Day: August 4, 2016

Whenever I am in need or trouble, the Gulleys, long-time dairy farmers and our friends, are among the very first people I will call. I texted Ed and Carol this morning and said I needed help. I knew we were likely to have to put Deb down and I had to figure out what to do with a 200 plus pound ewe, especially on a warm summer day.

Ed has done this a thousand times, and he is a big and powerful man.

The flies and maggots and smell would be long in coming. Most farmers have a dead animal pile, animals live and die all the time on farms. Carol Gulley asked if we wanted to bury Deb or have Ed come over and pick her up and bring him to his farm. We don’t bury sheep, we are fond of them, but they are not like dogs or horses or donkeys to us.

I confess I do not love all animals the same. The loss of a sheep is not the same thing as the loss of a donkey or a pony or a dog to me, although I was especially attached to Deb and her twin Jake, and their mother Ma. Sadly, I had to kill all three of them, Ma was a rescue and I don’t know much about her past, except she was in rough shape when she arrived.

Ed had a brutally long day haying and milking on a hot day, he finished the evening milking and hopped in his truck and came over  just at dusk. We put a tarp down and Ed – he is very strong – and Maria put Deb on the tarp and pulled her out to Ed’s truck. He put down a metal grid, pulled Deb up on it, then lifted the grid onto the back of the truck.

Sheep live humble lives, Deb was born in the dirt of the Pole Barn and left us on a tarp on the back of a farm truck to go to a dead animal pile. She will feed the crows and cultures and coyotes and worms and foxes, she will enter the chain of nature.

Ed was also here when the bear who crawled injured into our pasture was killed by state environmental police.  He is the best kind of friend, you can absolutely count on him when you need him, and I hope he feels the same way about us. That is what community is about.

So a humble ending to a humble sheep. Tomorrow, we wash out the barn and move on. We are buying 130 bales of hay from Ed, they will be coming soon.

I often took a photograph of Kinney Road looking up. The other day I turned around and looked down.

I drove by a farm stand, Stanndard’s Farm today and I saw their plant sale was over. It seems to have been successful, and I liked the pattern of the empty plant display boxes under the welcome sign. It had a lot of character. I think it was full of marigolds when I last saw it.

The old farmer used to sit in the white folding chair, his wife – he called her “Mother” – sat with him in the stand towards the end, he couldn’t see well enough to count out change, so he would relay the purchase to her, he would say “five ears, Mother,” and she would take the money and meticulously count out the change from a box she carried in her lap.

For many years, the farmer did that himself, until he could not see well enough or hear. He sat in his farmstead in July – his corn was fresh and delicious and popular – and he charged 50 cents an ear. He was a bit dour, he was friendly enough, but not into chatting much.

In July and August, he could always been found in the stand during the day, taking a break for lunch, his farmhouse was just across the road. I was startled to see how frail and weak he was last year, but he was in the stand every day throughout the corn growing season.

I knew that one way or another, it would be his last. I was touched at the gentleness and affection between he and mother, he told me he had been married for more than 50 years. This year, the stand is abandoned, his chair and Mother’s sit on a pile of corn husks, farm hands used to bring the corn to the stand all day, freshly picked, sold on the same day.

One of these days, I will run into someone who will know what happened to the old farmer – is he too ill to run his stand, did he die, or has he been moved somewhere else. I thought he was quite brave to come to his stand every day last year, he seemed to be in great pain.

Today I stopped by the stand and was touched to see his chair next to Mother’s, close to where I had last seen them, up front, next to the piles of corn and their cash box and Irises, which sold for $5 a half dozen. I would buy a dozen ears and Irises for Maria. I miss the farmer and his wife in the old stand, I am thinking of them this time of year.

Driving by, it feels like t here is a hole in the earth, waiting to be filled. There are  not too many more like them.

Fate has her own ideas about sheepherding, but she is joyous and passionate about it. There is a joy to her love of work, her individuality, her affinity for sheep. She loves to be around them, run around them, work with them, she just doesn’t want to push them around or tell them what to do. They have accepted her now, and there is a peacefulness to her work. It is amazing how fast she runs and how much she loves to run free. Joy in motion.