I’m still waiting for the last ewe to lamb (besides Ziggy, who will lamb next month because Ziggy runs her own schedule). She’s late, and she’s massive. Much too massive to have only one lamb. She’s been ready for days: heavy, engorged, nesting, dropped and engaged, then changing her mind, in and out of labour for the last two nights already. I’m up checking by torchlight through the night, wellies and rain gear thrown over pyjamas, sleepless, anxious. She’s an older ewe. Every lamb now could be her last. Maybe tonight. Please be tonight.
Words have eluded me this week. Sentences swirling half strung, escaping through the fog of sleep deprivation before they fully form, before I can commit them to paper. A nice little write up on lambing, my ever-so organised self had scheduled for this week, to be written in the thick of it. It’ll be a doddle, I thought, half a dozen ewes to lamb, plenty of time to relax and write. I have sat down thrice to stare at a blank page, write a few lines, scribble them out, start again, keeping half an eye out the rain-fogged window for glimpses of a bouncy little one bouncing by or an imminently birthing ewe who might conveniently decide to lamb down in view and save me having to don wellies and rain gear and traipse out over the rocks and through the mud to check again. Listening for the panicked calling of a ewe that’s lost her lamb or that fluffy-fleeced yearling that keeps getting stuck in the brambles, way down the land. Trying to force words to flow in the harried breaks between farm chores and lambing checks, with one eye on the clock before the next round of feeding, hauling out hay and buckets of beet to the sheep on the hill, refilling the goats’ hayracks, keeping the fire burning, kettle on the stove, clothes drying, towels and colostrum at the ready, just in case, dishes done, dinner cooked, everybody fed and watered, bedded and dry, fences fixed and reinforced where that other yearling keeps jumping into the saved grass, weather battled, roofs battened down, mud scraped and drains freely draining the incessant rain. Distracted. Tired.
I still have to remind myself that this is enough. That I don’t have to keep working, keep filling every minute with productivity or availability in between the demands of the farm and livestock when I really need to rest because the midnight checks and 6AM starts, running on minimal sleep and maximal stress, are fogging my brain and aching my body. This is my job—these ewes, these lambs—and for these few weeks of the year nothing else matters. This is enough.
This is enough. Sitting in the sheep pen with a lamb in my lap covered in lamb poop and iodine, is enough. Standing in the rain watching while the twin ewe snatches some grass because the ground is still too flooded and treacherous to let her take her tiny tots out to the unfenced pasture unsupervised is enough. Saying no to friends and family and other commitments because the lives I am responsible for, at their most vulnerable, the work I have committed to at its most demanding, have to come first, is enough. Taking time out to care for myself is enough. Just getting through the day to day challenges of the season is enough. Slowing down, being here, this job, this life, this lamb, this ewe, this moment, is enough. It doesn’t matter if I’m lambing six ewes or twenty or a hundred because every life is precious, every lamb born is the fruit of a winter’s work, gestation, care and resources that will feed us or become the future of the flock, and every ewe is my lady, giver of life, her value deepened by years in service that cannot be reduced to a price or a number. Waiting, farm-bound, exhausted, for that one ewe, for as long as she takes—please be tonight—is enough. She and her little ones come first now. I am her shepherd, midwife, vet and nanny. Everything else can wait. This is enough.
Update: Sunday 7:30AM twins born to Misty. A ram and a ewe. The rain has stopped. The ewes are on the grass and the lambs are all bouncing. The weight of winter has lifted. Finally, spring has sprung.
A little pre-warning for new readers (thank you for subscribing) that next week’s essay is on culling a sheep. My animals are the soul and sustenance of my farm, I take full responsibility for the lives I bring into the world from birth to butchering, and I will write on all of it, the real, unfiltered, full circle. See this post for some of the why. If that’s not for you please feel free to unsubscribe.
What you wrote..that..just that..every life is precious..regardless of us..we chose to have them..breed them..and now we need to look after them..
Damned weather isnt helping though..Ive still 3 ewes in..but all lambed..
So glad Im not alone in this viewpoint..thank you
Carly, really enjoyed reading this. Wonderful to get an insight into your work and the passion with which you care for your flock. And those little faces... too adorable! Thank you x