prolapse retreated back into place. I couldn't believe it. She was whole once again with everything where it shoud be. We let the ewe up. I slipped the lasso over her neck. We had caught her once. I didn't want to let her go just yet.

Salty could not leave fast enough. I wasn't even sure I would ever see him again. He would probably tell Gisela to come get her own water next time. It was lambing season. Who knew what other horrible afflictions lurked around the farm. I called Russ back to tell him of our success and he mildly informed me to keep an eye on the ewe. She could prolapse again. What?!!! I had an appointment in town. She would be fine. I would just lock the ewe in the garden to localize her movements and check on her when I returned home.

The ewe prolapsed while I was gone and by the time I finally found her, since she had also broken out of the garden, the skies were dark and cloudy with rain and night falling. I had no idea how long she had been in this shape. The longer the prolapse; the harder the retraction. But, this time, I knew the procedure. This time it was Greg in the mud holding down the ewe. This time, the prolapse wouldn't retreat no matter how hard or how long I pushed. I called Russ again. Could he come over and help?

We literally dragged the ewe up to the barn, both for light and only slightly more sanitary conditions on the barn floor. In the meantime, I had been wondering how a pregnant ewe could have a prolapsed uterus if she still had babies inside her. It didn't make anatomical sense. As Greg was holding the ewe and Russ and I were lying side by side on the ground trying to get four hands around this red balloon to push with even pressure, Russ admitted that maybe this wasn't the uterus. He wasn't all that up on female anatomy. I thought so. This was a prolapsed vagina. At least that cleared up one mystery. The babies were still inside and needed a way out.

We almost gave up. We probably pushed for 30 minutes and everyone, including the ewe was starting to get tired. Then, the boys had a thought. What if we used gravity to help? What if we put the ewe on her back and lifted her hind end off the ground. Just like that, the vagina retreated back to its safe spot. We had long ago given up with trying to keep everything clean and now all I could hope was a shot of antibiotics might knock out any infection.

We took one other preventative measure. We inserted a prolapse paddle into the ewe to discourage further problems. You have to figure, if there is a prolapse paddle, this is not that rare an occurrence in the lambing world. There was even an entire section in my sheep book once I looked under 'prolapse'. The paddle would keep the sheep safe until she was ready to deliver. Russ told me I would need to pull the paddle right before delivery and the lambs should birth just fine. Since most of our ewes deliver their lambs in the middle of the night, how was I supposed to time this? Did I need to sleep in the barn? It didn't look as if my own problems were diminishing.

As it turned out, I was ultimately well aware when the ewe went into labor. I required both Russ' and his wife, Carolyn's, assistance again. But, that is another story for another time. It is important to note only that this rural life is filled with neighbors willing to leave a warm fire or dinner table to assist when called. We are blessed with that kind of friendship. We are also blessed when sheep do not need any assistance from us, either stuck upside down in a ditch or trailing things from their backsides, but we are their shepherds and, so, we do the best we can when necessary.

(This photo shows our new Katahdin sheep with 3-day-old lambs. They are said to be "easy-keepers" both on the land and during lambing. We have brought them in to try and do away with stories like the one just recounted. I will report back in the spring, but these little darlings all birthed without assistance early this fall.)

All rights reserved. Copyright Scottie Jones 2006
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Something Had to Give

Well, the good news is the gate latch held. The bad news is the corner of the barn ripped off, taking with it the gate, dangling now at a dangerous angle by the latch. It was one of those mornings again.

When I looked toward the barn, having just grabbed my first cup of coffee, I didn't see any horses looking back. Usually, by poking my head out the back door, I can at least elicit a whinny, mildly interpreted as, "Get your sorry ass over here and let us out because we are dying of hunger." Except Tater, the one grumbling the most, is a big fatty. Why couldn't he be more patient?

Instead, this particular morning, there was nothing. With kids, no sound and no action usually means trouble. The same follows with animals. I picked up the pace towards the barn yard, only to find our three horses grazing peacefully, as if nothing was wrong. Except, they were in the barn yard and not confined in their loafing shed area. The two wearing blankets, meant only for indoor or under cover use, were soaked through from the rain.

I checked for wounds on all three horses because a gate doesn't pull out by its bolts without a body slam from a large animal, either directly against the gate or several bodies pushed tightly and leaning hard in an attempt to escape a kick or a bite. That would be Tater bullying my horse, Chaco, in a show of testosterone and youth. I was thinking through my plans for the day and schedules to be changed to accommodate a vet visit. Who could have a 'real' job while living on a farm when the unexpected always seemed to rear its head at the most inconventient times?

I couldn't believe it. The horses were fine. No scrapes, no bumps, no swollen joints. Just horses happy to be on new, green grass that didn't look like the new green grass on their side of the fence. Even happier when I took off their blankets that now seemed to weigh 50 pounds a piece. How was I going to dry these? Certainly not in my clothes dryer. This was not the time of year to wash the blankets outside with a scrub brush and I was not going to put these nasty, dirty things into the same place I put the whites! I spread them out on saw horses in the tack room and turned up the heat.

The broken gate was the only barrier between the horse's loafing shed and the barn yard. I found one hanger bolt on the ground beneath the gate. I found the other about 20 feet away in the grass. I had no idea what happened, exactly, but I did know re-securing the gate was going to be a bitch because the corner of the barn was lying on the ground next to the hanger bolt.

Not sure I could handle the reconstruction, I called my neighbor, Dave, for a look-see. I had the tools and I even had a possible 4 x 4 to fit at the corner of the barn, but the nails needed to hold it all together (also known as 'spikes')looked daunting in both length and breadth and I wasn't exactly sure how I would hammer them in.

It's a good thing Dave was around. He is an ex-logger with a great deal of enthusiasm for hitting things hard. We came up with a plan to reattach the gate, but when the spike hit the old-growth wood in the barn frame, even Dave's wailing almost came to a stop. I have never seen someone pound a nail with a sledge so hard yet for such little impression. The wood was like stone and every time Dave drove down on the nail, with his thumb just inches away, I flinched. Between that and threading the hanger bolts for the gate, I am afraid, if left to my own devices, Greg would have returned home from work to a temporary panel lashed to the posts with baling twine and no easy way in or out from the corral.

Dave smacked the spikes until they were in and then hit the 4 x 4 a couple more times just for good measure. We rehung the gate in such a way Tater could not use one of his latest moves, which was to stick his head through the rungs of the gate and pull up, thus lifting the gate off its hinges,defying our newly devised gate latch. If you can't open one side of a gate; try for the other - he is not a stupid animal.

The repair was complete. The sun was shining. No animals had been wounded in the event. The day had a feeling of normalcy. So, my plans were off by an hour, but it could have been far worse. Just a little hiccup at the farm. Just a little "oops" from the horses. It is probably better I don't know exactly what happened to rip the corner off the barn, hang the gate at a dangerous angle for escape, place three horses in the barn yard instead of safe under the loafing shed. If Tater could talk, he would probably lie about whose fault it was. Better to leave it alone and get on to the next project on the list of farm projects, the ones actually written down and planned for the day.

(Photo is pretty self explanatory. The gate is 'down', thus the horses are no longer in the loafing shed, but rather, farther down the barnyard behind me eating grass)

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