by Laura Parker Roerden

(June 6, 2017) If you’re a certain age, you might remember those strobe disco lights from the 70s and how they not only slowed down action, but captured and unnaturally suspended a singular moment. I can still see my college roommate’s expression while she danced at the disco we went to in her Brooklyn neighborhood that had been featured in Saturday Night Fever. Time stood fragmented in shards, as if broken like glass.

A couple moments in the past week have likewise entered my heart’s memory as if they happened in the presence of a strobe: our sheep Juniper violently head butting her two day old lamb away from her as the lamb attempted to nurse and my youngest Ben grabbing his head and falling to the ground when a football hit his eye.

Juniper’s sweet little black lamb with wisps of white on her face and edging her ears was born on Sunday evening May 21st. I first heard her call when I entered the barn on Monday morning to feed the animals. The newborn lamb was already dry and standing. I held my breath as I watched the tiny lamb trying to nurse. Juniper’s long teats appeared to be too low from the tiny mouth to grab. Over hours of watching, she eventually started to suckle. By lunch I was satisfied all was well and left.

I returned at 3:00 to find a frantic lamb, hungrily crying. By 5:00 she was nearly listless in a corner; I knew we had a problem. I called Evan, our farm camp manager, and asked him to come. It was he who noticed that Juniper had a third, nonfunctioning teat that the lamb had been unsuccessfully suckling. The poor lamb had yet to eat.

Colostrum is the first milk and must be given to the lamb within the first 12 hours since birth to build a proper immune system, so we milked Juniper and bottle fed the lamb before she lay like a rag doll on our arms sound asleep, “milk drunk” and fatigued from a day of being born into a world where only hunger greeted her. The lamb was content, but had so far failed to nurse.

In this first lambing season, we’ve learned so much about nursing from watching Juniper’s flock mate Juliette successfully bond and latch with her lamb Lulu. Weeks ago, I had stood awestruck watching Juliette minutes after giving birth, as she nudged her newborn lamb’s hind quarters with her nose to her udder while the baby latched. The mother continued to nudge the baby’s hind quarters while she nursed, together forming a perfect circle of connection.

But Juniper did not want her baby to latch; she pushed her away. I called the vet and asked for advice. Dr. Rosario suggested putting Vicks vapor rub in Juniper’s nose, so she’s wouldn’t be able to smell the baby. Apparently, this sometimes works. But it did not. A night of trial and error taught us that the only thing that worked was inserting ourselves between the mother and the lamb. We would crouch and scratch Juniper’s head, while also patting the lamb’s hind quarters and the mother would settle; the baby would latch. It was as if we were completing an electrical circuit of contact between the mother and her offspring.

I was in the barn helping the newborn baby nurse, among other chores, on Memorial Day weekend when I heard my own youngest child crying. Ben, age 10, had been hit by a football thrown by his brother without adequate warning. The ball hit him squarely in the eye. Ben hit the ground, holding his head in both hands, a single stream of blood stretching from his eye to his chin. He had blacked out momentarily.

The on-call pediatrician advised me to by-pass our local city hospitals and take him directly to Children’s Hospital in Boston, “because of the nature of the injury,” she explained ominously. He would need an on-call pediatric ophthalmologist. I could hardly breathe as I drove the familiar route into Boston, talking to Ben to make sure he was still cognitively alert and occasionally glancing in the rear view mirror nervously.

Six hours later after observation and a thorough eye exam, we returned home from Boston with eye drops Ben would need four times a day for a bleed in his eye and guidelines for managing a concussion. Juniper also needed to be fed four times a day, so I put them both on the same schedule and cancelled everything to watch for the list of neurological signs of resumed bleeding in Ben’s head or eye.

Each time I’d lean in to scratch Juniper’s head and watch her reluctantly nurse, I’d worry about my human baby and the half hour I was not vigilantly watching him. But as the days stretched on into weeks and my fatigue rose, my heart also went out to the new mother sheep. I don’t think any of us mothers have been spared days when the hard edges of what’s required of giving yourself over to our children hasn’t left us spent, feeling reluctant at best or resentful at worst. The big picture is not always immediately available to us in the moments when a hungry baby can’t wait and your own swollen body hurts from the strain of birth and nursing. These moments of parenting can feel fragmented and disproportionate in its request of us as if under a strobe. Or sometimes we fear we might not be quite equal to the task. What if we can’t figure out how to feed the baby or we miss a symptom of a brain or eye bleed?

