by Laura Parker Roerden

This morning, I awoke to a simple pale orb moving in a confused pattern in the window of my bedroom in the farmhouse. Bits of morning were reflected in flashes off wings like patches of hope in a stretch of darkness. I must have rubbed my eyes too hard in a dream, I thought, and tried to refocus. The white patches of light, or an angel, or whatever it was, failed to settle.

I watched it then and now get caught in the folds of the curtains, rising from the ridges as a scar might rise from delicate wound. Something in its movement suggested freedom. A moth, I suddenly realized, was caught between the window pane and sheer white curtains. Two sources of light were dueling it out for the moth’s attention: one from the window and the other from the room.

I have read that moths move in a perpendicular line to a light source. As nocturnal insects, the source of light is usually the stars or moon, a source so far away as to be reliably stable. But caught between the window and sheers, this moth kept turning and adjusting its angle to the light. Instead of freedom, it found instead a hall of mirrors, where no clear path home could be plotted. The moth, once seeking to orient to the light, now was being led astray by it.

This old farmhouse frequently has guests of the insect and rodent kind. It’s nearly impossible to secure a 200-year old home to smaller wildlife. Lines of ants leave their nests to follow chemical trails left by others in a bizarre reversal of the old bread crumb trick for finding one’s way home. Bats hang innocently enough in attics, causing us to pull up sheets more tightly around our necks when jokes about vampires raise the hair on our necks. Webs are left by spiders in corners everywhere, appearing as if left by magic or perhaps in a sinister plot to dirty a house just then brushed clean. Mice scurry away into the darkness when lights are turned on after cleaning off treats left on cans and glass in the recycling bin. Mosquitos and flies mark the seasons and bring out our worst: irritation and loathing and, at times, violence.

There is a temptation to wage war on these intruders. Suburban homes, newer and better homes, we are told, are built air tight. There is no place for intruders in them. But an older home audibly breathes: inhaling wildlife and exhaling heat and new life, in a near constant exchange. Older homes are alive.

Nature is at once part prey, decay and promise. We can not forget our roots in such a home; where our days unfold with the background of nature’s effort to reclaim even us. There is never any doubt how the story will end. If we aren’t afraid to fully awaken from our dreams of perfection and refocus, we will see, in truth, that’s the grace behind nature’s beauty.

War is certainly an option for this old house. You can try to close up holes, place poison along the perimeter; buy swatters and high-tech gadgets. You’ll then awaken to a steady stream of dead mice or flies on your counter top now legs up. Spiders will be smeared on your walls. New holes will be chewed where wood and stone meet, until foundations threaten to crumble.

Professionals can be called in for more reliable removals, but no good can come from seeing pollinators and detritivours as the enemy. You’ll instead inhale poison. Flowers won’t bloom. The luscious tomato you’ve waited all year to eat might never ripen. Mosquitos that find their way in through your own innocent passage will be unmet by spiders and bats, who once did the dirty work for you. Remnants left in trash will rot in their plastic bags, never feeding an endless circle of life. Fragments instead will be left, where once was the suggestion of integrity.

There will be unintentional consequences, too, that spill out of your home and into the woods and your streets: other wildlife will eat poisoned prey and fall victim.The war we wage in this old house is always, in the end, oddly against ourselves.

I’d rather accept the steady exchange between inner and outer; the reminder of nature’s final grip on our lives; the attempts to coexist and find balance that I wish to become reflected in my and my family’s manner. I’m grateful for this old farmhouse that has stood sentinel to a time before the Civil War through a muddy river of imperfect time.

Just recently a tiny field mouse was caught in our sink, unable to climb up the watery walls. I awoke to find my 11-year old son Ben standing at the sink with a mason jar, trying to coax the afraid mouse into it. He leaned with intent and compassion over the sink. Each time he positioned the jar, the mouse would try to scurry up the sides of the sink and end up wet and shivering on the bottom. Instead Ben grabbed the mouse gently by the tail and like a helicopter directly airlifted him to safety into the jar.

As he started to walk to the front door, Ben asked, “Mom, where can I put him where he won’t be cold?”

I suggested finding a pile of leaves in a patch of sun, but thought better of adding “away from the house, so he doesn’t come back in.”

And just like that Ben was off to find his rescue a better home.

Decades of living in this old farmhouse have changed me. I now welcome visitors as common as stones, whether or not they are invited.

