Sheepish

by Catherine Friend

  “No, it’s—”

  “Mrs. Muffin!”

  Yes, well, I guess so. The name sticks.

  Farming has been a wild ride for Mrs. Muffin. Goats have kicked buckets of warm milk all over me. I’ve been glared at by angry llamas. I’ve been playfully chased by 800-pound steers and then thoroughly licked by those same steers after they cornered me. I’ve even been attacked by a duck, which is humiliating to admit. I don’t know which hurt more—the duck clamped onto my pudgy knee or the knowledge that a duck could even do such a thing. Ducks, people. What kind of a world is this?

  But the sheep, ah, the sheep. After caring for them so many years, I fear I might have fallen under their spell. I like spending time with them. I like patting their heads and scratching behind their ears. I like nuzzling their babies against my neck. I like the challenge of convincing 150 animals to move in the same direction.

  Unfortunately, I find it extremely hard to combine a writing life and a farming life. As author and farmer E. B. White wrote, “I have drifted farther and farther from my muse, closer and closer to my post-hole digger.” I know how he felt. Once we started farming, my muse took one look at my dirt-stained hands and manureencrusted boots, and she delicately and oh-so-politely explained she had an engagement elsewhere. I believe she flitted off to England. (J. K. Rowling, I’d like my muse back. Thanks.)

  After overdosing our sheep and blowing up the tractor engine and planting the grapevines upside down, I sit down one evening at my computer and type How Not to Farm. Because we are making every mistake in the book, I might as well write that book. I compose a little piece about my idiotic vineyard experience and bring it to my writing group. They laugh, which is a tactical error because I then bring another little piece, and another. After a few more meetings, my friend Jane says I’m writing a memoir. I disagree, insisting that I’m only writing little pieces.

  Museless, I keep writing. Two years and 300 pages later, I have written what turns out to be—why is Jane always right?—a memoir. I’ve even given it a catchy title: “Searching for Placenta by Moonlight,” based on Melissa’s ability to walk through the pasture in the dark and find the placenta for a specific birth that took place that day. She knows exactly what she’s doing out here. I don’t.

  Despite this, the act of writing about farming makes me aware of how rare, and how amazing, a life it is. As shepherds, Melissa and I lead the flock. We care for the sheep, we protect them. We are responsible for their health and well-being. They are our business, and so much more. People coyly refer to prostitution as the “oldest profession,” but sheepherding goes back even further. When we sit in our pasture watching our sheep, Melissa and I are doing the same thing humans have done for 10,000 years. Stop and think of that. Ten thousand years.

  Sheep have been around since before literature, so they’ve been written about from the beginning—Roman writings, nursery rhymes, bad poetry. Sheep are the stars of the Bible, showing up more than 500 times, and they’re the first animal named in Genesis. David likened fleece to snow, and Solomon describes his mistress’s teeth as “resembling a flock of sheep just come up from the washing.” How many pick-up lines do you know that involve sheep? (Appropriate pick-up lines, please.)

  Sheep show up everywhere in our language: lost sheep, black sheep, good shepherd, fleeced, pull the wool over someone’s eyes, led like sheep to the slaughter, spinning a yarn, flocking together, gentle as a lamb, wolf in sheep’s clothing, two shakes of a lamb’s tail, dyed in the wool, golden fleece, muttonchops, and the leg-o’mutton sail are just a few examples.

  Woolgathering is another one. It isn’t used much anymore, but it means to daydream. Yet the word initially meant exactly what it says: to gather wool. In medieval Europe, the wealthy land barons owned both the land and the sheep, but the lower classes were allowed to pick up bits of wool that had snagged on bushes, and spin them up into clothing for their families. Women walked the paths sheep traditionally took, gathering up the tufts. Wild Fiber magazine reported that woolgathering was very social, and the women would “frequently stop at farms along the way and perform odd jobs in exchange for food and shelter.” Up to four pounds of wool could be gathered from the hedgerow in a single day, and that day began at 4:00 AM. It’s hard to understand how a word for lazy daydreaming came from such hard work, but that’s the English language for you.

