What does one do with a dead sheep? Rich always sorts these things out – he spares me as much of the unpleasantness as he can. But he wasn’t here to spare me now. I was going to have to work it out.
I wanted to spare Joli if I could, and do it myself, so I went up to investigate. Pulled the string to turn on the light in the big, cavernous barn. The sheep milled around in the open pen – all except one. It was lying there stiffly. Definitely dead.
I went over to it and grabbed its fleece, thinking that perhaps I could drag it out of the pen. Two handfuls of fleece came away in my hands. I dropped them and backed away. This wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d thought – and I wasn’t going to be able to spare Joli. I was going to need her help. Ceris and Elly are away at school, and we’re the only ones here to get the job done.
We milked and got the animals bedded for the night, then came in and had supper. Music and candles on the table every night, as usual. It helps me, to keep these things going.
Gives me an illusion of control and sanity. I looked at Joli after supper. Her lovely face gazed back, serene and level-eyed. ‘We’ve got to do that dead sheep,’ I said apologetically. ‘I know,’ she said.
We walked out to the barn together, arm in arm. I got a wheelbarrow, and we wheeled it through the dark, back up to the barn.
‘My friends are on Facebook right now,’ Joli said reflectively. ‘Or doing internet shopping.’ This struck us, for some reason, as being extremely funny, and we giggled a bit hysterically.
Together we managed to lever the dead sheep into the wheelbarrow and forced the wheelbarrow up the steep slope, opened the big padlocked gate and tipped the body out onto the flat space, ready for the knacker man to pick up.
We debated for a while what to cover it with, settling finally on a big dumpy bag that the goat food comes in. We covered the body and weighted it down with stones. When I looked down, there was a leg poking gruesomely out of the white covering. I pushed it back in and pulled the bag over further to cover it.
‘I don’t know how people in the Mafia do it,’ I mused. ‘Dealing with dead bodies is hard work.’ Amazing what you can do when you have to cope… I keep reaching down further and further to find reserves.
The worst day of being on my own was yesterday. I dropped Benji off at school and came back to milk the goats. But first I had to send off an order for goat’s milk kefir, which meant that I had to contact FedEx – we’ve just started using them to ship out our milk orders. But the computer wasn’t printing the label properly, so I had to contact the office. He wanted me to talk to the IT bloke to sort it out, but I told him I couldn’t because I had to milk the goats. I hand wrote the label and left it for the delivery man to pick up.
Then I started out to milk, but Taid told me that I was needed up in the sheep barn for a new lamb. When I got there, I found that one of the sheep had given birth to a tiny, yellow lamb that was struggling feebly on its own. No-one had licked it or fed it. I looked accusingly at all the sheep, ranged on the other side of the barn. ‘Okay, whose is it?’ I said. They all looked back at me guiltily, but no-one confessed.
I picked up the baby, sprayed its belly button with iodine, forced some Kick Start down its throat. I trudged back to the house, made up a bottle of powdered colostrum and warm water and firmly fed it some from a bottle. In the meantime, Taid identified the sheep he thought was the mother. We caught her and penned her up, but when I reached under her thick, dirty fleece to check her udders, they were completely flat – no milk at all.
I sighed – looks like I’m mum to yet another lamb. Just what I don’t need at the moment. I carried the new lamb down to the crèche, where we have three goat kids and one lamb snuggled in a small wooden pen under a heat lamp. I put it in with the other babies and finally started to milk – at 11 a.m. Milking takes two hours, but I had to stop at 12:30 to do some coaching on the computer. I did three sessions, back to back.
I worked right up until it was time to stop, and just managed to get the milk filtered and in the freezer – I didn’t have time to give the goats extra hay, or turn them out, or give the kids their early afternoon feed, or check on the new lamb, or give it another feed.
I thought, the lamb might die. I need to feed it. But I also had to get on my conference call. The executives at Cisco were waiting, and they didn’t know or care about my new orphan lamb charge. I had to be in two places, and I couldn’t.
