The Time

I’m standing in the driveway and I hear honking in the distance. I stop what I’m doing, tilt my head to the sky and wait. In a few minutes the sound becomes louder, bursts of honks that sound scolding, as if someone is flying off course and needs correction. Soon I see the familiar V shape of Canada geese taking their practice flights over the pond. Sometimes when I am lying in bed, through the crack in the window, I hear them pass overhead. I imagine them looking down on our roof from the inky sky as they pass in front of the harvest moon. Fall has arrived. They will soon depart.

As the temperature consistently lowers, my bee-hives become quieter. The past three days have seen cold rain and no flying. If the sun comes out and things warm up enough I’ll take a walk past the basil green hives and see them venturing out into the sunshine but those days are limited. I spend time planning how best to get them through the winter months. I bug my friends, the ones who who keep bees, for information. We stock up on tar paper and staples to wrap hives in, buy slabs of bee candy in case they run out of the honey they have stored, and prepare foam insulation to perfectly fit into the top of the hives.

Each morning I clean the chicken coops; I haul a lime-green bucket, a dust pan and drag a bag of shavings along. The plastic bucket whacks me in the legs as I stumble through the gate. I carefully set my feet down to avoid stepping on the wrinkly claws of hens who dart between my legs, waiting for scratch. Each day I open the door to the Youth Hostel and am greeted by a young Rhode Island Red who hops in through the chicken entrance. She cocks her head to the side as if questioning what comes next. I speak to her as I begin scraping old shavings and chicken manure into the bucket. She stands on the roost I am cleaning, directly in my way, and talks to me. I wish her “good morning” and as she bends down slightly, I run my hands along the silky feathers down her back. As soon as I have placed a bunch of fresh shavings down she settles herself into the pile. I wish her goodbye til tomorrow and move to my next job.

The rain began Friday and continued, almost without stopping, through today, I made the decision not to bring my sheep to pasture due to the wet conditions. They would spend the day in their winter paddock snacking on second cut hay from the feeders. Finishing chores I turned to see Daisy standing at the fence. She bellowed belligerently at me for not following routine and taking them to the field.

Some people feel that animals don’t have cognitive thought processes, that they don’t have familial relationships or feel emotion such as pain or sorrow. I believe that is often justification for bad behavior by humans.

This is something I have struggled with this week as we have had to make the decision to euthanize two of our ewes. For quite a while my vet has felt that our oldest ewe, Mrs. Chubbers, would struggle to make it through another winter. She has a persistent limp that even my daily dose of Meloxicam (think Ibuprofen for humans) mixed into a pile of grain and corn, cannot undo. She has lost several teeth making eating difficult for her. Last winter we fed her a mash of Alfalfa and beet pulp to help maintain her weight. While not ignoring Sarah’s advice, I just could not do it.

The wet conditions this summer have wreaked havoc on livestock’s feet, especially the light-hooved. I kept my flock off the fields entirely for as long as I could, feeding hay in the barn. When in the pasture, I rotated them from small paddock to small paddock on highest ground possible, not using the lower, more soggy fields, at all. Even with that, some of the ewes hooves got mushy. Sweet Pea and Quince got a dose of antibiotics when I noticed them walking gingerly. Quince recovered quickly but I stood in the doorway of the barn on many occasions and watched Sweet Pea lifting one hoof at a time as she stood trying to pull hay from the feeders. Back came Sarah, checked her feet- declared them totally dry and so we stood together, watching. I noticed that she spent more time lying down than standing, even when the rest of the flock were wandering and grazing. I also noticed she kept her head slightly down, an odd angle for a ewe. Sarah also noticed and took a video. The determination was that she had an injury, perhaps cause by a head butt from another ewe. The lifting of her feet and her somewhat blocky gate made Sarah think that there could be nerve damage. She looked over at me and said, “The ewe is in a lot of pain.”

I asked her for one more week to see if she might heal. Thursday I was drying dishes at the sink and looked down to the fields. Just beyond the gate I could see Sweet Pea lying on the cool green grass, watching her flock graze all round her, but never once trying to get up. And I knew.

The decision weighs heavy on Paul and I. In almost seven years we have not had to face this. Tonight I stood in the barn and wanted Mrs. C to tell me what to do, but she looked at me with her calm stare- trusting me to continue to care for her, whatever that meant.

In taking her, we will also be taking away Daisy’s mother. Many times I will find Daisy running over to her mother to check in. They feed side by side and she is the first to answer her mother’s blat.

Filling feeders full of sweet hay this evening I noticed Mrs. Chubber’s wet fleece. She being unable to climb up into the barn out of the elements. Sweet Pea lay quietly chewing her cud at the feet of the flock as everyone else hungrily grabbed dinner.

It doesn’t make me feel better to tell myself that this is part of farming. What I do take comfort in is the idea that being their shepherd means that it is my responsibility to make even the most difficult decisions for them.

Bright yellow beech leaves lean against our living room windows as if hoping that the support might possibly sustain them. I stand in the window and think that perhaps this is the last gift of care that I can and need to give my sheep: a peaceful end.