Farm Fresh Blog

When we retired, we traded traffic congestion in the 4th largest city in the country to the more rural traffic problems of living in a place with a mile long driveway. No longer are we waiting in frustration while rubberneckers view the latest accident. Now we're waiting for roadrunners to finish taking a dust bath in the dirt. No longer are we passing Cindy's Secret Sex Toy shop, now we have to hide the eyes of the underaged Border Collie while roadrunners have sex on a dirt road as you wait to pass.

Nothing around here gets in a hurry to do anything but eat. Stop and smell the roses takes on a whole new meaning in the country. And if you're a raccoon, it could mean "stop and smell the garbage." Our garbage can is about a mile away, near the main gate. One night we were coming in after dark and I started to step out and open the gate but saw a rather hefty raccoon poking around by the trashcan. I decided that perhaps now wouldn't be a good time to exit the vehicle, so we watched. And waited. And he didn't leave. He was well aware of the truck, not thirty feet from his little black nose, but there he shuffled around in the headlights, unconcerned.

I was in a hurry. I had to pee. He was not in a hurry. He was on Raccoon Time. So I waited some more. And he poked around some more. Eventually my bladder won. Wars could be fought by angry women who have to pee. I got fighting mad. No raccoon was gonna stand between me and my bathroom. I stepped out of the truck and hollered,

"Hey! I see you!!!"

He stood up. "Who? Me?"

"YES, YOU! Leave! Scram!"

If a raccoon can look affronted, he did, but he ambled his fat ass off into the forest anyway, muttering something about calling his Homeowner's Association on me.

 
We are almost guaranteed at least 4 bunnies between the house and the main gravel road out of here. Most of the time, we are the only vehicle they ever see, thus they have little or no fear of us, so we have to wait while they eat gravel, play in the dust, flirt with each other, or just sit in the open waiting for a lucky hawk to fly by. And they don't move.

Each trip to town goes something like this:

Slow down for rabbit in the road. Yell at rabbit to move.
 
"You can't see me. I'm invisible."

"No, you aren't! Get out of the bloody road!"

"I'm invisible."

"No, seriously! Move, you dopey rabbit."

(Honk horn)

"I'm invisible."

(Climb out of truck. Stand on running board and wave arms.)

"I SEE you! Get out of the road!!!"

"Wait? You see me? Seriously?"

"Yes!!! Move!!!"

"Oh crap! This way! No, that way! No, that path is better! Wait! I ran that way this morning. This way!"

(Rabbit is almost off the road, but - )

"No, that direction is better!"

(Rabbit runs all the way across road in opposite direction and stops. Still in the road.)

"Can you see me now?"

Honk horn again.

"Move, you stupid rabbit!"

"OKAY! Geeeeesh... Okay, see you tomorrow, okay? Yeah, but you won't see me because I'll be invisible."

Before we begin, you should listen to the Steve Earle song, "Copperhead Road" and get that earworm tune in the back of your head as we proceed with today's post.

https://youtu.be/xvaEJzoaYZk

You don't need to listen to a whole song about bootleggers, I just figured I'd put the tune in your head as your read because that's what's playing in my head every evening as my eyes follow the beam of the flashlight while I hunt for the little red bastards. Copperheads, not bootleggers. It's a nightly ritual now. We have killed at least 14 copperheads since I started counting at the start of summer.

I know. How horrible of me to kill God's innocent creatures. They're just part of the food chain, doing good on this earth by eating rodents. Without snakes the rodents and bugs would take over. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have 14 copperheads crawling around your back door and your snake huggin' tendencies will wobble a little too. Hey! I'm a 'live and let live' person, but do not lurk by my doorstep! I have 9 freakin' dogs, 5 cats, and about 30 or so sheep and goats IN THE BARN with me, there is no damned room for snakes in here!

Let me give you just a short excerpt from my summer. Let's slice out this week.

Wednesday:

I try to get all the chores done before dark, leaving me time around 9 pm to potty break the house dogs and get them inside before the copperheads roll out of the forest like zombies lumbering across the yard. On this night, I had the dogs inside and was doing a final roll call for the 3 kittens who still come inside at night. The two adult cats are on their own. One kitten comes inside, but another lingers outside the kitchen door near the picnic tables with one of the adult cats. The adult cat insists on my attention. Noting her empty food bowl on the ground, I stride in that direction. Gray kitten starts to come to the door but turns back and looks toward the picnic table. This should have been a clue.

