Country Grit: A Farmoir of Finding Purpose and Love

by Scottie Jones

  The trapper came by a few days later to reclaim his trap. He told me he had pulled all the traps from our road. He hadn’t realized people were walking with dogs in the area, and he noted, it wasn’t his intention to catch family pets. He was a genial man, nothing like the backwoods schizoid my mind had conjured. He was a second generation trapper paid by timber companies to thin the beaver population and curtail the loss of valuable trees. We can debate the merits of a national policy that allows the trapping of beaver in the twenty-first century, but it’s not fair to hold an individual trapper responsible for doing what he is legally entitled to do. He was just a guy making a living in the woods.

  So who has the right here? The lady walking her dogs, the guy trapping for a living, or the beaver just doing what beaver do? Each in our own way are looking for that balance between the ways of nature and the ways of mankind.

  LAMBING

  I was expecting lambs any day. The first hints of spring had warmed the earth, turning the grass a luxuriant shade of green and beckoning the lambs to come forth. As for my part, I had read everything I could on lambing. Again, I turned to Melissa, my Ag Extension agent, pestering her with lambing minutiae. I even graduated from the Extension’s lambing class with honors. I was prepared. So where were the lambs? I checked and rechecked the gestation charts. The weather was perfect. I was prepared. The time was right. It made no sense, unless those ewes were purposefully holding back out of pure sheep malevolence.

  Then it rained. A cold, drowning rain that went on for days, sliding the farm back into winter. Mud replaced grass. The casual walk to the barn became a boot-sucking slog. The sheep scattered to the far corners of the farm. Now the lambs came.

  The first ewe gave triplets. When she didn’t come in for the evening feeding, I went in search. There she was in the farthest field with the sun setting and the rain pouring. Less than an hour old, cold, and wet, the lambs were at risk for hypothermia. I slid one into my coat and zipped it up to its head. The others I carried wriggling in each arm while mom zig-zagged between my feet with incessant calls to her babes. Several times I nearly slipped in the mud and the dark and the wriggling confusion. Back in the barn, I dropped the lambs into a stall with fresh hay and a heat lamp. Mom rushed through and in no time the lambs were taking their turns at the teat. A good sign.

  Lambing is a little like a high school dance. Once that first awkward moment is broken, everyone joins in. I didn’t need any more night plods through the mud, so I kept the herd close to the barn. Several more ewes popped … and then the complications arrived in waves.

  Looking back, you don’t remember the easy births, only that there were some. I exhale with relief whenever I count strong babies holding close to their mother’s side. Strong enough to stand within minutes. Nearly impossible to catch after forty-eight hours. Which means, better to catch them right away so they can be weighed, tagged, iodined on their umbilical cord, given a shot of BoSe, tails docked, and castrated when gender necessitates.

  It’s the complications you remember. I lost my first ewe to a hernia. The large fetuses pressed against her internal organs, rupturing the hernia and killing both the ewe and her lambs. Then there were multiple births—triplets or quads so small and frail. Often they would fail within the first few hours. It was harder when they lasted several days. I interceded with tube feedings—milking their mothers for the all-important colostrum that would build their immunities. Placing them on beds of straw, under heat lambs, caressing them to encourage their will to live. Sometimes they did.

  There was Poodle, named for the tight, white curls of her coat. She was the runt, pushed from the spigot by her three bigger sibs. I tethered the ewe and gave the lamb unfettered access to the teat but she could barely reach and her sucking response was weak. So I milked the ewe and bottle fed Poodle, leaving her for the night. The next morning she was too weak to stand and her mouth was cold, signs of impending death. I brought her into the warm kitchen, placing her in a box with blankets and heat lamp. I bottle fed throughout the day and into the night. She began to perk up. The next morning, when I snuck down early to check on her, she was dead.