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by Laura Parker Roerden

It’s been an eventful time around here with three weekends in a row of crises, both human and animal. The crisis du jour this week was sheep acidosis or grain poisoning of both of our Leicester Longwool sheep on Friday night. Sheep can not eat anything that contains copper (a common element in many grains and mineral licks), nor can they eat too much non-copper grain, as it can shutdown their digestion as a ruminant. Both conditions are life threatening and can escalate quickly to sudden death.

In scuba, the most likely cause of a dangerous situation is a cascade of failures–your weight belt pops off at the same time your dive light stops working and your buddy abandons you on a night dive. (Yes, that actually happened to me once. I’m still not sure how I managed to catch my weight belt in the dark, though I’ll never forget being upside down like a buoy attached to my belt as if it was a mooring.)

The crisis this weekend at the farm was the perfect storm of the converging failure of two separate and unrelated systems that were put in place to keep our sheep from eating non-sheep grain and free-choicing grain at all. I was horrified to enter the barn at 9:30 pm to assist our new lamb in nursing to find all four sheep (lambs included) in the normally latched grain stall with the door to their pens and to the stall both wide open. I don’t know how many hours they were in there, but the sheep grain bin was knocked over and the llama bag scattered on the ground.

The first mistake I made was to text our vet without having adequately surveyed the scene. She answered to just “watch them–both behavior and scat.” But once I got a better look at them, it was clear that Juliette, at least, had already progressed to a problem. Both of her sides were distended as if she had swallowed two large beach balls. She moved like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade float, awkwardly and slowly. I was afraid she might pop when I touched her sides. Juniper looked normal, but hung her head down closer to the ground, like a dog you’ve just found that had knocked over the Christmas tree. I called the vet back to describe Juliette’s concerning looking bloat, but she had already apparently gone to bed. I got her voicemail.

I then called Tufts Veterinary ambulatory service, the vet we use for our larger animals, which set off about an hour of calling vets across the Commonwealth, who either couldn’t come out because of the time or distance. It was 11 pm when I reached a vet who was covering for another vet in Bolton (about an hour away). I couldn’t believe it when she said she could come and lived in a town only 20 minutes away. What luck, I thought and said a little prayer of thanks.

When the vet showed up at midnight, her first words to me were, “I’ll be frank. These situations do not usually have a good outcome.” I braced for what I’d tell the children in the morning.

She explained that a hospital setting was the best option for treatment, but because of the time of night on a weekend, we were best doing triage and arranging for transport of both sheep to Tufts in the morning. I had already spoken to Tufts, who had prepared me that the hospital care for each sheep would start at $1,500. I swallowed and decided we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. For now, I was willing to commit to this vet’s fees at a fraction of the cost and to a sleepless night to see what morning would bring. Sometimes resorting to Scarlett O’Hara’s, “I can’t think about that now” line is the best defense.

In my worry, I had forgotten to catch the vet’s name.

“Katrina,” she said when I asked. “Like the storm.”

“I have a friend named Katrina,” I offered, trying in a thinly-veiled way to distance us from a bad outcome.

For nearly four hours until Katrina left at 3:45 am, I harnessed and held sheep in headlocks with my knees while she administered a heady number of IV drugs and subcutaneous fluids and I took notes on a scrap piece of paper. I felt like I imagine Julianna Margulies must have felt during her stint on ER, when she learned her lines, memorizing names of drugs and code words. Occasionally familiar words like penicillin would stick out in a string of otherwise unrecognizable drugs, that I’d slowly sound out trying to spell in my sleep-deprived head as she gave me “the bullet” for the hospital vet in the morning.

It was only when Katrina handed me a bag of syringes with carefully measured out doses that I realized that I was the one who would need to administer them. “I don’t know how to give shots,” I admitted. My father always did his own vet services for our upwards to a hundred head herd. Somehow in all the years of my animal care-taking, I had never learned.

“Well, you’re going to learn right now,” she said, explaining the times each shot would need to be given depending on when we left for the hospital in the morning. She leaned over the animal, grabbed my hand and showed me how to measure from her hip bone to the right area for an IM (inter-muscular) shot. “If you get it wrong, they’ll be blood in the needle when you retract it. So don’t give the shot if that happens. It means you’ve hit a vein. If this shot goes into her veins, she can go into cardiac arrest.”