In the weeks since Luna was born and Ben was injured, we’ve employed a legion of dear friends and family to meet the needs of a newborn lamb and to cover pickups of older siblings at sports and other events while Ben goes to followup appointments. It takes a village, I’m reminded. And as Juniper has taught us: sometimes it takes someone else mitigating between us and our problems as if completing an electrical circuit. It’s there, in that spark, where the shards of glass against which we have uncomfortably strained become again whole.

 

 

 

 

by Laura Parker Roerden

(Sept. 26, 2015) Last night we drove west into a setting sun through rolling pasture-land to pick up our lambs in Scotland. Connecticut, that is. Just take a left at the Cliffs of Dover, I expected the GPS to instruct. The beautiful sheep farms and UK-influenced place names everywhere helped to create a sense of removal from time and place that felt appropriate to the occasion. It was not unlike a journey into a fairyland.

I remember when a lovely British woman I knew whose husband of fifty years died, she made the decision to sell their family home on Cape Cod and buy a thatched roof home named “Lavender Cottage on Pudding Hill Lane” in England. She chose to make the journey back to her native England via ship, explaining at the time, “Such a big life change shouldn’t be made over a five hour flight.”

I was thinking of her and the merits of the slow road, as we ambled our way along back roads to our destination. When my GPS told me to take a left on Pudding Hill Rd as the final turn to the farm, I was not entirely surprised. These sorts of things happen when you take the business of dream-making seriously.

The sheep farmer Keri was late for our meeting because she had to pick up her son. She offered us chocolate. I knew she and I would be fast friends as she introduced us to our sheep, explaining how Juliette had been bottle fed even though she didn’t need to be. “She has quite the personality, that one.”

“You’ll want to shear them right away,” Keri told us as she ran her hands through five inches of wool and outlined the merits of each animals fleece with technical language. This woman was a pro: a spinner, rare breeder, vet tech, bad ass animal loving, totally together woman farmer. I noticed syringes in the drawer of her desk as she fumbled for a pen.

“Oh, gosh,” I said. “I was hoping we could wait to shear until spring.” (Since we don’t know how to do that yet. Will they need sweaters then for winter? And isn’t that ironic? What have we done? Why don’t you just keep them and we can visit them. Or can you come live with us? all running through my head simultaneously.)

As she haltered the two lambs to help bring them into our truck, she leaned down and kissed each of them, taking her time to say goodbye. “You were my favorite Juliette,” she whispered to her, as she nuzzled her and kissed her face several times.

“You can call me with questions or anything you need,” she offered. She was catching on that we were going to need a lot of support. She handed me the registration papers, explaining exactly what to do to file them properly. Then off I drove, commandeering a pickup with two lambs, two children, a teenager and myself.

The quilt we had wrapped around the animal carriers came off during the first leg of our journey. We didn’t realize the animals were exposed until we were already at a drive-through. It was nearly 8:00 pm and we hadn’t eaten, so we had stopped. The two lambs were bleating in the background as we gave our order over the intercom. The teenager who gave us our food made a double take when he noticed our precious live cargo.

“I bet you’ve seen stranger things,” I said.

“Oh, yeah. That’s nothing!” he said. “I live on a farm.”

Say no more, I thought. “Yes, you have,” I answered.

Settling the lambs into our barn in the dark did not dampen our spirits as six of us surrounded their pen and coo’d in that sweet voice reserved for small children and baby animals.

This morning, I got to the barn just in time to hear bleating coming from the barn and answers of moo-ing from the other side of the wall. The cows and lambs were having a conversation! I can only imagine its content.

They had a lot to say to 9-year old Ben and me as well, though they were a little camera shy when we tried to capture it.

“Good Morning,” from Juniper and Juliette.

We love you already.

by Laura Parker Roerden

Work is love made visible. – Kahil Gibran

 

My father chose to be a farmer. By doing so, he was following in his own father’s footsteps and making good use of 62-acres of established farmland. But it was what some might call a cynical decision.

You see, my dad had been offered a spot on a minor league baseball team coming right out of high school. Farm boys were better conditioned than a lot of other athletes in those days before advances in weight training and sports nutrition. My father could send a baseball from center field to home plate like a bullet fired from a gun, his muscles trigger ready from coming of age chucking hay bales and carrying grain and water for hours on end.  He talked to the scouts about his real odds of making it to the majors. He considered the farm that awaited him. He chose the farm.