I went in and fired up the computer, still smelling of afterbirth from where I’d cradled the lamb. We needed the money that I’d make from these sessions, and I needed to keep my job. If I missed the session, my credibility with the company would be destroyed, and no excuse would be good enough. The lamb would have to take its chances. But leaving the animals unfed was like a physical pain – I hated it.
As soon as the session was over I called Joli (who had just come home from school) and we raced out to the barn together. She gave the goats hay and water, while I fed the kids. Everyone had survived.
Joli washed out the milking machine, and I went inside and sat down for five minutes, staring out the window. It was the first time, I realized, that I’d sat down all day. I rested there quietly and drank one glass of sherry. Then I heaved myself out of the chair and went to do the evening milking.
I phoned Rich to report on what was happening. He’s now scheduled for emergency surgery on 6 April. He’ll be home for two weeks first, and then will go back in for the operation.
Two weeks of having him home – and then another week in hospital. This time, we’ll be better prepared. I can call friends, organize milking rotas. Ask the Grants to take the goat kids for the week. Joli can milk at night, and I’ll ask people to come over and help. I have two weeks to make double portions of things and put them in the freezer. We can do this. We have to do this. We have no choice.
24 March 2012
Brilliantly sunny this morning – funny how that makes everything feel more cheerful! Rich is back from hospital for two weeks. It’s bliss to have him home. I picked him up on Thursday, and was shocked to see how pale and shaky he was, with grey shadows under his eyes. They had him on massive doses of steroids, which didn’t help at all, but now he has to withdraw from them, which is going to make him feel even worse.
On Rich’s first evening, we sat outside. We let out the three goat kids and the two orphan lambs we’re bottle-feeding, and Joli and Benji played with them in the grassy area where the swings are. We perched on the steps leading down to the swing set and turned our faces up to the slanting sun, which painted everything gold. We could see out over the bowl of our valley to the sea, blue and mysterious, in the distance.
We never do this, normally. Rich, when he’s well, is constantly in action. He hates the idea of drinking tea because he can’t tolerate the time it takes to make it. But this time he sat contently on the step, looking out. A gift, this beautiful half-hour; a gift out of the illness. I will take this and squeeze it for whatever it has to offer.
The weather today is amazing – warm and balmy – the first proper day of spring. Air like shandy: fizzy and sweet and making everyone slightly drunk on sun. Green grass shining. That’s a lovely thing about Wales, it’s so damp that when the sun does come out, everything gleams as if freshly scrubbed! Joli’s lying on her stomach in the field by the swings, reading, with the three goat kids and two lambs curled up next to her in the sun. I’m going to make lavender and mint and lemon soap in my big pan on the stove. Bliss…
Later – Joli’s doing homework at one end of the kitchen table, while I make soap at the other. Ceris, home on a break from university, is doing coursework in her room. The girls have agreed to meet for a break and a coffee at 3 p.m. But when it’s time for a break, Rich sends Joli out to look at the sheep, who are still in the middle of lambing. Joli comes back to report that Mansel, her pet lamb from last year who’s a grown-up sheep now, is lambing and has two back feet sticking out.
I wonder briefly, when did Joli learn t
o tell the back feet from the front? It’s not easy to tell the difference – I always struggle to remember which way up they point. When all you can see of the lamb being born is its hooves, it’s critical to know if they’re front or back. If they’re back hooves, you’ve got to reach in and make sure the bony little tail is smoothed down, or it’ll rip the mother as you pull it out.
And you can’t hesitate – once you start to pull, the umbilical cord breaks, and with its head in the birth canal, the lamb will suffocate. Front hooves are easier because that’s the way the lamb is intended to be born. Joli will grow up knowing these things, while I had to learn them, piece by piece.