I was so sleep-deprived, I felt that strange sensation when it feels like you’re witnessing a situation you’re actually a participant in. I had to rephrase her instructions, since I thought she couldn’t actually mean what I thought I heard her say. Or did she?

“Retract the plunger?” I asked.

“Yes, pull out the plunger first,” she went on to explain. “That creates negative pressure for when you push the meds in.”

“Got it,” I said and reiterated. “And if no blood enters the needle when I do that, then I know I can give the shot safely.”

“Yes.”

And so ended my lesson, as there were no drugs needed for me to give it a try.

Katrina also left me a bag of subcutaneous fluids, which I smiled in relief at. We had given our cat fluids the same way for 4 years. I had that one covered, I said.

As she prepared to leave, I asked if there was a situation where the sheep would not have to go to Tufts in the morning. I’m ever the optimist, I thought, as I asked the question.

“Well, I suppose if you come to the barn in the morning and they are both brightly moving and eating, then yes, you would not have to bring them.” But the look on her face was not encouraging.

I stored the meds and went to bed. It was 5 a.m. the last time I anxiously checked my phone. When my alarm went off at 7:00 am, I awoke with a great feeling of urgency. I wanted to get to the barn before any of the kids awoke, just in case there was bad news. I quickly put on the same dirty clothes from the night before and headed to the barn, preparing myself on the way for just about anything I might find.

I opened the door to the sheep barn slowly and walked in, saying my customary, “Good morning.” Juliette looked up at me and said, “Baaaa.” The bloat had gone down, and she looked nearly normal. I gave her a handful of hay in her bin and she energetically walked to it and ate it, as if nothing at all had happened. Juniper now also walked to her bin, looking at me expectantly. I handed her a small amount of hay, and she quickly ate it. I felt like crying in relief.

But there were shots to give. So I went back to the farmhouse to get Ben, who I knew would be awake by now. While he slept, it had seemed like a lifetime had passed. He had no idea any of the drama he had missed, but he was game to help me by holding the sheep while I gave them their shots. I would start with Juliette, who was sickest, I reasoned.

I found the spot measuring with my hand as I had been taught. Juliette pulled away as the shot entered. Seeing no blood, I quickly plunged the shot in. When I retracted the needle, it was bent at a 30 degree angle. “Well, at least I didn’t kill her,” I said to Ben, who laughed.

Emboldened I pulled out the next shot, took off the cap and went to Juniper. Juniper and I have had a lot of long talks in the past couple of weeks about her lamb, so I leaned over and explained what I was about to do. When I pulled the plunger back, I saw no blood, so I confidently pushed it in. Juniper immediately hit the ground, all four of her legs seemingly folding like a chair. I felt like joining her. But we took her harness off and stepped back.

“Maybe she’s a fainter like some people are when they get shots,” I said to Ben, trying to break the tension. We watched as she laid there, slightly swaying back and forth with each breath.

She got up and walked away.

I’ve since given about 15 shots and taught my oldest to do it too. I may have lost some sleep, but thankfully we didn’t lose the sheep. The past couple weeks have engaged all three of our boys deeply in sheep care: assisting Juniper in nursing, harnessing the animals, holding them, and giving meds. I’ve noticed they are each more gentle with the animals than I am, preferring to cajole them into doing things rather than my brute manhandling. They are naturals at sheep whispering. It’s meant late nights in the barn sitting quietly in the hay, with only one single light on, while we chat and attend to the animal’s needs. We’ve on occasion noticed the moon or the sound of a dove on our short walks back to the farmhouse.

“I really like it,” my 15-year old confessed to me last night. I smiled.

Me, too, buddy. Me, too.

 

 

by Laura Parker Roerden

“Farming is a way of life,” was one of my father’s oft repeated phrases. Sometimes he used it to explain why he still farmed in a year when he didn’t make any money or when the work demanded more of him than any sane person would give, like during haying season when he’d rise at 4:30 a.m. to milk the cows and finish his day at 9:30 pm when light was finally too scarce to stay on the tractor safely. He said it the day he stood at the farmhouse window watching the entire herd be led onto cattle trucks when he went officially went out of the dairy business in the early 1980s. After that, my father stopped going to the window at all.

It’s only in the past years without him that I’ve come to realize that my father also meant that farming was a way of understanding life. Today was in many ways a typical–albeit eventful–day on the farm. But it also happens to be the anniversary of my father’s death.

