Life and Death

I went out in the barn later than usual yesterday.  I took care of the dogs and cats who are anxiously waiting for my truck to pull in the driveway, and made myself a cup of tea.  I stood in the snow and took in the lovely bright blue sky and sunshine then went back inside to sew a bit.  Matt was staying late at work and I didn't have to make dinner for a while.  When he did come home and the evening meal was out of the way we made our way out to the barn and found "Old Mama,"  my 14 year old Grande Dame of the flock, stretched out with a dazed look on her face.   She drew her last breath as if she had been waiting for me to come out and do chores and now could say good bye.  The moment I had been dreading had come.  I was losing Lilly's mother, the ewe who came to me from Ohio as a grown sheep, when I still lived in New Jersey.  This wonderful girl was incredibly hardy from the beginning.  She gave birth to Lilly on Easter Sunday.  I hauled her and the others around from rental to rental before finally deciding I had to have a farm of my own and ventured north to the wilds of upstate New York.  It was all about the sheep.  I was tired of moving them, and me, around and wanted my own land, a permanent home.  I bought the best barn I could find that was still standing.  For the sheep.  Old Mama was very withered and bony, with ears that hung down instead of standing up.  I didn't shear her this year for fear she would freeze over the winter.  Imagine she made it through this far, almost all the way to another spring.  I'm so glad she had her beloved apple slices last night.  It was always Old Mama first, then Lilly, then the other old ladies, and then rotating back to Old Mama.  As we were standing by her we heard a little newborn cry.  Then again.  Nothing springs a shepherd to action like the cry of a little one in the bitter cold.  It was a tiny baby goat kid!  The timing could not have been better.  My heart went from aching over this sheep who had spanned my entire history as a shepherd, to leaping for joy that I had a baby this winter after all.  That little red buck who escaped from the back pen must have gotten his licks in.  Who knows what else will come now?   I caught him early enough in the ten degree cold to get a thick wool crocheted sweater on him.   Matt helped me catch the new, and wild, but hungry (always an aid in catching a goat) mother when she went for the hay we put down.  I had to trim around her udder and nurse out the very few drops I could squeeze out of the virginal teats.  I got a syringe barrel full and made the baby swallow it.  That's how I make sure it gets where it needs to go.  Love the way the thick gooey magical elixir makes them sleep, then bounce up with the energy necessary to nurse.  It took quite a bit of running back and forth to get my act together after not having played midwife since last October when Robert and Duvall were born the night before I left for Rhinebeck.  I tossed and turned last night wondering if I should have left them in the cold, did Mom drink enough of the warm molasses water I prepared to get her milk going?  Would he shake off the sweater which would surely mean freezing to death?  Would Mom decide she didn't want to be a mother and jump out of the pen?  I was wishing I had more panels to shore up the walls but all my extras were used to build the ill-fated hay feeders which are busted up pretty good now.  This space would have to do.  I was much relieved when I went out in the early morning and saw mom lying up against the newborn.  She jumped up when she saw me but stood by her baby and let him nurse.  She hunched over slightly when he latched on, as a new mother would, but stood quietly as he drank.  I put my hand under the sweater and he felt toasty warm.  God bless those sweaters.  No heat lamps needed.  My sweaters are better than lamps.  I petted Old Mama once more and closed her eyes.  I have no way to bury her with the ground frozen and no equipment.  She will go on the dead pile where her beautiful bones will go to feed the coyotes and other wildlife.  Sometimes I go up there to look at how the bones of my loved ones are scattered.  It's clear the bodies are dragged away from the dead pile and then consumed.  Now they are part of the land.   I'm going to get home ASAP and pray everything is alright.  It's a lament I've had for the 12 years or so that I've been a working shepherd.  I hate to leave them, and tell them I'm doing it for them, and try to forget about them all day long, but I never really do.