The rams hang around for ten and a half months, waiting for the day when they are called to go to work, fathering lambs for the next season. We put the bucks in over a period of days and weeks. We figure that the first bucks to go in with the ewes are getting tired, so we send reinforcements. They sometimes resent being worked through the chutes, but are happy to jump out of the trailers to join the ladies. When we were loading them, I said, “Hop in boys–all the corn you can eat.” Meghan said, “All the ladies you can breed!” I added, “…and all the wind you can tolerate.” Such is the life of a buck in the winter.
Monthly Archives: December 2017
Year’s End haiku
The sun swings southward
rising now just past the slope
of Flattop Mountain.
Solstice bringing short
days and long nights, at long last
finding its nadir,
And now, blessedly,
it will not seek a further
dark’ning nor shrinking
Of sunshine, daylit
hours. Now begins a dawning–
first gleams further north.
As light grows longer
morning shine extending time
and dusk now later
And later each day,
the world breathing in, and out
since Fall equinox
Led the moon and stars,
turning day into darkness,
stealing time each turn
Of the earth around
the sun, then leaning away
each revolution.
The pole star blazing
earlier as each nighttime
stole hours of sunshine.
Now we begin the
pendulum swinging northward,
toward the springtime,
It seeks a turning
Away from the magnet pull
That drew it southward.
Now the poles reverse
Morning’s rays creeping northward
Toward Sheep Mountain,
Toward equinox
when the heaven’s days and nights
will become equals.
But for now, solstice
in the winter, in the cold times
end times, renewal
We don’t sacrifice
animals. We don’t light fires
and burn Yuletide logs
Though we string shining
ropes that glitter and sparkle,
that glisten and glow
Yet we count the hours
for we know the sun returns
and the nighttime shrinks.
Our superstitions
replaced by certain science
daylight will rebound
Instead we sing songs
of praise, and adulation–
the birth of our Lord
Heralding the time
when the rising of the sun
fulfills the promise
Of the infant child
whose birth, foretold by shepherds,
attended by beasts
By cows, by donkeys,
by sheep bleating in the night
calling to the Babe
And we know by faith
and by our experience
that daylight returns.
So in the meantime
we sing and we celebrate,
this blessed season.
Romance on the ides of December
The ides of December means that it’s time to put the rams in with the ewes. Romance in December brings lambs in May. A sheep’s gestation is five months less five days. I wish we could predict now just when the shearers will arrive and what the weather will be like on the 10th of May.
The dwindling dinner party
Every year we buy several loads of corn to feed to the ewes on the desert. We will put the rams in with the ewes in a couple of days, and it is important that their nutrition is optimal. Nothing is better than corn for flushing the ewes. In late November, we had the first load of corn delivered. Now, in almost mid-December, that load is almost gone, but the ewes have found it very tasty and nutritious.
North to the Red Desert
The ewes have made their annual trek north to the Red Desert, where we have wintering ground on the Cyclone Rim and Chain Lakes grazing allotments. These allotments are part of the vast Great Basin, home to Greater Sage Grouse, desert elk, riparian plants and amphibians, feral horses, many many antelope and, part of the year, cattle and sheep. The Great Basin is named because it is a closed basin. To the north, the Continental Divide splits and runs in separate ranges until it meets again about 15 miles south of Wamsutter near the Haystack Mountains. The country south of there–Church Butte, Adobe Town, Powder Rim–is likewise amazing landscape, but it is not part of the Great Basin, the Red Desert. It is always a relief when we safely cross the overpass over the Union Pacific line and the underpass beneath I80 and head out across the open country for winter pasture. We are a week later than usual on the trail north. We had to wait for snow, since there’s not much water on the trail. Like Goldilocks, we want it to be not too hot and not too cold!
“Preg Testing” the bucks
Each fall, before the bucks join the ewes, we ask Optimal LIvestock Services to fertility check them. Renowned, and sort of retired Dr. Cleon Kimberling and his partner Geri Parsons bring their traveling lab to ranches around the West. Dr. Kimberling started this service when he was the extension sheep vet for Colorado State University. Back in the day, Dr. Kimberling would arrive with a crew of veterinary students. Dr. K would bicycle over the mountains from Fort Collins while the students drove the van. CSU no longer offers this service, but luckily for us, and others, Dr. Kimberling and Geri Parsons are keeping up the good work. He is still an avid bicyclist, and a working vet. Rhen was fascinated by the whole process, and told his parents that we had “preg tested” the rams.