Behold! The Bouncing Joys of Spring

lambing, and all the lamb spam

I really don’t know how I thought I’d find the time or the brain power to sit down and come up with something coherent in the middle of lambing. I managed neither, hence I am a week late with this, my apologies...

Lambing is the high point of the shepherding year and, even in a flock as small as mine it is also the most demanding, stressful, and exhausting time, when you’re running on very little sleep at the busiest time in the farming calendar, with the added weight of responsibility for all the fragile new life that is not just the make or break of your year’s success, but so much more than economic outcomes, each one is a precious new life that we give so much of ourselves to. To shepherd is not just to herd sheep, but to watch over them, protect and nurture them just as they feed, clothe, trust and follow us. Shepherds have traditionally been nomadic people, moving with the flock, living and sleeping among them, always present, as one with the flock, always on watch, thus domestic sheep now far removed from their wild ancestors have co-evolved to depend on our care in a reciprocal exchange of nourishment for nurture. Yet it’s that same care and dependence that leaves them so vulnerable to our mistakes, a responsibility that is sometimes heavy to bear. Perhaps I feel it all too deeply, my sheep are hand fed and known by name, not pets, but so much more than pets, and so much more than “livestock” conveys—as anyone who raises livestock knows. We work so hard and invest so much in them, and receive much in return, so that every fibre of their being is entangled with ours in an intimate sharing of life and livelihood. Lambing is when the cracks will show, when the year’s work and planning, successes and failures climax in a crescendo of sleepless nights and glorious birth and death and all the mess of everything in between. As shepherd you are midwife, doula, vet and nanny. You don’t sleep. You grow nests in your hair. You want every lamb not just to survive but to thrive and to complement the health of the flock. New life is delicate, precarious, and all-consuming. This year has been our most stressful and demanding, not so much lambing itself which we’ve come through with zero losses and a fine little crop of bouncing lambs, all well mothered on milky ewes, but the surrounding circumstances of our living conditions, the weather, the lack of infrastructure or facilities, the weather, the workload, the weather, the mud, the weather…

The cuckoo arrived, three weeks late, just as my ewes began to lamb. At least, that’s what a neighbour, an older guy who’s been keeping records of these things over the years, told us. I wasn’t too surprised; April took “showers” to the utter extreme and hurled horizontal sheets of icy rain across our open, flooded, muddy hill, for what felt like weeks and I was glad we had pushed the bulk of lambing our little flock back later, into early May. I wouldn’t have liked to arrive too early this spring, if I were a cuckoo, or a lamb.

Our first, early lamb born this season is nearly six weeks old, and just this week, we turned her with her mother and the first group of ewes and lambs down to the good grass. It’s been a long haul to get them there. We are based on the wrong end of the land; the high, exposed, wet and rocky end, made even wetter by a long winter of incessant rain, where the road access and our caravan are. If you’re not familiar with our situation, I wrote an intro of sorts that describes a bit about our current, primitive, off-grid living arrangement here, or you can take a scroll back through previous posts to catch up. The good grass, dry slopes and shelter are far down at the other end of the land, inaccessible to my lambing ewes, too far of a trek across the hill from our caravan for night watch, hauling feeds, and generally taking care of sheep at their most vulnerable, when I need them close. Our feed bill has been enormous. Late last summer, while the sun still blazed and the soil was still dry(ish) after a season of drought, I overseeded the top meadow to try to improve the rough pasture, close by, for lambing, and we vainly built lamb shelters and windbreaks. Then the rain started, and it didn’t stop, and the meadow flooded and my seed didn’t take, and when lambing time came earlier than planned thanks to one troublesome ewe (and, I have to hold my hands up, one spur of the moment breeding decision that seemed like a good idea at the time), the ground was still sodden and the weather still wild, so, in a hurry, we had to turf the goats out to their spring forage on the lower land early and take over their shed for the lambing ewes.

And then the spring storms hit, but I wrote about that in my last post.

Our small farm is nestled in between two much larger, extensive hill sheep farms, each running—I don’t know—maybe a few hundred head of ewes. I lambed my little flock later, aiming for the kinder conditions of late April into May, and when I started on night checks for my first couple of early lambing ewes, I could see torchlights on the neighbour’s lambing fields across the hill, throughout the night, already in the throes of lambing, and shepherds out on their quads tending ewes and lambs before first light. A few times, the quad had a trailer attached, I guess either to bring in ailing lambs and their mothers to the shelter of the barn or to collect the bodies of any that didn’t make it through the storms, before the crows would find them. It was a hard April for sheep. We heard of earlier lambing farms on greener fields than ours losing month old lambs in the storms.