We hear a lot nowadays about how we should pursue our dreams; do work we love. I suspect that my father would have said (even then) he loved to farm. But I doubt he loved farming more than playing baseball or that his dream of making it to the big leagues was easily dismissed when he was given the opportunity to take the next step towards realizing it. And yet, he chose to farm and said he never looked back.

So what does it really mean to follow your passion or to do the work you love? Does it mean your work is an endless party? Or simply that you find it meaningful at the end of the day? Do you know you’ve found work you love because you can do it for hours on end? Or is it when you feel that passion is your internal driver, rather than money? Or does a childhood dream become your guide for a passionate life?

I suspect my father would have said loving your work is about none of the above.

A few years ago, I hosted a neighborhood reunion at the farmhouse. All five children from the Goff clan, our neighbors up the street while we were all growing up, were home for Thanksgiving from far flung places like Minnesota and Pennsylvania. We drank too much wine in front of a fire, grabbed flashlights and climbed through the cobwebs in the barn, all the while doubled over in laughter as we shared stories about our adventures on the farm.

Marty, the oldest Goff, shared a memory he had of my dad that I had never before known about. My father had only recently died, so hearing Marty’s story was like finding a lost chapter of a well-loved book that had previously pained me every time I had reread the last printed word.

Marty was only 11 when he joined the other neighborhood boys his age in working at our dairy. As the story goes, he arrived that first day and my dad asked him to shovel manure. Hours later, sweating and slightly sick from the smell, my dad checked on him and asked how he liked the job he had been given.

“I didn’t like it, Mr. Parker.” Marty confessed. “It smelled real bad, and I was up to my knees in poop.” But it was quitting time and Marty went home for supper, where his grandmother hosed him down and washed his clothes.

Marty came back the same time the next day, where he again was given the job of shoveling manure.  Three hours later, my father again asked, “So, how did you like the job I gave you today?”

And Marty answered, “I didn’t really like it. It’s too smelly, Mr. Parker. And I don’t like standing in poop.”

On the third day, before he started work, my Dad said, “Well, Marty, do you still want to work here?”

And Marty said, “Yes.”

Still concerned, my dad asked, “But what about the smell?”

Now understanding what my father was trying to teach him, Marty answered. “What smell?”

My father gave him a new job.

I laugh upon hearing this story until tears gently roll down my face. This gift from Marty has such deep resonance to it; I can not tell if it is joy or sorrow I am feeling. But like most days I spent with my father when he was still alive, on the back of a tractor or helping muck myself, there is always the sense that the small pieces flutter into wholeness and meaning when we bring ourselves fully to a task.

Marty is now a labor leader for hotel unions in Minneapolis and tells this story of the farmer who lived up the street when he speaks at conferences. I, too, often think of my father’s quiet wisdom, usually when I myself am standing in manure. Life may not (yet) allow us to do what we love. But there is always the option to do the work we now do with great love—even the unsavory parts.

November 22, 2013

By Laura Parker Roerden

I look up and silhouetted in the dusky light is someone wearing a stripped rugby style scarf and a hooded black robe. He is carrying a white bird.

I am making supper in the farmhouse, the sounds of sizzling competing with thwaps of driving rain hitting the hard mud outside.

I look up and silhouetted in the dusky light is someone coming up the road wearing a stripped rugby style scarf and a hooded black robe. He is carrying a white bird and is about to enter our barn.

It looks like Harry Potter has brought Hedwig to visit.

I blink. And go outside.

“Excuse me,” (magical fictional character). What are you doing?”

The figure is now past my sight line, but he calls back:

“Returning your chicken.”

Oh, dear. I don’t think I’ve ever put on my barn boots faster.

“I found him in my backyard,” he explains, lowering the now rain-soaked black hood on his long robe and presenting me with the wet chicken. I recognize him—he is an eleven-year old boy who lives over a mile away across a very busy highway.

I know this particular boy because I had been friends with his mother, who had recently died from leukemia. Just last Wednesday a babysitter had brought him and his younger brother and sister to the farm to visit the animals. It had been the first time I had seen the children since their mother had passed away. I had hugged each of the three children and let them collect the eggs. The youngest boy, who is autistic and only 7, had pointed at me and said, “Mom.” I tried to hide that I had started to cry.

Now the eleven year old boy has walked the entire way from his house alone in the dark and the rain to return a chicken.

“That’s impossible,” I say to him. “Chickens don’t roam over a mile in the rain,” I explain. “It must be someone else’s chicken that lives closer to you.”

But sure enough, it is Mucky, the only white silkie chicken we own. Mucky was so named because of her penchant for falling into mud; and this chicken has the same distinctive brown ringlets around her legs.

