Lambs!

The kitchen patio view of Whiteface is gone ‘til next winter. The maples and the birches and the poplars and the pines have conspired a wall of green – an occasional explosion of pin cherry flower white blows their cover – on the edge of the pastures. The window glass fills with the webs of orb weavers. The webs collect pollen and leaves and other knick-knacks the weavers decorate their homes with. Thoreau wrote of the swamp coming right up to his back door and I couldn't regale of anything greater for the soul. All I can see of our resident 4,000-footer is the slash of pink the dusk spits above its wooded summit. If I climb to my second floor bathroom and peek through the screen, I might see the rocky slide from which its name comes. I’ll take the wall of green, the early dark of dusk in the pastures. The dusk creates a quiet room. We sleep early in the Bearcamp Valley. The onions and peas look good in their freshly planted beds. I tuck them in with a garden hose spray set to Shower.

The pastures are knee-high with grass and celandine and docks. The pasture begs to be eaten. If you don’t graze, you don’t know the magic of grazing. Mower blades can’t work the magic that ruminant teeth and ruminant butts can. The bumper sticker on my rider mower says “Make America Graze Again.” I hire a few laborers: the lambs get a ride from Alexandria. I tidy up my stalls and set up the fencing. Shawn hands me the first lamb from a dog crate in the bed of his truck. I carry it like a puppy to the barn. I look behind me and he holds a lamb by its legs – his father Damon does the same with the third. We make a strange parade and I’m laughing. Seconds later, three bleating Katahdin wethers from Clay Brook Farm are chewing hay and sitting pretty chill in their new stall. Damon Huckins – an experienced farmer – notes with his quiet Yankee subtlety, “You got some good grass here.” I take a little pride in that comment. But then I point out the sections that aren’t so great – that ravine between pastures that still spits out brambles and Hawthorns. The whole thing is a tick nightmare that Goober the Guinea Hen can’t solve on her own. Meh, it’s a work in progress. Typical Yankee, I am. At least I'm not telling you what I paid for the lambs -- the classic Yankee trope: what did it cost?

Me and the lambs have ourselves a dusky dinner date. I sit with them for an hour and attempt to convince them the sweet feed in my hand is delicious. Two small brown lambs and a big white boy stand in the corner and act like I don’t exist. I toss the feed in a bucket and back off. I have driven all the way to Plymouth and I have parked in front of Rand’s Hardware, only to find out they have a parking lot out back. I have carried a 50 lb. bag of feed out the back door and up a hill to the main street of Plymouth. Pretty college girls have walked by with ice cream and lattes and beautiful dreams of some beautiful future – and here I have lugged my bag of sweet feed a quarter mile from the back of the Rand’s Hardware to my sad, lonely Tacoma sighing and swearing and sweating. I have considered getting some ice cream, myself, after that ruck.

Ike

Once me and the lambs figure each other out, the acres and acres of grass, forbs, and green, green growies will turn into poems and farm songs – and chops and leg roasts. And whatever other by-products lambs might produce – blog posts and tears. The sweet smell of lanolin on my hands for the first time in a year almost brings tears. And it brings this blog post straight to you. Lanolin is a smell humans have forgotten. We used to know it. There are little Katahdin hairs all over me. I’m used to wool sheep – these hair sheep are a fun to pet and scratch and treat like little doggoes. But they are not pets.

These boys will love me before long. I keep calling them girls, as I’m used to having ewes. I flip a baby lamb and observe his little testicle still tied off, dolloped with blue antiseptic goop. The farmers who bred him missed a testicle. They were glad they caught it at the last minute. This is the kind of stuff farmers have to think about – sheep testicles and whether (wether: a male sheep who has been castrated) they are tied off or not. His little lamb fluff head sorta resembles a crew cut and I think of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. I nickname him Ike. Before sunset, he’s eating out of my hand. He’s the littlest lamb and he is clearly their leader.

I decide the big white boy – twice the size of his little friends – is named Big Mike. He’s shy and dumb. He tries to hop the gate at my first advance with the sweet feed – as if he were a goat. Lambs are all legs and are all dumb. The other brown lamb I impulsively name Nike. He seems to go along with the vibe, as if his motto is “just do it.” I keep thinking about how we describe people as “sheepish” – they don’t think too hard and they just go with the standard opinion that the mainstream news channel tells them to go with. But we don’t describe sheep as “sheepish.” Nike is the embodiment of sheepish. He’s a sheep. He looks good, he's got style. He must shop at the outlet stores up there in NoCo. Dumb. Done. Named. Names come naturally around here.

The lambs are all destined to be taken out come November. By bullet, by knife. Ike, Big Mike, and Nike shall graze the Something Wilds and do good work with this land. I can’t be any happier after watching and listening to them eat grass. My favorite sound: the chomp of grass by a ruminant. Tonight, I catch the lambs cuddled by the gate and watching the dusk. I imagine Ike telling them, “We’re going to be happy here, boys.” They chew and relax. There's an ease in these pastures I haven't felt in forever.

When I shake the sweet feed and open the gate, they follow me right into the pen. I flip them over one at a time and scratch their chins, I check them for ticks. Ike wins, with two. I drop the ticks into a jar of soapy water and close the lid. I find five ticks in the bathroom after a shower – crawling on the floors and walls, why not? Have some Stephen King nightmares, Rich. Who knows what the dogs bring in….

Big Mike, Ike, Nike

We’re going to grow together, me and these sweet lanolin-scented boys. We’ll write poetry together. And when the sun sets a little lower; when the bugs are gone; when the frost knocks that grass back…. I’m going to wake up one morning and sigh. I’ll see Whiteface again through the trees. Those old orb weavers will look tired and I’ll give them little taps with my finger and thank them for their work keeping the bugs down. The onion leaves will be brown and dry and ready for curing. These lambs will look at me through the electric netting – Where we grazin’ tomorrow, boss? I’ll shake my head. I’ll sharpen my knife, load my gun, check the rope in my snatch block. I’ll review my notes and that chest freezer will get topped off with ziploc bags full of meat. The walrus and carpenter may have cried, but they ate every one....

And next year, I’ll chat up my friends at Clay Brook Farm – hey, got any extra lambs this year?

And I'll write new poems and come up with new dumb names for baby lambs that rhyme.