  Not only has the use of “woolgathering” almost disappeared in the twenty-first century, but sheep seem to be fading away as well, like photos left too long in the sun. Because the number of sheep in America has fallen 90 percent in the last ninety years, so too has the number of sheep aficionados. But I know they still exist. The shepherds in my sheep producers’ group don’t talk about how they feel about sheep, so I must look elsewhere. Surely there are other shepherds who have described their love of sheep, so I google “Why I love sheep.” Unfortunately, the online people who love sheep have something entirely different in mind, since the first link is for a plastic inflatable, anatomically correct “love sheep” with garter belt and black mesh stockings.

  Well. Okay, then. Not exactly what I’d been looking for.

  It seems weird, in a world of poverty and environmental degradation and political unrest, to focus so intently on sheep, yet as Anne-Sophie Swetchine wrote, “To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.”

  Must you own sheep to be sheepish? I suspect that sheep ownership is not required for unbridled sheepishness. We can all love sheep, of course in an entirely healthy and platonic and non-gross sort of way. To be sheepish in an urban setting, all you need is a copy of Sheep in a Jeep, a Lamb Chop puppet, and a few wool sweaters. Possessing a wool coat and wool socks bumps you up to the Über-Sheepish class.

  To be sheepish in a rural setting, all of the above tools are a fine start, but you should also acquire these five items:1. Shepherd

  2. Sheep

  3. A shearer to shear the sheep

  4. A market for the wool and meat

  5. Lambs

  I’ve somehow woven these elements into a life, but truth be told, I’m not really sure it’s the life for me. Hence, a word of caution: The sheepishness experienced after being zapped by an electric fence is temporary. The other sort—of or belonging to sheep, loving them in a healthy and platonic and non-gross sort of way—can be a more permanent condition.

  No Snowballs on This Farm

  Only four of my sheep have names. Paula is the first ewe we bought, and I named her after my wife ... I also named both rams. But my fa- vorite ewe actually has no name. She is called No. 57.

  —JON KATZ

  Melissa and I are obviously the shepherds. So the next item required for a sheepish life is sheep. Before we even buy the sheep, however, Melissa and I make a pact. Nicknames for the farmers are okay, but we will not name our animals. We are determined to show people we are not spending all this money on fifty woolly pets. We will not be those shepherds who bring baby lambs into the house, strap on disposable diapers, and let them scamper around like puppies.

  We will not be those shepherds who name every single sheep in their flock, names like Fluffy and Snowball and Freckles. We are professionals, not hobbyists. Any sheep that learns how to jump the fences, we will sell. Any sheep that doesn’t produce twins year after year, we will sell. Any sheep that lacks good mothering skills and refuses to feed her lambs, we will sell. We will be a real farm, not a health spa for pampered sheep.

  Bad-ass farmers. Hard core farmers. Real farmers.

  Unfortunately, the first animals we bring home are already named, goats Merlin and Lancelot. We purchase two more goats, these named Ambrosia and Taffy. But we won’t name the sheep.

  We must name the land, however, since there are no street signs, just sky, soil, and water. If Melissa wants me to help her, I need to know where she is. “Over the hill, past the trees, down the little slope” could be anywhere on the farm. We end up with the cleverly named North Pasture, East Pasture, West Past
ure, as well as a few quirkier names, like The Bowl, The T, Madonna Point, The Sacrifice Lot (not what you’d think), and Nacho Hill. But we won’t name the sheep.

  We finally bring home fifty ewe lambs, each about seven months old, each with a numbered tag in her ear. Those numbers will be their “names”: 25, 39, 66. No exceptions. But we also bring two little rams home. As a writer, I own several books of baby names, and before I know it Melissa is poring over the books, and within a few days the rams are Otis and Rudy. Later rams become Andy, Monte, Duncan, Perfect Tommy, Jeffrey, and Erik. So now our rule is: We won’t name the female sheep.

  We purchase llamas to protect our sheep from the coyotes howling in the creek valley all night long, and of course we name each one. First comes Moche, who sadly dies after only two years with us, then the Dynamic Duo: Chachi and Zipper.

