Okay,so I am about to go postal - or should I say Va. Tech? Bad joke...I know, shame on me. I can bearly stand to watch the news but at the same time I am riveted. I don't get back in the trailer until nine-thirty or so but the news is just repeated over and over. I think about my kids and what if...The NY Times says they recently did a study on mass murders and found that most of them are carried out by educated white men, only a third were Asian men, I forget the rest. But no women! Hmmmmm...food for thought? What do we do when the going gets really rough? We DEAL WITH IT!!!!!!!!! I found myself having what we call in psychology "approach avoidance." I wanted to go in the barn and couldn't. I stalled, did the bottles, checked the email, played with the kittens, while the lambs were screaming in the barn. They heard me and wanted their bottles. I needed to check on Moira and Murphy Brown, and Velvet, and the pregnant sheep and goats...but couldn't go in. I stood at the door, my heart started pounding. Okay, do your breathing...Thor came home dragging sections of a deer and wanted back in the barn. I rounded up the other dogs and locked them in the trailer. Then I dared go in. Matt says to feed the bottle lambs at the gate. That requires me to stand in the pool of muddy water. Tonya always manages to get through the gate and gets muddy. Little Bridie gets trampled into the mud by the other bigger lambs. He called this morning and as usual, his seat belt bell was ringing and I know he had a cigar in his mouth. When he hears something he doesn't know how to answer he just acts like he can't hear me and says, what? what? It makes me crazy? All this can be solved by management. My management stinks right now. If I had built my ram pen when I first got here I could have controlled the breeding instead of waves of births, giving me no time to fall back and regroup. I finally built one myself when Matt was laid up in the trailer with a bad back. Waiting months for him to do it was a big mistake. I got Randy to help me catch them...thank God for Randy. He has no fear of being crippled or maimed and is quite the sheep wrangler. That cut down on the ketosis issue due to big fat wethers stealing feed from the ewes. It also gave me a date after which there would be no more births. That would be June l!!! Oh, My God!!! The shearer found three more wethers that Randy and I missed. Matt hates wrangling sheep now. I just have to face the fact that Matt is getting old and is no longer ten feet tall and bullet proof, like he used to tell me. I found him a deep tissue masseusse from a BOCE friend, but he doesn't have time to go, with working in NJ. Okay, so I got all the bottle babies fed, dealt with the white dogs, wrestling Finn into a pen, getting Thor chained up, and letting Knut go. I only allow once loose at a time, that way they don't decide to tour the county together and get themselves shot. Finn is an escape artist and I had to wire the pen shut. Forgot his water, had to take it all apart and do it over. No new babies last night but I found one skinny yearling ewe with something swimming in her belly...she's pregnant! Legolas got her before I pulled him! Can't use him again next year because she is his daughter. I bought a ram from Kathy Davidson and with moving I never had time to pick him up! I am cutting down on grain for the others - a minimum bulk delivery is over $700 now and I can't spend more than a week's pay for a delivery. Moira's medicine I picked up yesterday was over a hundred dollars. How do people do it? I just can't do the three 50 pound sacks a day anymore. I used to sling them over my shoulder like nothing. Now it hurts. Okay, what to do, I know, I will put her in a jug and feed her seperately. But the other will go crazy. They have already destroyed my good wheel barrow. I am using an old mason wheel barrow, and I need something to scrape the mud into. I put down hay to soak up the water, but it turned to mud. Okay, take deep breaths, go get a plastic garbage can and get to work. And get your butt to Lowes to buy a short hose with a nozzle on the end to reach over the entry way and avoid spilling water there. Use my head, keep calm, and get busy. Maybe we will all survive another day on the farm.
1 comment:
Hi Maggie - what a morning, huh? Okay, are chores over for a moment? Take a little time to sit with a cup of hot something good and get your head on straight. Overwhelmed is hard when it happens regularly. Make a plan of what needs to be done to make life more organized and to stop the ovewhelmed feelings. Tighten up the fences? Make some wire holders for those milk bottles? Change the place where you feed so you're not standing in freezing water? Matt says, but Matt may not realize that when you feed at the gate, you train the whole crowd to rush the gate (and they won't be little guys very long), not to mention creating a huge hole that collects water right there...take some time today to rethink your strategy. Think also about when you might be able to sell off some of your boys and substandard girl lambs.
BREATHE, Maggie. BREATHE.
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