I asked if they needed me outside, but Rich said they didn’t, so Joli went out with him, and I carried on making soap. We have our first big trade order due to go out this week, and I’ve a horrible, nagging fear that something will go wrong. I’ll come up short of soap somehow at the last minute – stupid, but I haven’t had a minute until now to actually make any soap. And I’ll be damned if I let the business go now, when we’ve worked so hard for the past year to get it going.
We’ve just now been contacted by Prince Charles’s company, Cambrian Mountain Initiative, to make soap for them. We’re teetering on the edge of what could be success, and I refuse to pop it all now, like taking a pin to a balloon. We must manage to keep it going while Rich is in hospital – somehow.
Joli just came in through the front porch, where Ceris has been sunning herself, curled up like a cat on the bench, and asked for some Depocillin (a penicillin jab we keep in the fridge to dose the sheep and goats when something goes wrong). She was covered in blood up to her elbows.
‘Bad?’ I asked as I took the bottle from the fridge, broke open a new syringe packet, attached a sterile needle and deftly drew a dose of the thick white liquid into the syringe. (When did I get good at this? I wondered.)
My mother phoned earlier for an update. I told her, because I thought I should, that Rich’s colostomy is an emergency one and that there’s a risk of his colon perforating in the meantime. A small risk, but a risk nonetheless. My mother asked me about it again, later in the conversation.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I said. ‘It’s not going to happen, and I don’t want to discuss it.’
I don’t want to think, during this brief, fragile period of having Rich at home before he goes back to hospital, how fragile it all really is.
25 March 2012
Last night, Rich said, ‘What’s happening to you? When I look at you, you’re glowing.’
I asked him what he meant, and he said, ‘You eat like I used to, these days. Quickly, and loads of food. And it just seems like you’re running things. When I used to come to the barn, and you were milking, you’d stop, as if you had all day. Now, you’re in a rhythm. You just get on with things. You talk to me, but you don’t stop. And you don’t seem tired – you seem energized.’
I thought about what he’d said, and it’s true. I do feel stronger, more energized. Like when you start doing something new, and the muscles ache and pang, and finally they give in and start getting stronger. It’s as if I’ve found a whole new gear from which to operate. I think the truth is that I’ve finally put my arms around this farm.
I loved it before, but it wasn’t mine. Rich was always there, strong and tall as a wall – experienced, knowledgeable. If I felt tired or didn’t want to do something, all I had to do was complain, and he’d take care of it. Like moving into adulthood – now it’s my responsibility. And that knowledge has released some new strength in me.
And not just me – yesterday I stopped at the army surplus shop and bought proper grown-up green waterproof trousers for Joli, and a wooden-handled knife like mine. We use the knives for cutting open bales of hay and haylage, and she was always asking to borrow mine. I handed them over to her ceremonially, telling her that she’d earned them, which she has. She was inordinately pleased.
It’s funny, the farm has made her very tough, and unfussy. She came back into the house yesterday with lamb poo down the front of her T-shirt, and laughed as she told me the story: ‘The lamb had poo on it; the mother licked the lamb and then licked me. And I didn’t want to move, because I was feeding the lamb, and because the mother was bonding with me.’
She looked down at her stained T-shirt. ‘No point in changing this now. I’m only going back out. Have you got a rubber band?’ I gave her one, and she matter-of-factly tied her T-shirt up so that the poo was out of the way. It looked very fetching.
‘There we go,’ she said. ‘All sorted.’ And she went back out to the barn.
Today was another stunning day! Sunny and warm… Joli and I milked. She fed the babies (current count – three goat kids, two orphan lambs and two lamb twins still with their mother, but she’s not producing enough milk). That’s seven baby bottles that need to be used, washed and refilled, three times daily.
Rhys came over to help drive in fence posts, where the goats had broken the fence down and got into the goose run. Rich is looking so ill… pale green, with great grey shadows under his eyes. He’s quickly out of breath. And he’s so used to forcing himself on, it’s difficult to make him sit down and rest. It frightens me more than I can say when I tell him to put his feet up, and he does, without complaint.