  Then there was the lamb I tubed and bottle fed and worried over until at last he was strong enough to hold fast to his mother teat, even while competing with his twin. Still looking healthy after a few days, I released the three to the pasture only to find the lamb weak and wobbly again one morning. I brought the ewe and her lambs back in the barn, supplementing the little guy with bottle feedings. His mouth seemed wired shut and he was uncomfortable when I placed a nipple dripping warm milk against his lips. Clear signs of tetanus, a disease promising an agonizing death, with no hope of survival. I laid him across my lap, rubbing his head and speaking softly, “I’ve got this.” Then I euthanized him. A sad end to a short life.

  And the others that failed. Some never took a breath, despite brisk rubbing or swinging their limp bodies in a circle to force air into nonfunctioning lungs. Some were breach (backward) or had become tangled with a sibling in the birth canal, necessitating an intervention on my part, with an arm up the uterus, to shift the bodies until they could be delivered. There were times I was too late, causing them to suffocate in the womb. And, some were just abandoned by their mothers, rejected for a myriad of reasons that only the ewe knew. Often these abandoned lambs, called bummers, died shortly after being abandoned, even though they received all necessary supplements. Somehow the ewe knew the bummer wasn’t going to make it and conserve her precious resources for the lambs that would live.

  But some bummers are abandoned because the ewe is new to mothering and lacks good maternal instincts. One particularly wild new mother lambed in a secreted corner of the paddock in the dark of night. By the time I discovered her, both mom and babes were bronco beyond catching. Then I found an additional lamb prostrate, with head drooped over his back. His mouth was cold, so I hurriedly carried him back to my kitchen. I readied a bottle of powdered milk replacement. Like most lambs, he had no desire to suck on a synthetic rubber nipple until he tasted the warm, sweet milk trickle down his throat. Then he inhaled four ounces of the stuff, swelling his little belly. Next, he was ready for a nap in the straw. I had fashioned bedding in a cardboard box placed next to the stove and strung a heat lamp above it.

  He was an ugly little bummer, and I wondered if that had anything to do with his mother’s rejection. His skin shone pink through a light dusting of wool. His legs were too long and his head too small for that round belly. He resembled a freshly plucked turkey leg. I took to calling him Turkey. Greg called him the hairless wonder. None of these names stuck, so in the end, he was just Bummer, the bald lamb.

  His health improved and within a day he was hopping out of his box. There was no returning him to his mother; a ewe’s rejection is absolute. He was ours now. Like most newborns, he required feeding every four hours. I wasn’t keen on traipsing to the barn in the middle of the night for his feeding, so I fashioned a diaper out of a plastic grocery bag and set him back in his box in the kitchen. That didn’t last long. Soon as the lights went out we heard the tapping of tiny hooves across wood floors and then the final leap into our bed. He had already introduced himself to the in-house livestock when he nestled between them around the wood stove. Now, with muffled groans, they just shifted on the bed to make room for him.

  As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered what those tough, Basque shepherds would think if they saw me now. On second thought, I doubt they got out of their wagons in the middle of the night and walked barefoot through the rocks to feed their bummers. Nope. I bet shepherd, dogs, and lambs all curled up together just like we were doing.

  The bummer took to Greg and would lie at his feet in our parlor. One night, Greg announced his name to be “Snickers.” When asked where it came from, Greg swears the lamb told him. And it did fit. Everyone nodded approval. There was something special about this little orphan, and Snickers captured it.

  This episode lasted a month. Gradually lam
bs wean themselves from milk to grass. For bummers, they no longer need humans and develop a preference for the company of their own kind. Still it’s good to have a few bummer ewes in a flock because they retain a people-friendly attitude that helps tame the herd.

  But Snickers, being a wether (castrated male), presented a problem. There’s not much use for wethers except as meat. And no one was eating Snickers, according to my husband.

  “So we’re keeping him as a pet?” I asked a little pointedly.

  “No, we’re sheep farmers, so no sheep as pets.”

  My husband has principles and he sticks by them even when they conflict. Frankly, I was just as conflicted.

  The resolution came from the community. Snickers was adopted by a little girl, named Mary, of course. She fell in love with Snickers at the very moment her grandmother was looking for a project that would teach her granddaughter responsibility. Snickers is now a very happy lawn mower for a family in town. And yes, he follows Mary around.

