March:Anticipation
Anticipation: the action of anticipating something; expectation or prediction.
I am full of anticipation this month. March is when our lambing begins. I have been watching these six ewes all winter. Watching their sides grow, and their bellies swell downward. Watching their interactions. Wondering if they are all bred. Wondering what March will bring.
My goal is to build a flock, from my own breeding decisions. I look for good Shetland conformation; straight and sturdy backs, well sprung ribs, square leg stance front and back, wide set horns, kind eyes, and fine crimped fleece, oh and color, lots of color. White is the dominant color in Shetland sheep, but I crave the deep brown black and all the shades of grey and brown they come in. In my first little flock of five, I was lucky to have Katmoget, (a black based pattern that is dark on the underside and light topside with dark eye markings) and black sheep. Shetlands come in 11 different colors and over 30 patterns. I am building on that foundation towards all the colors. I do not have any brown based sheep…yet.
Every March I am filled with anticipation of this new lamb crop. Every year, as I watch what these sheep produce, I learn more about the genetics of the parents. What emerges relies on the traits they carry and since they are not registered, I only know what they appear to be. The genes express themselves in the offspring so it’s kind of a fun puzzle to figure out. The more I can deduce from his offspring, the more information I can give the next owner of Hamish when I need to replace him with fresh genetics. He has been a very good ram for me so far. Except for the occasional demolition, but that’s for another blogpost.
I am experiencing the anticipation of expectation and the delight in what’s to come. As the time gets closer though, the anticipation becomes nervous and anxious. The anticipation of darker predictions crowds my mind. I begin to worry about the weather, I worry about who will go first and if they are experienced or a new mother. I feel the udders, watch their tails, and strain to get a peek at their vulvae- are they pink? growing? changing shape? Are their bellies getting lower, are they sinking in the loin area? Have I made good choices with pairing? Did that younger ram get the job done? Did I mention the weather?
I ready my lambing kit and as I go through all the items. I read of other lambings on farms across the country on Facebook and Instagram, I begin going through all the birthing scenarios. I go to the Tractor Supply and buy more Nutri-drench, and nipples, and then remember where I put them last year. I take the lambing kit to the barn. The next day, I remove all the frozen liquids and bring them back up to the house. Did I mention the March weather here; snow today, 60 tomorrow, then rain?!
I check all my lambing jugs, repair the gate latches, shoo the chickens and their abandoned nests and frozen eggs out of them. I build a new jug closer to the window, just in case. I crawl around them looking for sharp edges, I place boards at the base so little ones can’t squeeze out, I fill with soft bedding.I hope for the best, I prepare for the worst.
I begin to decide who will go first and preemptively lock her up in the lambing jug at night. My sheep can go in and out at their choice, and while I know that they are fine, I would hate for one to give birth on one of these cold march nights and not see where they are. So, I worry less if the impending ewes are locked up at night. They seem to enjoy eating in private and not jostling for food. If nothing happens over night, they are released the next morning.
Anticipation has 2 sides, the excitement for good results and the dread of the opposite. I run through all the options and imagine how I will handle them. I don’t sleep well.
And so it begins…
On March 10 Enya, my oldest and most experienced ewe delivered twins again. A beautiful Katmoget ram, and a beautiful ewe who looks just like her. I named the ram Gawain, and his sister Elsbeth. Enya is an amazing mother This year, I held back and just watched her do her thing. It is so humbling to watch an animal do so well at her job and realize how little she needs me. To give birth to a living creature, then clean, and talk to her lamb, nudge it onto its feet and guide it to latch on then, birth another and tend to it just as well, is a feat everyone should witness just once in their lives. It absolutely takes your breath away. I realize this ewe is one of my most precious treasures and teachers.
On my birthday, the 19th, one of my young ewes, Gaelach, surprised me with the delivery of a tiny, stillborn, ewe lamb. I was heartbroken along side her. I checked them all at first light and all was well then Ed took me to breakfast and when I returned, I found her, next to her unresponsive lamb. The lamb was small, only 2 ½# but beautiful. It was clear the ewe had cleaned her off completely and tried to no avail to get the lamb up. She was so sad and silent. I was also. I just didn’t expect her to be ready to lamb yet. I figured she was still several weeks away.Honestly I felt like I had failed her. I spent the rest of the day making sure she was well, nourished and recovering. When she had safely passed her placenta and rested. I milked some of the colostrum for future use and now we will let her dry up.