I chose to ignore said clue and continue toward the empty food bowl. Right into a copperhead.

Apparently he saw me before I saw him and he was beating a hasty retreat so by the time I got the gun out that rascal was at least 20 feet away. Nevertheless, I made sure my cats were clear and started shooting.

Now the funny thing about shooting snakes is that they are easy to hit when they're sitting still, but even a .410 shotgun shell has a hard time hitting a fleeing snake doing a serpentine at that distance. My first shot missed. I was running to gain ground for a better shot when I saw the second copperhead. Yes, the second copperhead.

Funny thing though, I didn't see the cats any more.

So I shot at the second snake who was racing in the opposite direction of the first snake at warp speed. I'm still not sure where the cats beamed to but they were G-O-N-E, gone. I was then left to shoot at two fleeing suspects going two different directions in hopes of at least slowing them down enough that I could get closer.  Until - click.

Nothing. I'd shot all my .410 shells. The gun was empty. It may as well have been a paperweight. So there I was standing in the dark with an empty gun, a waning flashlight, two scared copperheads, two missing cats, and an empty catfood bowl.  Fortunately Other Half was in the barn and the sound of gunfire alerted him that perhaps there might be a problem on the north side of the house. I screamed at him to bring me another gun. Now that, Friends and Neighbors, is something he can do. Screw gun control folks, when you have 14 effin' copperheads you want guns handy where you can grab them at a moment's notice. So he trotted out with my trusty Henry lever action .22 rifle. If you can only have one gun, this is it.

Other Half and I are a pretty good snake hunting team and we soon dispatched Copperheads #10 & #11. As I've said before. Other couples have bonding experiences over Date Night. Around our house we have Snake Night.

Yes, the one on the left is a very large copperhead.

That was Wednesday night. Thursday night we were returning home late. Most of the chores had already been done  before we left, so the only thing I had to do was close the door on the chicken coop and potty break the dogs before bed. We rolled into the yard. Other Half cut the truck engine off and I opened the door and stepped onto the running board to scan the yard with a flashlight.

He ridiculed me for my caution. Being the person holding the gun AND the flashlight, I had all the cards, so I just ignored him. The beam of my light found a copperhead not 12 feet away. After a few cuss words, I shouted at him,

"I WANNA HEAR THE WORDS! NOW! I wanna hear the words!"

"Okay, you were right."

Music to the ears of any woman.

So I shot Copperhead #12 and continued my slow progress to the chicken coop. At the gate of the chicken yard I found another copperhead. Other Half shot Copperhead #13.

We did then did another sweep to clear the yard before we gave the dogs a potty break.

Little known fact: 3 Livestock Guardian Dogs and 1 Border Collie can squeeze themselves together into a small room and not make a sound. Just sayin'.

Fast forward to last night:

Other Half was gone and so I was left to batten down the hatches for nightfall by myself. This practically guarantees a close encounter with a reptile. I got all my chores done and was making my last trip into the barn before I went inside for the night when I glanced at the water spigot, expecting to see my giant toad, Jabba the Hutt, but saw a copperhead instead.

I threw out an F bomb. He ran behind a trash can. I ran for a shovel. He ran along the base of the barn. Like a bull in a china shop, I knocked tools over while madly grabbing with my snake catcher pole. He made it underneath a planter where we both stopped to catch our breath. The only thing more creepy than the copperhead you can see is the copperhead you cannot see, so I climbed on top of the log splitter to both give me the advantage of height, and because I'm a weenie and don't like an unseen copperhead around my ankles. I then began to dismantle the planter in my quest for blood. At this point I began to question my sanity. Who does this shit alone in the dark? I was trying to juggle a flashlight, a gun, a shovel, and a snake catcher pole. I definitely needed the other half of my snake catching team.

Those headlights coming down the driveway were a welcome sight. I think Other Half was just happy that I had not shot up the side of the barn in my solo hunt for the copperhead.  Yes, it would have been easier but there are holes in the other side of the barn already where Other Half shot it up. Sometimes we get lost in the moment.

So Copperhead #14 joined the ranks of his brothers, flung on the other side of the fence for the raccoons.

