I have always admired farmers who can nonchalantly say, “Oh, we lambed only twelve hundred ewes this year.” My wife and I usually lamb about twenty five and generally breathe a sigh of relief when it is over, by which time we are usually into Lent. Despite this however, after the last ewe and lambs have been penned on fresh straw, I reach for the Macallan and, in the style of Clint Eastwood at the bar of the Dodge City Saloon, pour out three fingers.
I do sometimes wonder whether lambing is the start of the shepherding year or the end. Does it start with the feeding of the Tups around the middle of the previous year or when choosing the yearlings/shearlings for putting to the Tups in September? For many however, it starts with the selection of the stock from which to breed and with the decision on which to sell.
I guess all this shows that it is jolly difficult to say when the cycle of nature starts and when it ends. For each individual that cycle is clear, but for nature itself it is not so cut and dried. We are told that in the distant future the Sun will have burnt all its fuel and will go out, but that long before then the earth will not be able to sustain life and that all traces of the human race will, as Haydn’s musical oratorio Creation puts it, “Vanish into dust.”
Until that time however, I expect sheep will continue to do what they have always done, which includes things that some may find odd.
Readers will know Payford Bridge which forms the border between Redmarley Parish and Pauntley, but may not be aware that we often graze about a couple of dozen sheep on the meadow fifty yards upstream. In November last year, the river unexpectedly rose and the bridge disappeared and so did the meadow. All that is, except about half an acre of higher ground. The pregnant Sheep instead of moving to the higher ground as the waters rose, huddled disconsolately in shoulder high water right next to the river which had burst its banks in a big way.
Alerted by neighbours, and in stockinged feet, we waded two hundred yards through two to three feet of swirling, freezing, brown water to our worried ewes. The wife rattled a few ewe-nuts in a bucket and led the soggy sheep through the waters away from the river towards the higher ground. I kept the stragglers away from the submerged fast flowing river whilst Edward, the son of a local farmer, who had magically appeared positioned himself at the rear to help keep them moving.
Thus encouraged by food and confidence in front, but with a slight fear of someone they didn’t know at the rear, the baaing ovine troupe moved to safety. In a couple of places the flock was swimming, and for a brief moment the wife fell and lost her grip on the tub of ewe-nuts which bobbled in the current, but she quickly surfaced and recaptured the bucket.
Once upon higher ground the sheep shook themselves and seemed untroubled by the ordeal, however the three of us were cold, sodden, shivering, dirty and anxious for a hot shower. Despite this, the thought crossed my mind that one of the larger local sheep farmers may turn this experience into a novel farm diversification scheme.
I have heard that there are many city folk who think it a good thing to get close to animals, and who will pay good money to get close to nature in its natural environment. In fact for some years people have been flying to Miami to experience the proximity of mammals in controlled areas off the Florida Coast:
These people spend millions of dollars on what are said to be “the spiritual and therapeutic benefits of swimming in the tropics with Dolphins.” But there are suggestions that the novelty of this practice is waning. If so it may be time for an entrepreneurial farmer to offer jaded visitors a therapeutic weekend of swimming with sheep in the freezing waters of the Leadon.
View from the Pew 