  A few years later, our friend Mary D. attends the local livestock auction to sell some of her goats, and Melissa accompanies her. Farmers love to watch livestock auctions. Of course I’m always a little nervous when Melissa attends the auction, for there is no telling what she might bring home, but Mary and Melissa return around noon, and all seems well. I feed them lunch. We laugh, we talk, and then Mary must leave.

  As she escorts Mary to the door, Melissa gives me a funny look. “Um, I had to borrow $5 from Mary. Do you have enough that I could pay her back?”

  I dig into my wallet. “What’d you buy with the $5?”

  Mary senses danger. “I have to go home,” she says.

  “Don’t leave until I tell her,” Melissa cries.

  “Tell me what?” I say sharply, which seems to be happening more lately. “Candy bars?”

  “Nope.”

  “Breakfast?”

  “Nope.”

  Alarm bells clang in my head. The only things you can buy at the livestock market are candy bars, breakfast, and animals.

  I jam my fists on my hips. “Goat or sheep?”

  “Llama.”

  Mary leaves in a big hurry and I stomp up to the barn.

  Because the crowd at the auction had been small and not that interested in buying, no one bid when a tall, good-looking llama came up for sale.

  “$25?” asked the auctioneer. “$20? $15? $10? Do I hear $5?”

  Melissa couldn’t believe it. A healthy llama and no one wanted him? If she had asked me, I would have said, “The last thing we need on this farm is another llama. We already have two.”

  She didn’t ask me, of course, so instead she borrowed the money from Mary and bought the llama. Someone from the auction trailered the llama to the farm. Melissa and Mary installed the animal in the barn, then came in for lunch without breathing a word of the farm’s new resident.

  This llama is marked like a pinto pony, white with lots of brown spots. White rings circle both eyes so he looks as if he’s wearing goggles. It makes me chuckle.

  A llama for $5. Even I can appreciate the value of a good bargain, so household harmony is maintained, especially when I demand naming rights. This is how Tucker comes to live on the farm.

  We stick by our “no naming the female sheep” rule. Then Melissa buys two Muscovy ducks, big waddling things that don’t quack but sort of whistle in a nonthreatening way. The female proves to be a great mother, so she becomes Mama Duck. The male struts around imperiously waiting for Mama Duck to walk by so he can have sex. I want to name him Oversexed Asshole, but Melissa, being more generous than I am, dubs him Mr. Duck.

  I’m having my own struggles with names, since I’ve realized something about the title of my manuscript about our early farming disasters. “Searching for Placenta by Moonlight” is a terrible title. Because lambing, the time when ewes give birth to their lambs, is difficult for me and because it is the direct result of two sheep engaging in intercourse, I now change the title to “Sheep Sex and Other Natural Disasters.” Perfect.

  Sadly, while I’m distracted by naming my manuscript, Melissa has entered the Fun House Maze of Naming Animals and can’t find her way out. A baby duck Melissa hatches and raises becomes Ping. The next year there’s Ping II. Other ducks are Daphne, Helen, Veronica, and Chloe. The roosters over the years become Serge, Romeo, Sonny, Tony, Dante, and El Guapo. The hens are too numerous for names, but Melissa still knows each one.

  I recognize, of course, that not naming our ewes is our feeble attempt to keep our sheepishness in check. Should we begin naming our sheep Snowball or Fluffy, we’re goners. I’ve seen it happen to people made of stronger stuff, so our caution is warranted. We will stick by our guns. We are not naming the ewes in our flock. We are bad-ass farmers. Hard core farmers. Real farmers.

  Tough muffins.

  Getting Naked

  I think I could sing and shear a few sheep at the same time.

  —ROBERT PLANT

  Two shepherds. Fifty sheep. Next? A shearer. Unless the sheep are hair sheep that shed their fleece like dogs, the sheep will make wool, lots of it, without any effort at all. Therefore, the sheep must get naked. Their lambs will find the udders more easily with less wool in the way. The sheep will be more comfortable in the summer heat.

  Every year our shearer, Drew, shows up for our late March shearing day thirty minutes late, with a thermos full of Mountain Dew, a bottle of Advil, and a plug of tobacco in his cheek. “Did your mom bring cookies?” When I nod, he starts unloading his truck. Shearing can be a lonely job. Drew tells of shearing jobs where he drives onto the farm, the farmer points to the barn—“Sheep’er in there”—then disappears. Drew sets up his equipment by himself, catches a sheep, shears it, stuffs the fleece in the wool bag, sweeps off his shearing board (the piece of plywood he stands on), then catches another one. All day long, all alone.

