Ovine Kind of Life
He’s just got one thing to say..
August 2005
Even with a tractor and a 5' rotary cutter behind it, I couldn't safely cut the steep side hills. As the months went by, I was beginning to understand something about relationships. Like a wife, nature wouldn't fit into that dreamy vision I had of it; I would have to negotiate with nature, accede to its power and work with that power rather than against it. The war I now began to fight was with me, with my values, with my uninformed assumptions, with my concepts of beauty; not with nature; to 'win' I would have to let nature's way become my way, to define a new relation for us and be forgiving in the same way that nature was forgiving of me.
I hated mowing lawns, having spent the Saturday mornings of my youth mowing my father's front and backyard; swollen by mosquitoes bites, pushing an ever-dull hand mower in the 100 plus degree heat of Fresno. But here, the grasses I was cutting had fed animals; this had been a dairy farm; the land knew the hooves of cows, they were part of this place. My familiarity with animals was limited to Winky the cat, Rosie the cocker spaniel and Pokey the desert tortoise, the family pets. I knew nothing of livestock, but ignorance had never stopped me in the past, so why should it stop me now. Growing up in the west on cowboy movies, I wanted cows, longhorns, something with swagger. But Bettina would have none of my cowboy bull, she was afraid of cows stepping on her feet; she grew up with sheep in Germany and she convinced me she knew how to care for them. Like my dawning relationship to nature, I conceded to my wife's wishes. Ovines, bovines, what the hay; her childhood memories would eat mine, sheep could spare me from the lawnmower as well as cows.
But what breed of sheep, there are many. Bettina told me that merino sheep produce fine wool and perhaps she could use their fiber in the sportswear she designed and manufactured. As we talked about this, driving to and from the farm, my dreams were becoming entrepreneurially ovine, sheep and greed were taking over. I contacted a breeder; drove to his farm; selected five bred merino ewes, two big ones and three pretty ones (that's all I knew about sheep, some were big and some were pretty and some were not); and I carted this pregnant load back to the farm to lamb. One Sunday afternoon, kerplop, a lamb came out of the back end of a pretty ewe; I now had six sheep and a wife who, as it turned out, knew less about sheep than I did, "it's gooey," she said.
As I was soon to find out, this lamb wasn't our baby, it was my baby. Bettina washed her hands of my husbandry project; and now, dad had his hands full. I read everything I could on sheep, I attended seminars, I hired consultants, I called the vet for anything I didn't understand, and that was most everything and the little ones kept coming. Then my flock numbered twelve: my disciples, I told my friends with a wink; but sheep are sincere, and I really saw them as prophets.
Eugene Wyatt