The Improbable Shepherd

by Sylvia Jorrin

  The other day I received a phone call from my daughter. Someone had tried to contact me through email. She sent the woman my phone number. Apparently, the woman had met me last year at a fair. Since it is three years since I attended a fair I had reservations about giving my number but gave my permission. She called and said she had bought my book but hadn’t read it until a few days earlier. She seemed to have liked it, at least enough to drive up from Margaretville to see where it all happened. Can she pay a real visit? I agreed. For April. My kitchen is bespeckled with lambs, at least today, and I’ve decided to not heat the living room for a while. If l can get a phone to work in the kitchen, I’ll live in a one-room cabin. It can be nice in there. It’s almost nice now. But not nice enough for a stranger and her husband. She then placed an order with me for some books. A nice order. A very pleasant surprise. Hence dishes. My friend Valerie and I have agreed that we have accumulated much of the worldly goods we each need or want at this stage of our lives. I am the older by four years, but we both have been accumulating for a respectable number of years now. I still buy all linen napkins in the Salvation Army and tablecloths and white cotton sheets. However, were either of us to become affluent, the one thing she or I would buy would be dishes. There were some most unusual ones in Stephen’s Antiques the other day. Blue and white. Nice ones. And so, while I’m too cheap to buy some much needed slippers, $12 is too much to spend on something I don’t even like. I decided the book money was “mine,” not the farm’s, not the house’s, not toward hay, but mine to use to delight the soul and lift the heart. I bought the most beautiful teapot I’ve ever seen. It was even more interesting to me after I got it home and examined it more closely. The design on it is a picture that is carried completely around it. It is of the sea, or probably the bay. All waves in blue with a tiny bit of shore line covered in trees. On the sea are several canoes with Indians, a large ship, some skiffs with Pilgrims sailing toward the coves. It is absolutely enchanting. And so this is a story about almost everything. But most of all about the rich fullness of the life here. Lambs, frozen water pumps, dogs, Honeybell oranges, dishes, and friends.

  THE NEWEST LAMB

  I MADE A Boston brown bread this afternoon, inspired by an attempt at making baked beans. My beans, of late, have lacked what I call depth of flavor. Not enough molasses, perhaps. The bread was perfect. It sliced beautifully and butter simply melted through its finely crumbled texture. I haven’t been able to find rye flour here anymore and used, instead, some buckwheat flour as a substitute. The bread made me feel better somehow, at least better than I have been feeling of late. It took the edge off of the sadness that has plagued me.

  The newest addition to the little flock of bottle lambs is now standing for the first time here in the house. She just sounded her first little blatt. A long-legged thing, and rangy. Another blatt. Do I pick her up and tell her I am her ma ma ma now, or do I let her walk around a bit, getting her legs used to a wooden floor rather than the texture of the barn floor? She just nuzzled some papers I stored in a bucket to use to encourage a fire in the wood stove. Did she nuzzle hay during her three-day stay in the barn? Perhaps. Her mother had a perfect and full udder when she first freshened. A large, mostly East Friesian ewe. But may have developed a hard bag in the intervening days. Therefore, not enough milk. The lamb was brought into the house in the limp-as-a-dishrag position, tube fed, and packed snugly into a smallish wooden box with one of my acrylic hand-knit barn sweaters, no time to get some old fleeces from the barn, and a gallon jug of hot water. She wasn’t responsive enough, but now, six hours later, has responded to the tube feeding, the corn syrup, the B-complex injection and the antibiotic. I wouldn’t call her lively, but she did lie down on the sweater and get up again on her own. She’ll live.

  A day or two later. The newest bottle lamb had gone under the kitchen table, pushing on my knee to encourage me to give her her bottle. I’ve just achieved a rare experience, a perfectly hot cup of tea thanks to the most lovely gift of a blue bee teacup, and am reluctant to leave it untested in order to heat the lamb’s bottle. She hasn’t been named as yet as I was uncertain that she’d live. She shall live, however, and shall grow into being a very large sheep when an adult, long legged. Fly-away ears, with a classic East Friesian head and face. A couple of new names have turned up of late. Two begin with the letter C, which is reserved, on this farm at least, for goats. One of them is Calliandra. Is that where the local appreciation of the name Callie or Kyle comes from? Calliandra does seem to suit this little sheep. Perhaps. It is possible to have two Calliandras. One a goat and one a sheep. That hasn’t been done here, but I can always choose to change my systems, can’t I? After all, it is my farm.

  The days are longer. It seems as if the weather should already break, and spring should appear with a suddenness, immediately. It won’t. March brings with it a threat of snows, the snows we have not experienced this winter. Usually around the first day of spring, which sometimes is on my son’s birthday, there is a blizzard of sorts. I expect it this year as well. I’m at the edge of being out of firewood. A bit scary, that. There is slab to be cut, about two weeks worth; however, it is expected to burn fast, if I can get it cut. I’ve used more electric heat this year than I ever have. The 40°F temperatures in the kitchen at seven in the morning does not encourage me to come downstairs. Not that the room I sleep in is much warmer; however, by morning the four wool blankets and one synthetic down comforter that I sleep under have begun to do their expected thing, and I become reluctant to climb out of the bed and have my feet hit the very cold floor.