That’s the thing about farming, or working the land in any capacity. Plans are constantly changing, being tested and re-evaluated against the weather, the season, livestock with minds of their own and all the other ever-evolving variables that are out of our control. To be adaptive and resourceful are essential skills for any farmer, as well as having a strong sense of commitment. We are getting a guy with a rockbreaker up here to dig a track down to the lower end of the land, soon, so that we can set up base on the better ground for next year. 

this photo, to me, exemplifies the typical resourcefulness of a small farm. the re-used pallets and bale string holding everything together, the self-built shed of local, rough cut timber from the sawmill over the hill, floors strewn with straw that is a by-product of the local brewing industry, even the heaps of manure in the background which, when rotted, will be cycled back into the soil. and then, sprung from the mud of it all, the lamb

I am writing this now in the “lambing field”, AKA the butterfly meadow at the top of the land that is now, finally, drying out and greening up nicely, soaking up the spring rays, letting the warmth of the sun melt the furrows in my brow and the tension in my jaw, watching with deep relief our last two lambs, born yesterday, totter beside their mothers as they graze. (Our last “official” lambs of the season—Floki the ram was on unstoppable form last fall so we’re expecting one or two late “accidents” in a couple of weeks or so). A swoop of swallows dart around, hunting swarms of midges over the damp meadow and duck pond. They’ve been checking out our goat shed, which we temporarily took over for lambing, for a place to nest. The “little ladies”, one week old twin ewe lambs born from Lady Ella, curious and bold next to the tottering day olds, come over to suss me out. Brown Little Lady is the smallest and the bravest, she comes right up to nibble my boots and graciously accepts an ear scritch. Lady Ella herself stands by, staring at me, suspicious of my writing pad but, as ever, alert for a pocket treat. She’s one of my best, original Shetland ewes, bred and born in the only pedigree flock in the South of Ireland on the beautiful, low lying marshland of County Clare. Shetland sheep are hardy and adaptable and took to our hill of heather and rock like ducks to a pond. Lady Ella is a foraging queen, independent, assured and savvy, well suited to life as a hill sheep. Looking back at my records just now tells me that she, carrying twins, held her condition all winter equally as well as the single carrying Blackface ewes, only coming in for extra feeding for the last few weeks, and her twins are strong and thriving, already as big as some of the singles. Good twin ewe lambs from one of our best ewes are a blessing to our flock, guaranteed a place as keepers.

Lady Ella and the Little Ladies

Our numbers have been fewer overall than expected with almost all single lambs, only the one set of twins, and a few empty ewes. Talking with other farmers, it seems to have been a low year for many. I’m OK with fewer numbers, I kept breeding numbers low intentionally for our first year on the hill and didn’t “flush” (increase feeding before breeding to increase ovulation) the ewes, and I’m relieved to not have had a lot of twins to feed and shelter through the rain, and no weak triplets needing warming or bottling by our woodstove (I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for those couple of late accidents); what we have are strong singles born to the thriftiest ewes that will grow well and fat on heather and gorse, born through probably the most difficult conditions we will ever have to face.

Perhaps it sounds callous then, to talk about the necessary flock reductions that have to be considered as numbers multiply, while loving on the lambs, but it’s at lambing time that decisions on the management of the flock and the individuals that make it up are close to mind. Things like difficulties lambing or handling (I have to be able to handle ewes and their lambs at lambing), or bad mothering are marked against that ewe, as are other factors like poor hoof health, not keeping up condition to rear her lamb with the rest of the flock, and so on, so that culling decisions can be made (after all management factors have been assessed) to maintain the overall health and integrity of the flock. Besides, the point of it all is to feed us, after all. This year is to be a hard cull year as we continue to refine the flock for our conditions, culling out ewes not fit to winter and rear their lambs on the hill. And, as though Life is affirming our decisions, we are blessed this year with a high percentage of beautiful and hardy ewe lambs which will all be reared as replacement breeding ewes for the flock: the first generation to be fully hefted here, conceived, gestated, born and reared on this hill that they will never leave. And our freezers this year will be filled with more mutton than lamb as we thin out the flock to make way for them. I will write a piece about that and more on the decision process when the time comes. Our ram lambs are reared for meat, and that way they support the farm and flock, and us.

this ram lamb might be a lucky one. only the best can be considered as future breeding potential

But, that is a whole summer away. A whole summer of lamb races over the rocks, chasing ducks and bumblebees through the heather and growing fat on sunshine and rain. And we will scritch their little ears and delight in such a fine and healthy crop of lambs born of rocks and rain and gorse, as they revel in their bouncing celebration of life

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