The next morning, as I buried the small black ewe with a blue jay feather, I thought about this anticipation of the light and the dark. To be grateful for the good outcomes and thankful for the bad ones. The lessons I’ve learned; to be more careful, more attentive, to look at all the ewes not just the impending ones and think of the unforeseen circumstances. Mostly I remember that I am not in control, my job is to care for my flock and do my best by them. And so I continue to wait. 2 down 4 to go.
Anticipation is filling my studio space this month also. I have been asked to participate in a gallery show in Minnesota. I am so grateful to my graduate school artist friends Barbara Gilhooly and Ayn Hanna for introducing my work to their gallerist Merry Berg at Gallery 360 in Minneapolis. At the end of April, I will have some work in a show when they are showing there. It will be a reunion of sorts with our other compadre, Carol Lyne, flying here and then driving up with me. I am in a flurry of painting and framing and show preparation. It all seems to be the positive sort of anticipation with a few moments of stark terror flying through. Ed is a champion frame builder, and I am so lucky to have a beautiful woodworking shop to build custom sized floating frames for my paintings.
Anticipation of another sort is slowly bubbling along on another burner in the studio. Many times when I am thinking of the next body of work, I go through a series of exercises and study/gathering time. New work is exciting but a little scary and I find if I ease myself in slowly, I worry less. I am a ‘dip my toes in and slowly enter the pool from the stairs’ kind of girl, rather than a dive in headfirst. I wasn’t always, but with age comes experience and general self-knowledge. I am working on a series paintings of farmers at work called Your Beautiful Work. To find authentic reference photos, I put out a call in my social media that I am looking for images of farmers and ranchers at their work. People have been sending and sharing their images. Most mornings, I share time-lapse videos of me making small drawing studies. In these studies, I ‘anticipate’ the paintings, by walking my hands through the image, trying out the composition, doing a dry run, working out the value structure and seeing where the pitfalls might be. I tend to paint slowly, in several layers. If I can work out the initial ‘putting down’ in a drawing, I feel less anxious during the painting stages.If I get ‘lost’ in the painting , I have the drawing to refer back to. I can be free then, in the painting, to adjust or change as I like. I have started working this way and I am excited for this new body of work. I have close to 30 new drawings and so far, things have been going well. As the paintings have been rolling out, I make a giclee print of each painting to send to the farmer as a thank you. One of the paintings was purchased by the farmer. Eventually I want to put them together in a proposal for a gallery show. I want the world to see the actual work that farmers and ranchers do. In our culture, they tend to be invisible, and their work underrated, misunderstood and undervalued.
Farmers and ranchers make up only 2% of our population. Two million farms dot our rural landscape and 98% are operated by families. 86% of US agricultural products are supplied by these family farms. That’s 2% supplying 86% of all the goods for the rest of us. In 2020, 8 cents of every dollar spent on agricultural goods went back to the farmer. In 1975, it was 40 cents of every dollar. That is not a way to support our family farms. We need to do better. We need to realize these are the people who are stewarding our most precious natural resource- our soils.
Agriculture is not the problem. Agriculture is poised to be the biggest driver to the solutions to our environmental issues and climate change. Regenerative agriculture, with its attention to soil microbiology, reduced inputs, less tillage, and keeping animals on the land, holds many of the keys to saving our soils. People making choices to support their local food systems by walking away from centralized, fragile food systems towards decentralized, local, producers and processors are another key. The first step is getting to know your farmers.
My friend Dana Di Prima is a farm supporter and pod caster who is launching a new community called #forfarmers. The vision for this community is:
“To make sure that 100% of farmers feel seen, heard, appreciated, valued and important as an essential part of our society and that they are well supported in their work”
To this end she is calling all interested to become Founders at #forfarmers. Through the power of this community, we will develop a funding base to meet the needs of farmers through grants, emergency funding, partnerships and collaborative initiatives.
I am a #forfarmers Founder, and I am asking you to join me. To get in on the ground floor and join the community or just show your support and find out more, click here
Follow Dana at XOXO Farmgirl
Listen to her Podcasts, ‘Talk Farm to Me ” and ‘The Accidental Farm’, wherever you listen or read her Blog. Any way you make contact, you will find valuable information about farmers at their beautiful work
I am anticipating amazing things in the months and years to come. Whatever the outcomes, anticipation drives this creative life we live here on Brown Dog Farm. Please follow along and see what happens… and let me know in the comments what you are anticipating this Spring.
