February 2006

The wide eyed lambs look up at me when I enter the barn. How do I appear to these newcomers, to these dawning eyes?  Standing there, facing their direct gaze, I feel tainted by my own rationality and envious of their simplicity.  Ignoring me, the lambs go back to nibbling at the soy meal and whole oats that I put out "free choice" (24/7) in the creep, a 'lambs only' pen that has openings small enough to keep the ewes out but permits the lambs to pass through.  At three weeks of age the lambs' rumens have begun to function; they can digest solid food now and begin to gain weight rapidly.

The ewes yet to lamb and I wait.  Waiting becomes wanting in late February. Hay is scarce now; stocks have been depleted and there is little for sale.  Farmers worry about having enough hay to get their livestock to the grass of Spring.  At our latitude and elevation pasture growth can be expected by the third week in April in a normal year, but this year, with no snow cover to protect the pastures from hard frosts, growth may be set back a week or two.

Spring is always waited for but there is something else looming; there is always something looming, something to fear.  This year it's the flu; Osama the Flu is coming. Fear is pandemic now; we wait for the mutation that will permit human-to-human transmission and the viral pandemic that will ensue that is promised to kill millions of us.  But there is money to be made here; there is power to be consolidated.  Fear is good for the economy and the government; pharmaceutical stocks will rise, HMO's will make a killing and there will be fewer people on welfare: the statistics will look good when all is said and done.  And quarantines will permit us to meet people of like interests, to form life-long friendships.

Alas, let me go back to worrying about hay, the flu future is too bright for a pessimist like me.  This morning, I must go to North Branch to get 4 round bales, each weighing about 700 lbs, load them on the trailer and get them back to the ewes.  There is a dusting of snow on the roads; will I be able to get up the slippery hills without the truck losing traction and have the load slowly pull me backward to jack knife truck and trailer into a ditch—don't know until I go—this is as real as the flu. What would life be without waiting, without wanting, without worrying; and, we'll never know what the lambs don't know.

Eugene Wyatt

2006

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