We have killed more copperheads this summer already than we killed all of last year. This has been a bad year for copperheads. I blame the unusually wet spring, and two mean-ass Border Collies.

Border Collies???

Yes... Border Collies. In particular, these murderous bastards.

I've been told that armadillos eat copperheads. While I'm sure that's not the bulk of their diet, ANYTHING that eats snakes is welcome around here, so I was happy when armadillos moved underneath the cabin. We had a few close encounters where we had to rescue armadillos from Border Collies

but overall it was working. We saw the occasional copperhead but mostly we saw where the armadillos had tilled up the yard at night. It was a trade I could live with.

All was well until the Border Collies and Briar killed the armadillos. Yes, two in one night. I was livid. And guess what?

The close encounters with copperheads began a steady climb.

April 27: copperhead by barn door
May 7: copperhead in sheep pen
June 7: copperhead by kitchen door
June 12: copperhead on road
June 24: copperhead by back gate

June 27: Trace and Cowboy kill 2 armadillos

June 29: copperhead by chicken pen
July 2: copperhead by bedroom window
July 5: copperhead inside barn aisle !!! WTF!!!
July 6: copperhead by bedroow window
July 20: 2 copperheads outside kitchen door
July 21: 2 copperheads outside chicken pen
July 22: copperhead by bedroom window

Do I have absolute proof the death of two armadillos is directly related to our spike in copperhead sightings? No, I don't.Will I allow anyone to ever shoot an armadillo out here? No, I won't. From now on those little buggers get safe passage wherever they want to go. Godspeed, Little Armored Buddy.

And the copperheads?

Well I'm hoping that we thin out the bold ones, leaving only the shy ones that don't come up to the barn alive to reproduce. Hopefully over the years we'll end up with a population of copperheads that stay in the forest. I don't want to eradicate all of them. That would leave the niche open for rattlesnakes and trust me, I'd rather have the copperheads. They aren't as quick to bite. If they were, the dogs and livestock would already have been bitten. Because of that I'm not actively hunting copperheads down in the forest, but if I happen see one, especially around my house, I'm like a chicken chasing a bug, except that this chick carries a gun - and a shovel.

Dear Reader Christine asked about Lily. She wanted to know how my #1 Ranch Dog was doing now that Mesa was assuming more responsibility for chores around here.

Rest assured. Lily's status as the Supreme Ultimate Perfect Dog is secure. (pause while the rest of my pack of dogs gags)

I have long held to the notion that the dogs are different tools in my toolbox and while now I find myself reaching more and more for Mesa because she needs the practice (and she's better at a lot of stuff) Lily is still my go-to girl for many jobs.

While Mesa is good for large sweeping gathers or short stuff where bluster and bravado can bluff her way into success, Lily is required when fine-tuned driving is needed, or a job absolutely must be accomplished right now with no care to being soft on stock because they're rioting in the alfalfa barn like a protest crowd storming an electronics store.

Most of the time I don't want holes in my livestock and Lily is prone to do that if they don't behave immediately. Handling stock involves the carrot and the stick. Lily is the stick. In those same situations Mesa rushes in and makes them think they'll get bitten, but she doesn't do any damage. On the other hand, Lily slides in like a Navy Seal and gets stuff done, but there may be a few holes in the most stubborn offenders. It might not always be pretty but the job is done swiftly, and the stock listen better to Mesa the next time. The sheep can be pretty well-mannered, but the goats can behave like gypsies in the palace, completely disrespecting a dog that doesn't back up what she says.

A classic example of when you need Lily's Clint Eastwood approach happened a couple of days ago. Some of the does are in season and the bucks are particularly obnoxious. They are large, stinky, uppity creatures who tend to be bolder and pushier than normal due to testosterone poisoning. Around here, the girls come into their pens in the late afternoon and the boys are turned loose so they can browse and graze until sundown. This happens every evening and most nights the bucks are simply in the background while we're doing evening chores. They wander in whenever they wander in and we close the gate behind them at bedtime.
Thus I was completely unprepared to be assaulted by two horny goats when I was taking a bucket of scratch grain to the chicken yard.

They swooped in and I was surrounded by a Goat Lives Matter protest rally. They refused to let me pass. Irritated, I made the mistake of kicking one. He immediately responded with flared ears and renewed interest.