Walking back to the farmhouse, I mentally recounted the many events of the morning. Fortunately, our handyman Keith was here and could be of help.

• The cows come into the barn when I try to feed our calf Mark separately, requiring me to back them up out of a narrow passageway and down some stairs, which sounds like a comedy routine, except for the moment I am pinned between one and sidewall of the corridor. I call for Keith to help, but he doesn’t hear me. I find my own way out.
• An older Australarp hen that I had separated into a brooder yesterday because it was ill and the other hens were harassing it, is now dead. I think about where to place it in the woods, so it might be part of a larger offering of rebirth and renewal.
• A baby Silkie chick has naturally hatched and is running around the smaller coup. I replace the waterer and food with dishes the chick can reach.  I watch for a moment to confirm all is well, only to find that the mature hens are now pecking at the chick each time she tries to eat. So I move two possible mother hens (speckled Sussexes I had seen being broody) and the chick into a separate pen, which we secure and add food and water to. One of the speckled Sussex nestles into the hay, fluffing her feathers out and in one motion of her wing scoots the baby chick under her. Sure now I had found a mother hen up to the task, I bring the other Sussex back into the larger coop with the other birds. 
• Keith and I walk the perimeter of the outside pen for the sheep to prepare it for our lamb Lulu to go outside. He adds some chickenwire and closes a gap between the fence and the wall so that Lulu won’t get separated from her mother. When it is ready, I open the door and both Juliette and Lulu bound down the stairs to the outdoors. It’s obviously they are going to like it.

• I find our first 2 peafowl eggs in the pea pen. Our peahen has officially matured, so I make a nesting area with hay for her under her roost in a corner, where she can securely sit on eggs. I put the eggs on the ramp to bring to the farmhouse, only to later discover that the hens have tried to eat them. The eggs are now broken open, contents spilled onto the concrete.
• I notice a nest of birds (probably sparrows) have hatched in the rafters of the calf barn. The sound of their peeping is deafening and suggests an abundance of birds.
• I purchase 500 lbs of grain and we bring it into the various barns, where the bright sounds of grain entering bins and the clatter of lids captures the animals’ attention.

I don’t know for sure, but think my father would approve of a morning spent on our farm among the mad tiddlywinks game of life pressing forward, ever seeking to put death and birth on equal footing.

 

Related post: For the Love of Work

Welcoming Lulu

by Laura Parker Roerden

Last week the ordinary stuttered into extraordinary: our first lamb was born. My eldest son Eli delivered the news in a phone call to me when he went to the barn to close up the animals.

“Mom, I think there’s someone here you’ll want to meet,” he simply said, without offering more.

My first thought was one of my father’s old friends had stopped by looking for him, having seen the glow of light on in the barn, since for decades my father could always be found at this time of night milking our cows. But I was wrong. I was surprised how long it took me to even consider the alternative: Juliette, our rare Leicester Longwool sheep had given birth to her long-awaited lamb.

I had days before started a blog post I hadn’t yet finished entitled, “(STILL) Waiting on the Damn Lamb.” I had done preliminary research on buying a “lamb-cam,” since the word lamb irresistibly lends itself to word play of all sorts. “Lam(b)enting the wait for a lamb is a lamb-able offense,” I had written to no one in particular, as I failed to hit the publish button on that blog post for good reason. But the truth is, I was a combination of annoyed and worried by what seemed like the longest pregnancy on record for a sheep. Wasn’t there something I should be doing? Aren’t we always waiting on some proverbial lamb?

When I got to the barn that night, Eli was standing quietly by a tiny wet, white lamb and her mother. A separate peace had descended on the pen. Something about the scene made both Eli and I whisper to each other a mixture of instructions and excitement.

“Oh my gosh. She’s so beautiful.”

“We have to get the heat lamp on and get Juliette extra hay.”

“Oh, look at her little tail wagging!”

“Call your brothers and dad.”

All of a sudden there was so much to do; and yet there was nothing at all needed. The sense of peace in the barn stood thick like a protective fog, while we toggled back and forth between it and our desire to play a part.

For months I had procured information about lambing and tools were safely stashed in a chest we called our “lambing kit.” But now there stood a perfectly healthy lamb, still wet and rooting her mother’s under carriage to latch on. The lamb would occasionally lose balance. Or her knees would buckle to the ground. But she’d build her way back to firm purchase, discovering each nob of her legs unfurled like a jointed ruler.