  We, on the other hand, want our shearer to be happy, so we make Shearing Day a party. My mom brings Sloppy Joes, cheese and crackers, and her killer chocolate chip cookies. We have ten to fifteen people there. (Although one year Melissa kept inviting anyone she met, so we had over twenty-five and there was no room to move. That was bad.) We help Drew set up. We catch the sheep and roll them on their rumps to be shorn. We gather up the fleece and bag it.

  To get more fleece into the seven-foot-tall wool bag, someone needs to climb into the bag and stomp down the wool. The first bag is usually mine, but then my legs turn to noodles and I happily assign the second bag to someone else. One cool March Saturday a new acquaintance shows up. She stands waiting, trembling with excitement because she really wants to stomp wool. I look her up and down. She has a runner’s body, trim and lean. Instead of choosing her, I send someone else up into the bag, then hurry off to deal with another problem. My mom sees the whole thing. “Honey, I’m sorry but you don’t weigh enough to pack the wool down.” She hands the dejected woman a handful of cookies. “Here, these might help.”

  We sweep Drew’s shearing board. We laugh at his stories and tell a few of our own. Even on a gloomy day, the barn hums with voices, electric clippers, and bleating sheep. Shearing Day is our social event of the year—good friends, faithful family, contagious laughter, and naked sheep.

  Our ploy works because Drew keeps coming back, even though shearing on our farm has proven a bit dangerous for him. Other shepherds tease Drew about making sure his health insurance is all in order before coming to our farm.

  The first year, after a long day he stepped up onto the metal frame holding the wool bag, slipped, fell back, and hit his head on the frame of the feed room door. Then he just lay there. One woman immediately herded her kids out of the barn because she thought he was dead.

  He eventually rose, stubborn as ever, and refused to consider going to the emergency room. It took us thirty minutes to convince him that bleeding profusely from the head wasn’t normal. Melissa drove him to the clinic, and they waited hours but a doctor finally got around to closing up that hard head with over twenty stitches.

  Not every sheep enjoys being shorn, so now and then one might kick a bit. An article about shearing in The Shepherd said shearers need t
o be “one-part compassion and three-parts gristle.” Shearing a 200-pound animal without getting kicked in the groin is a challenge even for the most experienced shearers.

  One year, the first sheep Drew sheared was our big ram Monte. Monte disliked being touched by anyone other than a flirtatious ewe in heat, so he kicked Drew hard in the hand. Drew took an Advil, then kept shearing even though the hand swelled up and his fingers grew so stiff he could hardly bend them. I kept asking him if he was okay, if he wanted to stop, but he’d say, “No,” then pop some more Advil. He knew if he stopped, his hand would quit working so he sheared all fifty sheep. Then he finally went to the doctor a week later—to learn that Monte had broken his hand. Yet the guy keeps coming back, probably for my mom’s chocolate chip cookies.

  Technology may be replacing many jobs, but when it comes to sheep, a human shearer is still required. The Aussies tried automatic shearing machines in the late 1980s. The sheep was stretched out with its front and back legs tied, then the automatic clipper moved over its body. In over 1,000 tests very few sheep were injured, but it took a long time to shear one sheep. I found a video on YouTube but couldn’t bear to watch it because there are parts of a sheep’s body—both male and female—that shouldn’t accidentally be sheared off. Thankfully, the automated machine was abandoned as too slow.

  A more real threat to a shearing career is the declining number of sheep. In the 1940s, the United States was the fifth-largest producer of wool in the world, but now we produce less than 1 percent. There are 850 million sheep around the planet, so it’s not as if they’ll become extinct anytime soon, but still, the sheep is fading from view. Even in Australia, where sheep and wool are major industries, numbers have fallen from 200 million in the late twentieth century to just 50 million in 2010. The 2010 International Wool Conference was canceled due to lack of registrations. Sadly, as the number of sheep on the planet fall, more shearers quit because there’s nothing for them to shear.