“This is the chicken I was holding when I visited last week,” the boy explained. “So I recognized her.”

Yes, he had held that chicken for nearly the entire visit.

Chickens don’t wander, except to cross the road (famously) to go from our barn’s pasture to our lawn. To my knowledge, we’ve never had one of our chickens leave the farm; no-less travel a full mile down our road and then cross a dangerous busy main road to travel several houses down another street, choosing the exact backyard of a boy who had held him a few days before.

I offer to drive the boy back home, but we are both quiet the entire ride. I can’t resist wondering what this watery journey means and who here has rescued whom. If it had indeed been Harry Potter, what would the message from Hedwig have been?

The boy makes me promise I won’t tell his dad he had come to the farm alone. I make him promise not to do it again.

Back home now, I go to the barn to close up the chickens and check on the poor silkie, which I notice is now shivering.

“This won’t do,” I say to the chicken as I tenderly take her off the perch and fold her into my jacket to bring her back to the farmhouse, where the kids can towel dry her and warm her up.

“Mom, can we use your blow dryer?” my 9-year old son asks.

“Yup,” I answer. “Stranger things have happened.”

Are you worried about the environmental challenges facing us: from global warming to plastic pollution to habitat loss to overfishing? We are too. The next generation is inheriting an ocean that is very different from the one we did.

Time and again, Ocean Matters youth show us that there is hope—for our young people and our world’s oceans. Teens see these problems and are willing rise as stewards and leaders for healthy seas. But they need support from caring adults who say their work is important. This is where you come in.

Ocean Matters is launching an exciting new project this summer to support youth in becoming stewards for the sea as Team Ocean Teen Leaders. This spring and summer, we are training youth in Hawaii, Honduras, and Florida to rise up as ocean stewards. Ocean Matters teens have restored mangroves, done research on invasive species, looked at patterns of coral breakage to enact effective boating legislation, done coral restoration, cleaned up single use plastic and more.

Now we are looking for adults who will step up and support young people in these efforts by helping to raise funds in your networks.Would you join youth by being on our Team Ocean Fundraising Team?

How Can You Help?

Pick a level of support that you think you can raise among your ocean-loving friends and social networks and then choose a fundraising outreach that you think they will respond to.

Levels of Support

Admiral $2,000
Captain $1,000
First Mate $500
Second Mate $200
Deckhand $100

You can use this video that describes our project and why it’s important to the health of the ocean and to the youth who will inherit it. Simply use the share button in the upper right hand corner when you share it.

 

 

Simply ask your networks to contribute whatever they can to this effort. No donation is too small.

What Are Some Fundraising Ideas?

June 8 is World Oceans Day, so you can tie some of your fundraising over the next month to that!

• send out an email within your network with the video and a heartfelt message from you about why this important (this is the most effective way we’re told by the professionals). Be sure to include the donation button below or the link for online donating.
• hold a “tea for the sea” or other small event in your home and invite friends to contribute what they can
• share a FB donation request from the Ocean Matters Facebook page
• engage children in returnable cans and bottles recycling
• hold a yard sale
• your ideas!

Where Do You Donate?

Donations can be made securely online at our website and through First Giving. Include this donation button and link in your emails to your friend and networks by simply copying and pasting the below:

Ocean Matters is 501(3)c nonprofit corporation and donations are tax-deductible as outlined by law.

Donate Now

How Will the Money Be Used?

Ocean Matters is 100% volunteer run, so every dollar you give will go directly to supporting youth’s efforts as stewards for healthy seas and in recruiting other youth to join this effort. Our scholarship program funds teens who show both leadership potential and financial need. We also help support youth in creating media such as advocacy films that can be used in their efforts to recruit other teens to their teams. Youth start environmental clubs or green their schools, work on single plastic pollution issues or sponsor cleanups, teach about sustainable seafood—the possibilities are endless.

Celebrate World Ocean’s Day, June 8th by Joining Team Ocean

Simply let us know what level of support you think you can raise among your networks and we’ll put you on Team Ocean.

Join this wave of hope for the sea. You’ll receive our undying admiration and a really cute t-shirt and the knowledge that you have done something to address the many threats to our ocean.

Let us know you want to help be on our Team Ocean Fundraising team by emailing us at lproerden@oceanmatters.org

Learn more about Ocean Matters at our website!

Thank you from the bottom of our ocean-loving hearts,
the whole gang at Ocean Matters!!