Yes, this was a certain kind of peace, I thought, as I watched Lulu nurse. After all the waiting and preparation, the real surprise was to find such deep peace in not being needed at all.

 

And Other Good News

by Laura Parker Roerden

I was drinking coffee while doing chores in the dairy barn this morning when the vet, Rosario, showed up. “Thank you for coming!” I said, stepping out into the frigid air to greet her, clutching my mug to warm my hands. Rosario looked up to introduce herself, offered an outstretched hand, and hit the ground hard. Her rubber boots were no match for the unseasonable slick of ice left on the slanted ground.

The morning had started badly for me, too, so I was sure she might be hurt. I ran to her side to help her up. But she rose nimbly, brushed herself off, and then took my outstretched hand, “What? No hat in this weather?” she chided as we shook hands. I laughed.

She was there to provide a certificate of health for the ram we had on loan from a farm in New Hampshire that we are planning to return this weekend. You can’t bring an animal across state lines without one. There are so many things you realize you have no idea even exist until you jump into something like raising lambs. “Who knew?” is a familiar, if humbling, refrain for me.

As she examined Theo, she gave me advice and made positive comments about the condition of the barn: “Be on the lookout for hoof-rot. Once you have it, you won’t be able to get rid of it,” she warned. “But I can see from the condition of your bedding that you’re not likely to have it. Things look very well-kept here.”

“Aren’t you beautiful, Theo?” she coo’ed to him.

“He’s just the perfect weight, too. We rate them on a 1 to 5 scale and he’s a 3–exactly where we like to see them.”

Pride started to raise in my chest. I felt like I did when the pediatrician would tell me I was doing a great job when my children were babies: like someone had handed me a life-ring, which also meant she could see I was barely still treading water. The sheer kindness of the comment washed over me like a wave; I was surprised to tear up a little.

We chatted while she worked, updating the shots for our other two female lambs, giving me advice on lambing. “Can you tell if their bred,” I asked?

“No. Not really,” she answered.

“Oh, well,” I sighed, as I listened to the litany of signs. “They’ll bag out about six weeks before, though that’s notoriously unreliable. You’ll also notice lengthening in their vulva, and they’ll stop eating too.”

“Just like a cow,” I offered, trying to appear at least somewhat knowledgable.

“Yes, exactly,” she said. “But there’s one sign that’s always reliable,” she offered.

“There’s this ligament on the top of their tale that is taut like a pencil on either side. Just before they lamb it softens,” she instructed, taking my hand to feel the hard ridges. Once I found it, she described the jelly-like feel I’m looking for, equating it to the way our own hips became slack just before we gave birth.

“All animals have it,” she added for good measure. “It allows the hips to open for the baby to pass through the birth canal.”

“Ok, I’ll just keep an eye on them and then when I think they’re close, I’ll check the ligament,” I summarized.

“Yes. That’s a good way to handle it.”

“I have an ultrasound machine in my car. We can tell for sure if they are bred. Do you want me to get it?” she suddenly offered.

“Yes! I do,” I gasped, realizing immediately what she had done in holding back that critical information. She was putting herself out of a job by teaching me to do the work myself. She was reminding me that farmers deliver babies, trim hooves, give shots. She was, in fact, telling me not to call her.

As she retrieved the ultrasound from her car, I talked quietly to the lambs. “We’re going to find out if you’re going to have a lamb, Juliette.” And then it hit me: we’re going to find out if we are going to have lambs.

The ultrasound screen lit up with white halos around dark valleys, as she depressed the handle along the side of Juniper first. Things were moving; I thought I saw something round. “See that circle?” she asked.

“Um. I think so.” I squinted.

“That’s the lamb,” she said.

As she pressed the wand deeper into Juniper’s abdomen, something flickered. “And, there’s the heart-beat.”

This morning, I had seen the first blue bird of the season. Now I know assuredly that Juniper is going to lamb sometime this spring. Juliette is expected to have twins. Only time will tell how lambing will go, but I’m off to buy gel, rubber gloves, and a stethoscope to assist in their births as instructed by Rosario. For now, the bluebirds are back.

Laura Parker Roerden is the founding director of Ocean Matters and the former managing editor of Educators for Social Responsibility and New Designs for Youth Development. She serves on the boards of Women Working for Oceans (W20) and Earth, Ltd. and is a member of the Pleiades Network of Women in Sustainability. She lives on her fifth generation family farm in MA.