We lost a sheep last week. A little red-brown sheep born of our flock two springs ago, with a white snip down her nose and little oval, pointed ears that stuck straight out at right angles from behind her light, amber eyes. Ruby. Tiny Ruby was her name. Lost to the weather.
We find her tucked under the bracken that’s the same flame colour as her fleece, cold and stiff, eyes glazed, long gone. He heaves her hard body over his shoulders, carries her, heavier than she looked, he struggles, across the flooded, knee-deep bog and up the hill. Drops her into the boot of the car, lined with plastic feed bags, with a grunt and a thump. I’m sorry, Ruby. Too late. We should have carried her up yesterday while a glimmer of life still flickered faintly in those light, amber eyes. But it was dark when he came home and it was already too late, I knew. I had done all I could.
He rings me from the knacker’s yard, there’s a queue. Trucks and trailers piling up to offload carcasses fallen in the night onto the heaps already stinking. It’s been a bad couple of months, the knacker man tells him, they’re busier than ever. The knacker man is a cheerful, lively chap, as those who work with death so often are. Ever wondered why butchers are always so happy? I think the answer to that lies somewhere in that working so closely and mundanely with flesh and blood gives one a profound appreciation for life. To paraphrase something that Biba Tanya wrote on Instagram that struck with my own experience of immersing in the most basic, carnal and earthly skill, “butchering my own animals has brought me closer to God than all the [insert spiritual practice] ever did.” Birth, too, in all its blood and mess and transience, transfers that same fervent gratitude and awe for life. But, I digress.
My husband talks to some other farmers in the queue. The weather, they all agree, it’s the weather. We do what we can but we can’t save them all. One guy lost fifteen sheep; this his third time at the knacker’s yard in a week. There are piles of dead hill sheep, my husband tells me, some fine, strong looking sheep. The air is grim, thick with regrets and what-ifs and the sickening stench of rot.
We take some consolation from our peers’ misfortunes—it wasn’t our fault: it was the weather. We did everything we could but it wasn’t enough. I’m sorry, Ruby. I didn’t see how close to giving up she was until she was too far gone. I did all I could. It wasn’t enough.
I remember the first time we lost a ewe. We’d dealt with losses at lambing before, but this was different. A fine, mother ewe in her prime, a ewe we had hand tamed and hand milked, whose sweet milk had nourished us and raised lambs for our little flock. Out on the hill, our first year here, the nightmare of a fast and lethal sickness that we, still so green, had never seen before and missed the early signs. The whirling rush of panic and gut sinking dread of the realisation she had already given in to the irresistible pull of dying. We did what we could but it wasn’t enough. Too far for a vet to trek across the hill, too heavy of a big, grown ewe to carry her, and it was too late, anyway. She was dead by morning, her half-grown lamb curled up at her side, waiting. We had to leave her there, where she lay, tucked under the rocks in a grave of gorse, “lost to the hill”. Ladybell. Her name was Ladybell. We carried her lamb away and left her to the land.
Our sheep have to be tough to thrive here and we have to make hard decisions on who gets to stay. Sometimes they make our hard decisions for us. And sometimes you just get hit with a bad run of weather at the end of a hard year, and you do all you can, but it isn’t enough.
I was asked a while ago if the inevitable losses of livestock make me “very emotional”. Yes, I answered, honestly. Sheep die easily. They’re known for it. Keeping them alive is the aim of this shepherding game, and God knows we put our hearts and souls into it, into keeping them well and thriving—our livelihoods depend upon it. But it’s so much more than just the economic loss, which is significant, yet pales next to the loss of life—a life we raised, nurtured, named and knew, and gave so much of ourselves to.
They all have something to teach us. Some gap in our knowledge or experience, or in our management, something we missed. Something we needed to learn, to do better. Or maybe just something within ourselves that needed to break, to shift, to soften. Whether it’s a hand milked mother ewe with a lamb at her side, or twins miscarried by a favourite ewe—a ram and a ewe lamb, yet barely distinguishable, each entombed in their own universe of salty sea and starlight, a soup of nutrients and a spark of life forever unborn, returned to the earth in their brief, primordial expression of Sheep. Or a beautiful, lop-eared goat with the deepest brown eyes and a galaxy of swirling stars in her hide who came with a disease I should have seen. Or a Star doeling who stole and broke my heart, knocked me off my track and allowed me to grieve, and set me back on my right path. Or a little red-brown sheep with oval ears and amber eyes who just wasn’t as tough as we needed her to be. They all leave a mark, whether it’s your first loss or your hundredth.
The wind drops, the rain stops and the sun comes out, right after my husband has taken Tiny Ruby’s cold little red-brown body away to the knacker’s yard. There is no time to wallow, the moment for tears has gone with the dead; the living are calling. I bring the goats out onto the heather and they leap and bound for the joy of sunshine and life! Then down to the rocks to sit with the sheep who come up to stand and ruminate beside me and offer me their comfort of warm breath and ear snuffles and the life-affirming rhythm of their munching. I stay a while, watching them all closely, counting the rising and falling of their breaths, noticing the alertness of their ears, the strength and hale of their bodies, the light in their eyes that attests to the vigour needed for the time of the year, for this liminal, darkening season before deep winter, when the veil is thin and the weather is thick and life slips easily.
Later, I bring out extra hay, make sure everyone is filled enough to stay warm through another night of storm. Séamus the ram has marked his first ewes of the season. Gametes have met. New life sparks in the dark.
I'm reading this late, catching up on Substack after some time away, but just wanted to pop in and say how much I appreciated your story of loss. Although my current flock is small, I've experienced unexpected losses many times, and it's always emotionally difficult. I share your perspective though, that each sheep's death, whether lamb or grown ewe (or, in my case my first ram), has something to teach us. Some lesson, maybe just humility or patience, or acceptance. Thanks for another beautifully written piece!
When my son was growing up, we used to go to a Benedictine monastery every Spring to help the monks with their sheep farm during lambing season. My son would help bottle feed the orphaned lambs and named each one. I remember the bittersweetness of the first time, after he'd named all the little ones in "his" flock, when the truck arrived to take them away for slaughter, and how this was explained to him. He was so devastated to think of it.
I am still, although a carnivore, unsure myself how to reconcile the cycle of life and my animism (I am an astrologer who believes in the aliveness of everything in the universe).