"Oh, you want a piece of me, Grain Bucket Carrier? Bring it on! Let's rumble!!!"

Ut oh. Big mistake. Do not give a hormone-addled buck the invitation to spare. I now had two bucks insisting on stealing my grain bucket and one was pretty aggressive about it. (Young and stupid. The older buck wasn't nearly as bold.) Now it took longer to type this on the keyboard than the encounter actually took place because just about the time I recognized there was a problem, a tiny black and white blurry missile launched herself in between me and the most aggressive buck. It was Mesa. She was everywhere and nowhere at once. Lily then soared in grabbed the older buck by the back leg and dragged him across the barnyard away from me, while the Livestock Guardian Dog watched in shocked amazement.

And that was it. Stopped before it even got started. And this is why if you have bucks, bulls, or rams, you need a good stockdog that can recognize the situation escalating and put a stop to it before it gets out of hand. Lily has the confidence for that. In fact, she lives for it. Mesa recognizes the situation but needs the confidence that comes with experience. It'll come. It's in her genes.

But to answer your question, Christine, Lily is doing just fine, still Top Ranch Hand, and Queen Of All She Surveys.

After a year of retirement, I find that I still bleed Blue. I stared at their dead bodies on the television screen in horror before Fox News wisely switched off the camera in Dallas and went back to New York. But it was too late. A nation was shocked into the realization of what those of us in Law Enforcement already knew - police work is dangerous stuff.

I stared in numb silence at the television and there, in the safety of my living room, I cried. I cried for their families, and I cried for the officers who still held the line as they protected the very citizens who had been protesting against them earlier. And as the days passed and more stories came out, I still cried. I cried when I heard about the off-duty officers answering the call to arms, these officers who left their families, some dressed only in shorts and flip-flops, carrying rifles, raced to help their on-duty brothers and sisters. That, Dear Reader, is The Brotherhood. It is a bond that ties us all as brothers and sisters in blue. It is the very bond that so many distrust.

Perhaps unless you have been in military combat, it is hard to understand the bond between officers. As individuals, officers are not white. They are not black. They are not Hispanic. They are not Asian. Officers are Blue. If you don't believe it, watch them together in a crisis. The men and women I worked with over my career are closer than siblings, for you cannot experience some of the things we walked through together without developing an unshakeable bond.

"I've got your back."

For most civilians this statement means I'll help you move furniture. For cops, this means I'll put my life on the line to protect yours.

On some levels I can understand the mistrust of police. The Brotherhood of cops is a tightknit community and from the outside looking in, the wall we create around ourselves feels exclusive. People talk about The Brotherhood between officers as a bad thing, convinced that other officers will cover for a bad cop. Frankly, I've been involved in those investigations and an officer investigating a dirty cop is like a dog with a bone. We want to ferret them out. They make the rest of us look bad. But we want the chance to take care of our business ourselves first. We want the public to let us investigate things before the case is tried in a court of media and public opinion mere hours after it comes to light.

"Police officers are rude!"

Yes, sometimes they are. Occasionally you might run across a cop who is just an ass, but for the most part, officers are rude because they don't want to die, and they don't want you to die, and the behavior you are displaying scares him. He wants to see your hands. You know you're reaching for your insurance card. He knows there might be a gun in that glove box.

As an officer I have been on hundreds of traffic stops. I cannot count the number of guns I have pulled out of door panels, center consoles, and glove boxes. While many people get all bent out of shape because an officer has his hand resting on the butt of his gun during a traffic stop, I can assure you that for a large chunk of my career, my gun was out of my holster and pointed at someone EVERY NIGHT. That comes as a shock to most people, but in the kind of work I did, it was safer for everyone.

On some nights, that gun was the reason I came home at the end of my shift.. And my rude behavior was often the reason suspects went to jail instead of the morgue. If the gun was already out, he was less likely to do something stupid which would result in a bad night for everyone.  I was looking for narcotics and felons and if you were a small fish caught in my wide net, once I determined that you were not a danger to me or my partners, the gun was holstered, the handcuffs came off, and I apologized for your trouble and sent you on your way. People, please understand, when the cop feels safe, you are safe. If he needs a gun out to feel safe in that situation, don't be offended. Guns don't go off by themselves. Guns go off when you scare cops.

