I’m driving past the pond on my way home and watching the icy wind lift swirls of snow into the air. They skitter across the frozen surface of the water, lift and dance like mini-tornados. creating white-outs as they blow across the road in front of my car. To me, they are the embodiment of pure winter.
In like a lion comes the month of March. We accept cold in February as part of our winter package: The grocery stores don’t even think about having colored pots of daffodils lining the plant display aisle. But, once the calendar page turns to March so too our thoughts turn to spring and I don’t leave the grocery store without a purple narcissus or a paper coned package of white tulips tucked in among my food to help me weather the war between winter and spring.
On a farm, spring reveals itself without much melting. There can be five foot snowbank remnants from February but the sun remembers that it is now March. Even on the coldest days you can feel the new warmth in the sunshine beginning to melt the icy ground of animal paddocks. This winter we were resolute about daily scraping and manure shoveling. We were determined to avoid the seven hour day we put in last year, with a tractor, to get back to ground zero. However, even as we stand leaning on our shovels, breathing heavy, the ground grows soggy with melting sheep poop.
March is the month in which we need to begin thinking about new life on the farm. We decide that we would like to have more hens for laying and spend hours talking about various brooding box designs. Baby chicks become hens in a matter of weeks so we also talk about adding on to our chicken coop. One condo for the first flight of ladies and a second for the youngsters, seems like the perfect human ski trip accommodations. We mull over the breed of chicks to order. Our first year we had helpful suggestions from a friend, but this year we are flying solo. Turns out the color of tail feathers is not as important to us as some assurance that they are low-maintenance birds who lean away from the tendency to kill their friends. We decide to order ten Buff Orpingtons – the golden retriever of chickens. We don’t really need ten more but unfortunately we understand attrition much better this year than we did last.
Each evening we drag our metal ladder across the barn and climb up into the hay loft to drop a dinner bale down. I stand and breathe in the green smell of fresh hay and kneel to gather hay bale leftovers to stuff into hen’s nests and begin to count. In March we need to begin to figure the number of bales we have left. We have emptied our other hay storage space already so this is the only feed we have left until we turn the sheep out to pasture in May. Prices are close to double if you have to purchase hay in the winter so you want to calculate correctly when you order in late summer.
It is also time to begin calling the shearer. This is a task that needs to begin early because, even as repeat clients, it will take several phone calls to get through and schedule a time. Our sheep are heavy with wool. These coats are wonderful insulation from the north wind, but the spring sunshine now pushes the flock into the barn mid day to escape the heat and take a nap. It is time for a shave and a haircut.
Thursday it was almost sixty degrees at noon. All day I listened to the thunderous rush of snow sliding off the metal roofs and landing on the ground below with a satisfied thud. The icicles that the winter winds had bent toward our front windows until they looked like demonic teeth badly in need of orthodontic work, began to drip steadily. But, as early evening brought darkness, it also brought back the cold. I woke in the night to the roar of the wind coming down the mountain: at its height it sounded almost like a growl in its intensity. Laying in the dark I was both fascinated and frightened. When we went out to feed animals the next morning in the returned cold, there was a tree lying across the paddock. It had blown down from outside the fencing and broken part of one of the gates. The sheep looked at us chewing and unblinking as though having a tree smash into their winter space was an every day occurrence. We finished our daily scrape and dragged out the chainsaw. Paul had difficulty hiding his delight at having to use his beloved Stihl. We have come to understand spring as the time of repairs, and of Paul using his chainsaw.
We are coming into the middle of March this week. Time for corned beef and cabbage. As we head toward April the smell of promise is in the air as more people become vaccinated and Covid restrictions slowly begin to lift. Perhaps this lion will, indeed, go out like a lamb. If so, I’m really hoping that doesn’t mean more sheep manure to shovel.
Melissa Perley