  A small amount of cash has come in of late, unexpectedly. This cash is actually mine. From work that I have done, not for the house or for the farm, and I intend to use it to replace some money I had saved in order to buy some pear trees from Saint Lawrence Nurseries. Last year I placed the order too late. This year I’ll place it in a day or two. Four trees. The best place for them visually is the worst place for them for their safety. It is where the beavers have relocated. Inside a riparian buffer zone that was denuded of the rugosa roses and crab apple trees planted there a number of years ago. The spot cries out to be replanted, however: how to do it without jeopardizing the new plantation? Perhaps there may be a solution. Were I to plant the pear trees outside of the fence and make a sheep-proof fence in front of them, then visually they will satisfy the space and yet, in all likelihood, escape both beavers and sheep. The beavers appear to have returned once again, although I haven’t been to the brook of late to check their attempted progress. The edge of their embankment is still visible from the barn window. The crab apple plantation looked good last year for the first time. The rugosas have been disappointing but perhaps the manure spread last spring and an addition of rose fertilizer may bring them back.

  A new bottle lamb entered my life a couple of hours ago. She was found stretched out in the “I’m dead” position in the barn yard. When she was brought in she did take an ounce or two from a bottle, but tube feeding her seemed safer and so I did. She was 96°F when she came in. Is 96.8°F now and looks promising. My yearlings are lambing and aren’t quite certain what to do with the little thing that caused them pain. Sometimes they are outstanding mothers and sometimes not. This latest addition clearly hadn’t even been nursed or cleaned off. She passed the black tarry stuff shortly after she had been tube fed. She is tidily ensconced in the lamb box with her half sister. The kitchen hasn’t achieved 60°F as yet, but they are both warmed by milk jugs filled with hot water.

  I am waiting for a person to arrive from New Hampshire to pick up the three lambs she bought from me to begin her flock. A long-held dream of hers. Today I am giving someone else the privilege of living her dream. She wants a Friesian-Dorset flock, and has patiently waited for this moment, waited for the “right” lambs to be born here and be ready to go since last autumn.

  I remember the arrival of the first sheep here and how I sat every morning in the barn watching them for the first few weeks. It
was the house that was my dream initially. I never anticipated becoming involved with animals of any kind. After all, I never was an animal person. But here we all are. The house evolved, crashed a few times, and evolved some more. Thank goodness the Greenleafs built it so well. It never would have survived me were that not so.

  I think about the woman whose voice I have been hearing over the telephone but whom I have never met. The drive from New Hampshire is a long one. She got directions online which are suspect to me. When she read them back to me it was all about taking back roads from I-88. I don’t trust online directions and don’t like back roads for a stranger to the area. Too easy to get lost. She is an hour late already and my plan to take her to lunch has been put aside. It is, for me, a privilege as well, to be starting the foundation stock of her dream.

  The house is silent except for the sputter and crackle of the wood stove. It is a rare moment for me to be able to sit for a few moments in quiet. I hadn’t had a kitchen for several years and it still feels strange to be sitting at a table in what has sometimes been a one-room cabin, for me. And I am ever more unaccustomed to a moment of repose. I chose my finest lambs for her. And she is nearly here.

  THE KITCHEN FARM

  THERE WERE TO be no lambs in the kitchen once more this year. I was resolute in my decision. Two bottle lambs are in the barn proper, the third is now living the good life in New Hampshire, and three are in a pen in the carriage house. So what is this fairly unappealing, gangly creature doing chasing Peabody, the cat, around this room? That they are fond of each other is without question. Peabody rubbed her back under the lamb’s chin and then sat down. The lamb pawed the cat to get up or at least to move to a more likely position for her to curl up against. Their favorite place is next to the wood stove which is in front of the electric heater, only to sit on my pink bathrobe, which will, therefore, soon be in need of two runs in the washer at the Laundromat and, to be certain, hasn’t been worn by me for quite some time. Peabody moved a moment after the lamb made herself comfortable and snuggled next to her. She now has moved to the window sill. The lamb has followed and nuzzles the cat in a seeming attempt to get her down. She then has stretched her head to be able to look out of the window. Peabody does not move. Enough of the lamb for the moment, she appears to be saying. The lamb does not give up. She has not ever been quite alright. She takes a bottle more easily of late, but only four or five ounces at a time. She calls for it when she is hungry. By now she should be on three 10-ounce feedings a day but rather is on five or six feedings of four or five ounces a day, sometimes one at two A.M. That still doesn’t justify her living in the house when I am bottling lambs in two other places. The barn and the carriage house. There was a moment when there had been no lambs in the kitchen. A brief moment. And I let the dogs in instead. However, Glencora MacCluskie hates lambs passionately and so she and Nelly were banished once more when this new one arrived. There was something pleasantly still in that animal-free moment. A sense of freedom that I rarely experience. And yet, I chose to keep Caliandra inside. The better for her sake although she is not becoming socialized with sheep, only with the cat. And me. And I her.