"Well, if a cop is that scared, he shouldn't be a cop."

I won't even dignify that kind of stupidity with a comment other than to say I've heard it spouted all too often by ignorant people. If you think the job is easy, you get your ass out there and do it. They're hiring.

Most citizens have few real contacts with police except for a traffic stop. No one likes getting a citation. In many cases the stop is not about the minor traffic violation itself. The violation gives the officer the probable cause to look for bigger fish. The cop is actually looking for narcotics, or warrants, or stolen goods, or any number of other greater violations.

Perhaps the person or the vehicle meets the description of a suspect in another crime and the officer needs to be able to stop the car and check it out. That traffic violation just gave him the probable cause he needed to stop the vehicle. When things go bad the media reports this as "the cop just stopped him because he had a broken tail light" or "they just stopped him because he didn't use his turn signal and now he's dead! No one should be killed over a traffic violation!"

The cop ends up looking like a nitpicky, trigger-happy racist but the reality was the shooting was never about the traffic violation. Most of the time it was about not complying with simple directions.

Over my career as a Houston Police Officer I've made hundreds of traffic stops. I have been cussed at, and screamed at, and some stops have blown up into all out fights on the side of the road. I have had to smile and be polite as citizens MF'd me and accused me of stopping them just because they were black even though I patrolled in a black neighborhood. Everyone was black.

But mainstream media doesn't want to hear that.

Statistics can be twisted and massaged to support whatever view you want to prove. My experience as an officer in a major metropolitan area gives me more credible information on the subject than someone who has had experience on a few bad traffic stops with rude officers, or someone who can quotes stats from FOX and CNN to me. In most cases I have to say, "Cite your source because your numbers don't jive with actual FBI statistics."

And I've been on the street. I have been in the hospital. I have stood over the dead cops. I know how fast 'routine' can go bad.

The extreme left can show me lists of dead citizens shot by police officers and I can show them lists of dead cops, but where does it end? In my lifetime I have never seen race relations so bad. I have never seen such disrespect and all-out hate for law enforcement. I have never seen our nation so close to anarchy.

I cannot tell you where it will end, but communication and good manners on both sides of the badge is where it should begin.

During most of my police career I was blessed with co-workers who treated me as an equal, as a sister, or as a daughter, and still today I maintain many of those friendships. Since these dear friends know me so well, they won't be surprised or offended to learn that I like my new co-workers better!

Work for a dog on a ranch can certainly be similar to police work. The job is about taking care of others. There are long hours in all kinds of weather. Sometimes you work in the heat. Sometimes you work in the rain. Either way, most of the time it's dirty work.

Somebody has to be in charge and the people enforcing the laws are often not well liked by those who are told what to do, but if society, or a ranch, is to run smoothly, you need sheepdogs.

Part of the job is rule enforcement.

Part of the job is community service.

Fortunately for those being served, it's not a popularity contest, because given a vote, sheep and goats would likely vote against having sheepdogs altogether. Like police officers and soldiers, sheepdogs are often tasked with serving a population that would rather pretend coyotes didn't exist.

But they do.

And fortunately for Rosie, so do sheepdogs.

Rosie chose to sneak away and have her babies in a tangled mass of briars, mesquite saplings, and black locust trees. Everything in here has thorns. It is hard for a human to navigate in this mess, but easy enough for a coyote.

Judge led me through the thicket to the new babies.

He was rewarded for his efforts when Rosie t-boned him.

Although Rosie didn't appreciate Judge's presence, he still brought help, and the babies were moved to the safety of the barn.

With everyone tucked away, the sheepdogs can go back to work, watching for things the sheep prefer not to see.

We have Wifi again! I'm baaack! And I have lots of news!

Check this out.

Yes, it is as soft and scrumptious as it looks, as soft as the softest cashmere. Yes, I made it, or well, I'm in the process of making it. Guess what it is.

Or who.

Yep. It's Briar. (Okay, the brown stripes are alpaca.) Who knew she would make such soft fiber? Since I discovered spinning wool into yarn, nothing is safe. I look at soft puffy clouds in the sky and think of spinning, so it wasn't much of a stretch to spin up the pile of dog hair I stripped out of Briar. Without all that undercoat, she is much more comfortable and I have discovered yet one more use for this nifty dog. Why scour the internet in search of cashmere goats when I have a Livestock Guardian Dog that gives me the softest of cashmere without any additional cost?

