Month: December 2018

The Way Back

A few nights ago, we had one of those moments. It was about six pm and we were done feeding, ready to make dinner and relax for the evening. We were having pork chops, and I went out to start the grill. When I came back in the kitchen, I told Vanessa I needed to send a short email about school while the grill warmed up. She said “okay” and went on about her business, like married people do.

She left the kitchen a couple minutes later, and I went into the office to use a computer with a real keyboard. I figured it would take about ten minutes to write the email, but as usual I was overly optimistic.

Twenty-five minutes later I went back to the kitchen, couldn’t find Vanessa, and thought Oh crap, I should have already started the pork chops. I figured she’d be mad that I was slowing down dinner. This is a pattern for us. She’s early, I’m late.

So I took the pork chops out to the back porch and that’s when I heard her yelling. Fortunately, I am deaf enough not to have made out the words, but I could tell from her tone that she wasn’t happy. So could the dogs. We all huddled in the back while she came down from the barn.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“In the office?” I said, timidly because that seemed the safest. “I told you I was going to write an email?”

“I thought you were dead!”

Then I understood. Death is her go-to thought when she can’t find me.

“Sorry… I was in the office the whole time,” I said, then added. “The pork chops are on the grill.”

“I was afraid that Jose (the ram) had gored you.” Jose has no horns, but he does like to head-butt. About the worst he could do is knock my back out of joint. “I was afraid you were dead in the Way Back.”

The Way Back is the farthest, darkest part of our property. Werewolves live there. In Vanessa‘s mind I had been gored by a hornless ram and wondered into the dark Way Back to be eaten by werewolves.

And it turns out that when she was coming down from the barn she wasn’t yelling at me, but yelling for me.

I think I would would have preferred the quickness of a heart attack punctuated by a fall from the hayloft onto the concrete floor. But we don’t always get to choose our exit.

We sorted out my imagined demise, cooked our pork chops, filled our plates, and sat down to eat. That’s when I poured salad dressing all over my pork chop instead of the salad beside it.

The Egyptian

We sold most of our lambs yesterday. That always brings mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am relieved that our flock is down to a size that’s sustainable through the winter on the 250 or so bales of hay we already have in the barn. I’m also glad to recoup some of the money we spent on that hay last summer. It’s also a lot easier to move six or eight sheep from pasture to pasture than it is sixteen, which is what we had earlier in the summer. On the other hand, it’s distressing to the animals. We have to catch them and, once we do, carry them upside down by the legs to a trailer where they are locked in.  As you can imagine, they aren’t fond of the process.

We sold them to an Egyptian man. He and I had been texting back and forth for a week about the lambs I had available, the breed, the price, and when he could come to get them.  He wanted four young Dorper ewes, he said, because he had a Dorper ram. I told him that’s what I had, and that I had the registration papers. He wanted to come one night at eight o’clock, and asked if we had lights in the barn. Yes, we have lights, I said, but eight o’clock is too late for me. 

At that point, I didn’t know he was Egyptian. We had only communicated via text, and his texts were like most people’s—short, lacking context, and mostly grammar free. At one point he wrote, “This [the lambs] is full blooded for pet right?” I asked him what he meant by “for pet,” and he responded, “sorry for the auto correction I meant dorpers”.  Okay, I thought. I was suspicious because 1) texts have no tone of voice, and 2) I had gotten other weird texts from my Craigslist ad, some from bots and some obvious scams.

He arrived with his family about six o’clock last night. An American wife and two adolescent children, a boy and a girl. Very nice people. The kids jumped out of the car and started playing with our dog, Mike, while he and I walked to the barn to look at the lambs. We chatted, turns out he is a policeman. He wanted the ewes, and decided to buy one of the ram lambs, as well. For about an hour, he and I wrangled sheep while Vanessa entertained the kids, and his wife maneuvered their very large SUV (I think it was a GMC OhMyGod or possibly a Ford BiggerNshit) and trailer around the pasture as we loaded up the lambs.

The key to loading up animals, I keep having to learn over and over, is to have them in a contained area before the buyer arrives. No matter how friendly the animals are when you are holding a grain scoop, after you snatch the first one, the others get skittish.

It turns out that my Egyptian friend—I say friend because catching frightened animals will make you friends, even if just for a short while—is a kind man. When we had a couple of long walks to the trailer carrying a kicking, bleating,upside-down sheep by the hooves, he would ask “Do you want to stop and rest?”He did not add, “old man.”

He had told me earlier that he slaughtered and butchered his own sheep. I think that’s a very humane way to do it, since what stresses the animal most is being transported and thrown into a new environment for a short period. If I had a stronger stomach, I might learn how to do it myself…someday… after the zombie apocalypse… and after I’ve eaten all the peanut butter. Anyway, after we got all the lambs loaded up, we were standing in the barn, signing the papers, and he asked, “Do you have an air compressor?”

“Yes, right over there.” I thought maybe he had a low tire.

“Let me tell you a trick,” he said.  “After you slaughter a lamb and hang it, poke a little hole in the leg somewhere, and use the compressor to fill it with air.”

“The lamb?” I asked, imagining a large, woolly balloon.

“Yeah, it separates the skin from the meat. After you fill it, put your thumb over the hole to keep the air from escaping. Then just tap all around it with a little stick.”

Kind of like a piñata? I thought.

“Makes it very easy to skin,” he said. “Just peels right off.”

We finished signing the papers, he paid me, and they left not long after that. It was dark, their taillights bobbed down the drive and disappeared over the hill. Vanessa and I fed the dogs, put up the chickens, and had a late dinner. I felt a mix of relief at having fewer animals to feed, the familiar sadness of saying goodbye to animals I have cared for, and pleasure at having met a new friend. When I went to bed around ten, Vanessa was already asleep. I was too tired to dream.