LAMBS, by Hardscrabble Farmer

Occasionally, one finds grace and wisdom on the Internet. From Hardscrabble Farmer at theburningplatform:

I woke in the darkness an hour before sunrise. The wind had been blowing hard for days, the sound of it lulling me to sleep and then hours later drawing me up from the world of dreams as it roared outside the windows. The temperature had fallen to the single digits for the last week or so, colder if you believed what they said about the wind chill factor, but it was warm beneath the blankets as my adjusted to the dimmest ember of the dawn through the windows to the east. In the coldest months of Winter we tend to slow our efforts down and spend a great deal more of our time in contemplation than in the vigorous labor of the warmer months. I got up and let the dogs in for their meal having spent the long night patrolling the farmyard in the bitter cold. I listened to them eat from their bowls while I made coffee in the lambent glow of the kitchen, the soft tinkling of their collar and tags keeping a perfect rhythm with their feeding.

I dressed quickly and put on my coat, boots and cap before stepping out into the icy air. In the paddock I could make out the form of the sheep, three of them in a clump near the sugar house gate, the rest spread around the big paddock out front. The feeder stood filled but it was to early for them to feed and while I couldn’t see them clearly the sounds they made were clear across the distance from the doorstep to the front lawn. I knew almost instantly that one of them had lambed.

It had been coming for days and while I didn’t allow them full access to the rest of the farm, I allowed them the room in the paddock rather than closing them into the sheepfold and now I regretted that decision since it was far to cold to give birth in the open, so I hustled over to them, snow brittle and crunching beneath me boots as i closed the distance. Later that day my son told me he thought he’d heard a soft bleating around 4am but when he opened the door to his cottage to listen, he’d heard nothing more and went back to sleep.

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