  And that’s lambing. It’s the joy of birth and the sense of renewal mixed with loss that is both blunt and mundane. One moment there is sweetness and hope and the next there is a cold callousness that demands we move on. And both dimensions have to be held in balance if you’re to stay effective as a farmer. While in between, there are these little stories that never travel down the path you expect, do they, Snickers?

  HOT DAY TO HAY

  In the coastal mountains of Oregon, most farmers turn pagan at some point in the summer. Early summer begins a polite beseeching of the rain god and the sun god to cooperate. Why can’t we all be friends? The dialogue turns menacing by mid-summer. This is based on that delicate balance of sun and rain necessary to make hay. In the Northwest, heavy spring rains bring lush grass that is waist high by early June. The farmer surveys this abundance with that warm feeling of contentment that this will be a good year. He just needs the humidity to drop low enough to dry the grass after the cut. Wet grass molds in the fields and spontaneously combusts in the barn. Many a barn has been lost to wet hay.

  Unfortunately, this is the coastal Northwest, famous for its cool mornings with heavy dew and mild afternoons. That’s good for tourism but bad for haying. At a certain point, grass reaches a peak in nutritional value, and each day beyond that causes it to grow more rank. And each day that passes without a first cut pushes out the time frame for a second cut, eventually making a second cut impossible. Finally you throw in with the pagans and start looking for small animals or a tourist to offer in sacrifice. Something that won’t be missed right away.

  When the heat finally comes, those farmers with haying equipment are in high demand. As newcomers, we were last on Will’s list for haying. And haying is not a simple process. First the grass is cut and raked into furrows for baling. The furrows will be turned and fluffed over several days to speed the drying. Pray it doesn’t rain. Once dry, the baler travels down the furrows, scooping, folding, and compressing the grass into bales that are cinched tight with twine and disgorged out the back. Balers are complicated pieces of machinery with lots of moving parts that are bounced over mole holes and rocks, which constantly throws them out of alignment.

  This causes the farmer to stop his tractor and get down to make the necessary adjustments. Balers are well known for their insatiable appetite for fingers, so this chore is done with considerable care.

  Once the bales are in the field, the pressure is on to get them out before it rains. Rain on the bales and the whole project is a bust—you can’t dry hay bales. Getting the bales out of the field requires a team of sturdy young men to buck them onto hay trucks and then into the barn. The only good thing about this task is that teenage boys still want to look buff for teenage girls, and it’s better to get paid bucking bales than to pay a gym to lift weights. Every year a buck team has to be assembled from the local pool of teen boys. Then we wait until the farmer has adequately appeased the gods of weather. And suddenly, one morning, it’s go time.

  It hadn’t hit 90 degrees all summer, until the day we pulled our hay. Then the temperature soared, and the pagan gods laughed. We started at eleven, after the dew was lifted and the baler had a lead of several rows. I drove the truck and Greg lead the buck team. Both my daughters, home from school, were pressed into service with the admonition that “the family that farms together, eats together.” By mid-afternoon, my eldest decided she would rather skip the eating, and if pressured anymore, skip the family too. Fortunately, a young girl from town had decided that the boys shouldn’t have all the fun. She kept my youngest company in the sea of testosterone.

  By five we had fifteen tons in the barn with seven tons to go. The boys were stripped to the waist and glowing red from exertion and sweat. This is where I had to be attentive to the signs of heat exhaustion, since Greg was in the same condition as the boys. We stopped regularly for rest and water. I was impressed with how the girls kept up, but the stack was approaching twelve feet high and only the boys, with their upper body strength, could toss the bales to the upper tiers. Still, the girls did their part of the work without quite realizing their bigger role in motivating the boys. The boys were on their game, as they subtly competed for the attention of the attractive young women.

  It was during the swelter of late afternoon that I noticed the young woman looking flushed and dull-eyed, early signs of heat stroke. I called to the two boys beside her, “Is she hot?”