  I loved it when the six-bottle lambs had begun their dance around the kitchen, leaping, running, jumping, but it was at that moment I knew they had to leave. It was also at that moment that a large lamb, with a broken leg and multiple fractures arrived. He sported, in the fullness of time, a formidable cast. No practical way could be found to return him to his mother. So, in addition to a $115 vet bill, he will cost me the better part of a bag of milk replacer at $65 a bag. The cost of feeding his mother and 1/70th of the cost of feeding his father, and will not earn what he would have had he not suffered a broken leg. In other words, some of the lambs had to stay in to keep him company. When he was ready to go out, the others left, too. And now reenter Caliandra. Oh well, it continues to be my choice. I just can’t let her suffer her chances in the barn or the carriage house with the bigger bottle lambs. At least not yet. I was raised by an overprotective mother. It shows.

  A few days later. The lamb continues to improve, whatever that means. She drinks quite nicely from a bottle. And yet, she is still indoors with me. And the cat. Why? One could say I love her, but I don’t think I do. She isn’t even a smidgeon like the lambs I have loved. I like the look of the curly fleeced ones. Boxy. A little square in shape, with, however, the classic elegant Friesian head and shiny hair on their faces and legs. She has the head. The legs. The shiny white hair of a Steiff toy. But her fleece is very close to the body, flat, grey (not only from the wood ash in my kitchen, she came that way, and not particularly appealing). Her back has the hunched over look of a motherless, hungry lamb. Her legs have stretched out of proportion to her back. She only looks good when she is running. Her ears are predicting her size as an adult. She definitely prefers the proximity of the cat. And yet, my glance is always upon her.

  I don’t understand the nature of love. What it means and what it does. When this lamb didn’t get up one morning for her breakfast, I gave her some aspirin and decided to put her to bed for the day. She became packed in towels and gallon jugs of hot water which were periodically refilled. She fell asleep. I didn’t wake her. After about seven hours she climbed out of the box. Asked for her bottle and chased the cat. Now I have a new “save the lamb” technique. Put it to bed. But is this love? I hear tell rather often that I love my animals. I don’t know what that means, exactly. Is it because I just got up to throw a cut-up sweater over her because the kitchen temperature is dropping? I don’t know. What I do know is I really don’t want to let go of her. Not yet.

  I’ve been reading some of Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels over the past few nights and polished shoes are mentioned several times. Were the house not so insistently cold, I’d go up to the summer bedroom and dig out the special polishing kit for my Zimbabwe-made hiking shoes. Now. (I’ve been accused of frequently jumping from one thing to another and would agree at the moment were I not freezing in this kitchen with the grossly inadequate electric heater on full blast, and still another log not wanting to catch in the wood stove knowing the summer bedroom temperature is below 30°F.)

  My mind now requests “finished units.” That room is now perfect. For seemingly forever I indulged in “Grand Miscellany,” going from one thing to another, not weaving the threads of a sweater in after finishing the knitting of it, but wearing it anyway. The theory was to not have anything “too bad” and making small progress on all fronts.

  When I was nine and had some ombre wool brought to the house (where I spent most winters sick in bed), I remember being given sets of questions and answers to fill out. I’d do the first three and then jump ahead to eight and nine, thinking it would be a sort of surprise and allow me to finish the homework that much sooner. I’ve done that ever since. But finished units have begun to appeal to me.

  My house has suffered terribly from neglect and poverty for the past few years. The farm of course, has taken priority, always. But my living quarters have been allowed to disintegrate before my eyes. I had taught myself to look at that which was increasingly unacceptable and turn away. Bad choice for the soul. But, at the time, I could conceive of no alternative. However, a chance event caused me to come to terms with the farmhouse dilemma. And I took some farm money to repair part of my house. The part, especially, that looked like my house had been in the London Blitz, which in a manner of thinking, it was. Shall I call the roofers the bombardiers? Ceilings, walls on the floor. Several. Not all. But primarily, both my once finished, completed living room and bathroom. The living room has now been repaired as far as I care to go. And is newly painted in two coats of my favorite shell pink. In the late afternoon light it is quite a different color. Deeper. Richer. Prettier. I’ve wanted to replace the old wall paper in the bathroom but the front bathroom looks so nice, and as the bathroom has the same light, I’ve decided to paint it the same color. Somehow it no longer seems so impossible to finish that room. All at
once. Perhaps the sudden sense of urgency that possesses me will make it happen. As Connie in Stephen’s Antiques said to me the other day, “What’s next?”