Life and Death

Life and death are very real, very close here on the farm. I am still getting used to that. Two weeks ago we had two lambs and were faltering badly in the local lamb marathon. Then we had twins. Our very first twins here on the farm. Adorable doesn’t even begin to describe them. You can see their picture below. And they aren’t afraid of me – yet. I am sure that Dad will teach them caution soon enough but for now they caper gladly toward me while their mum stands stoically and watch.

I am entranced with them. I watch them for hours every day. I love to see them each nursing from a different side of the ewe, tails wagging fiercely and mum continuing to graze. And the older two black lambs grow bigger and more independent every day. They jump, they cavort, they occasionally nurse but more and more their appetites are stimulated by grass.

One afternoon as I was coming back from checking the steers (all present and accounted for) I heard this bleating from our pasture. I watched the white ewe call for her black lamb. She wandered all over the paddock. She repeatedly entered the horse stalls, her plaintive bleats echoing through the rafters.

I thought perhaps the lamb had wandered into the next paddock. The other sheep were slow to move into the forest paddock but I had left the gate open and knew that sooner or later they would become more adventurous and enter. Perhaps the black lamb had led the way and mum didn’t realize it. So I donned my boots (long, long grass in that paddock) and set off to find Livingston. I walked every inch of the forest paddock. No lamb. I then widened my search to the barn paddock where the flock were grazing. No lamb. Finally I entered the horse stalls and found Livingston.

He was lying between two bales of hay and looked asleep but had died. There was a white bubble around his nostrils. From this I surmised that he had been inadvertently smothered, probably by his mother when she rolled over on him during the night.

He had grown so big that I had to drag him out. I couldn’t carry him, or perhaps I didn’t want to. He had been so cute and cuddly and everything a lamb should be. It made me very sad to see him dead. I understand livestock death in the abstract but for some reason it really hurts my heart when I see the reality.

Anyway, I reported to command central for instructions. Dan said that he couldn’t get up to the farm for several days so I would have to bury Livingston. All right but where? It has rained for a month solid and I walk through swamp land with every step. Not ideal for digging. We settle on a spot and I get the wheelbarrow and wrestle the lamb in for his final ride.

The hole digging was as hard as I had imagined but it got done and I did my best for the lamb. But his mother’s cries continued all day and into the night and I couldn’t sleep. I feel as if I am growing more aware of the natural world around me as I grow older rather than cocooning as so many pundits say we do as we approach our “declining” years. The big 70 is approaching and I feel as if I know less rather than more now.