  Both boys froze, turning a brighter red than I thought possible. I suddenly realized I was talking to teenage boys. “I mean, is she really hot?”

  “Totally.” This was delivered with rapt sincerity by the more gangly of the pair.

  This exchange brought her back into focus and now she was flushing bright red.

  “Oh, for goodness sake, get her to sit down and I’ll bring the water.”

  My practicality seemed to break the spell. The boys looked sheepish and their peers began to laugh. My daughter shot me a look and rolled her eyes at my lack of teen awareness. I passed the water around and we got back to work.

  The moon was rising when we finished. With each dollar I paid them, I thought of how it brought me closer to that hot bath and soft bed. As the boys walked off, counting their money, I could hear them making plans for the night. Then one of them, the gangly one who revealed himself with such sincerity, turned to the young woman. She was getting in her truck and he asked, if she didn’t have plans, perhaps she would like to join them.

  Summer nights are short in Oregon and we try not to waste them.

  BARN PARTY

  Even before the barn was complete, Greg knew it needed a christening. In the minds of men, something about building resembles birthing. And that calls for a recognition, a barn party. Greg claims to be the source of the inspiration, but I had no doubt that Jack supplied both the kindling and the matches. Jack was a folk artist, and his favorite medium for the crafting of folk was the party. For Luther, parties with alcohol surmounted his general objections to social obligations that might impose restrictions on his freedom.

  So when our dark, dingy barn had been transformed into a brightly illuminated palace of solid timber construction, and when it was festooned with the sweet smell of fresh hay, the time of christening was upon us. The call went out. On a full moon night we would host a barn party. Everyone was welcome.

  Of course, as with all things rural, we had no idea of what we were doing. How many people would come? How much food and beverage should be ordered? And the preparation! The barn would need to be cleaned, which is no small feat. Barns with haylofts means strands of hay come filtering down from the ceiling whenever anyone walks on the boards. Basically the barn looks like the underside of a hayfield. And we’re going to serve food in there? I began waking up in the middle of the night again.

  Jack stopped by to help me sort it out. The food was easy: a keg of beer, a tub of ice, a dozen sodas, a dozen hamburgers, a dozen buns, a grill, a tub of potato salad, a tin of brownies. Done. I noted that didn’t sound like
much food. Jack winked, and said, “These are country people. They grow their own food; it’s people that’s in short supply. But you do need to clean the barn.”

  The day of the party we pressed the girls into service again. My eldest, quoting her econ professor, noted the only reason farmers had children was for the free labor. She credited us with being real farmers on that score. Greg power-washed the barn. The girls strung Christmas lights. I ran to town for supplies.

  Toward evening, Jack’s truck rolled up. He unloaded sawhorses over which he put old doors, then tablecloths, and then a series of tented canopies. He looked at his banquet hall and judged it good. Next he unloaded an oil drum bar-b-que, stoked it with firewood, and set it ablaze. Then he took out a lawn chair, a cooler, and a milk crate. He positioned these items in front of the entrance to the barn, until they were just so. Finally, he went to the cab of his truck and pulled out a fiddle case, which he slid under the lawn chair. He plopped in the lawn chair, took out his pipe, then pulled a beer from the cooler, popped it open, and set it on the crate. He leaned back and lit his pipe, took a sip of beer, and smiled. He winked at my girls and gave his unique salutation, “Bright moments to you!” Both girls reported knowing from the moment he smiled, the party had started. His smile said it all. Something interesting was about to happen.

  Which is probably why they came back to the house. It’s a short stroll from interesting to dicey. I loaded them with a platter of hamburgers and a bowl of potato salad. I brought the buns and brownies and we arranged them in the center of the long banquet table. Surrounded by so much empty space, the food looked forlorn. Foreshadowing? I wondered. What if no one comes? We didn’t actually invite anyone except Brick, Jack, and Luther. No one knows us, why should they come, even if they knew we were having a party, which they might not? I decide to distract myself by gathering raspberries for the brownies. At least there are brownies.