Joli and I cut up all the soap batches I made yesterday, and she labelled and packaged them. Today is Sunday – the day of rest! Funny… the work never stops on the farm. The goats don’t take the weekends off, and neither do the farmers. Tomorrow I must grudgingly send Joli back to school – she loves packaging the soap, and it’s fun to sit around the table, chatting and listening to music, while we slide the beautiful-smelling bars into their crisp canvas bags, tying on the coloured labels.
Now I have to make more soap, strain the goat’s milk kefir and bottle it, and get that all done and the table cleared off before it’s time for the evening meal. Our big, cheerful farmhouse kitchen is like a factory. The table is constantly being covered with projects and then cleared, like a massive tide coming in and out.
But every night, without fail, all the projects are put away, the candles set out and the music put on. We eat fresh, homemade bread and huge pots of stew, our own cheese and jams and chutneys. I love suppertime… I love the fact that the family is all together in one place, and we have this moment of peace and beauty to buoy us up.
Whatever else is happening outside, it seems critically important that we put on the music, light the candles and sit down together. It’s the hub that keeps the crazy spokes of the wheel in place, gathered together at the centre.
26 March 2012
Feeling completely overwhelmed today. We were up until 11:30 p.m. last night, getting colostrum down two lambs that had just been born. Joli went out to feed the babies and was so long coming in that Rich went out after her. We have walkie-talkies so that we can communicate between the barn and the house, but they’re not working at the moment – one of the many things on my long list to replace.
When Rich went out, he found Joli with two new baby lambs, whose mother was just staring at them dopily, trying to work out what they were. Rich came back in and mixed up powdered colostrum and went back out to try to feed it to them. He came in half an hour later, frustrated. They had only taken a little bit.
I re-warmed what was left in the bottle, which had grown stone-cold, and went out again. He came with me. It was a clear, mild night, bright with stars. I always resent going out so late, when sensible people are in watching TV, but taking a deep breath of the sweet night air and looking up at the stars always makes me glad to be outside again.
Anyway, I was able to coax most of the rest of the colostrum down the two lambs. One took it eagerly. The other, still wet with afterbirth, had to have his head jiggled, and the bottle squeezed to get it down him. Or her. I didn’t check. That late at night, I didn’t care.
Rich had a pretty good night but a rough morning, so I’ve left him in bed to sleep. Joli is still in
her room – hasn’t done the morning shift of feeding the babies. Fair enough, she worked like a hero all weekend. So now I’ve got to get Benji fed and off to school, and feed seven babies – or nine, counting the two from last night.
And that’s before I even start the shift of milking and barn work, which has to be completed before I sit down to any paperwork or ordering. Or FedEx, for the deliveries, or calling the stockists to tell them we’re closing down the business while Rich is in hospital. The only way I’m going to get through this day is to practise my new skills, faithfully. They’re not theoretical – they’re about survival.
So. Let’s see. What have I learned? Don’t get overwhelmed. Don’t think about everything that needs doing. Just do the thing that’s right in front of me, at the farm pace that means you move slowly and inevitably towards something. Not rushing, just moving like water, calmly and inevitably. One thing at a time. I can do that. Now, I’ll just make myself a cup of tea….
27 March 2012
Another absolutely stunning day. Sunny, bright and warm. The weather is conspiring, for once, to get us through.
Rich and I had a horrendous time this morning, trying to get our deliveries ready for the courier to pick up. My computer didn’t want to print out the FedEx labels properly, so I spent the whole day yesterday grinding my teeth and speaking to the IT guy at FedEx, trying to make it all work.
In the process, I downloaded three different browsers and two versions of Adobe Acrobat, and now my computer has gone into a sulk and completely refuses to have anything to do with the printer. Grrrr.
Secrets from Chuckling Goat Page 13