And no, it doesn't smell like a dog. It is such an amazingly pettable scarf that you just want to scrunch it up against your cheek. It's not just plain dog hair, it's "cheingora.

And it's cheap and easy to obtain, unless of course your Livestock Guardian Dog meets a skunk. I'm hoping that doesn't happen again until I get enough undercoat to finish my scarf.

Now on to other business. . .

The Boyz are growing up! This week new milestones were reached. We have been giving them increasingly more and more responsibility. It's been a while since they've gone on their Frat Boy Walkabout Tours. Those aren't nearly as much fun anyway when it's blistering hot outside. They could still do it though, and now that I've bragged on them, for sure someone will slip under a fence to chase hogs under a setting sun.

Instead of allowing them both loose at the same time, I just have one out with Briar, and the other is either locked in the barn aisle or inside the house with me, lounging on air conditioned concrete floors. Who wants to slip under the fence and run off in this heat when you can hang around with the sheep, waiting for shift change when you get an hour or two in the AC? Yes, Friends and Neighbors, I know it flies in the face of all the Leave-Them-Alone-With-The-Flock-Don't-Make-Pets-Out-Of-Them advice. So sue me. It works. I don't have to prove anything to anyone anymore. I'm too old for that shit. I just have to have my dogs stay home with the flock, and I don't care how it gets done. We did this with Briar and she turned out just fine. Now the Boyz are following in her footsteps.

And guess what? They stay at home now. Yes, they are pets, but then so are my sheep and goats. Pets with jobs. Remember. Helloooo... We live in the freaking barn! As long as the dogs stay in the barnyard or the pastures surrounding the barn, they can do their jobs. They don't have to stay alone in the back forty with a flock of sheep. That's too much to expect any dog, especially puppies. The sheep stay within earshot so it's reasonable to expect the dogs to stay within earshot. What I don't want is them slipping under the fence and disappearing for an hour or two while they play in the forest. It's happened in the past and will probably happen again before they are adults.

Jury is better about staying with the flock during his shift.

Judge, like Briar, often sleeps under a horse trailer where he can keep an eye on things.

Jury is much more personal with the flock. He checks butts every morning, walking through the flock, licking rear ends and taking inventory. Judge? Not so much. He spends more time scanning for threats. Judge doesn't kiss babies and pat their butts. Judge is a warrior waiting for enemy invasion. Jury is your quintessential maternal-type Livestock Guardian Dog. He prefers to be part of the flock while his brother prefers to be a guard dog who is simply safe around the flock. Together they complement each other and will make a great team.

It has taken 13 months to get them to this point. That's 13 months of work on the part of a conscientious breeder who properly socialized them with goats and people, and then on our part as we worked through all the jail breaks and chasing bouncing lambs. It doesn't happen overnight. And you're never really completely done. Livestock Guardian Dogs don't train themselves.

Even now I know there will be setbacks. Just because I bragged about them today, I'll go out tomorrow and find a dog has left the sheep to chase hogs. That's Murphy's Law.  But each day they get better and better. Yesterday I left Judge loose with Briar while we left the house for the day. Truth be told, I was worried all day that he'd go walkabout. When we returned home, he ambled out from underneath the cattle trailer and trotted down the long driveway to greet us. It was the prettiest thing I'd seen all day.

That was a milestone. It was one step closer toward our goal of leaving them out with the flock all the time, secure in the knowledge that everyone will be safe and present when we return home.  It's a long road, but well worth the journey.

We came over the rise and the blue light illuminated the dark desert like a miracle from God - or a casino. Or both. It was literally an oasis in the desert. I'm not a casino kind of person, but this was such a beautiful sight that it was a religious experience. The desert does that to you. While I have nothing against gambling in general, it just seems to be a grand waste of money, and frankly, driving through the desert in June with a load of sheep was a pretty big gamble in and of itself on our part. There's nothing quite like the desert to shake your faith in the reliability of motor vehicles. Forget air conditioning. You just want the truck and trailer to keep moving east. Back home to Texas, where living in a remote area means being thirty minutes from a What-A-Burger.

And so it was that we safely concluded a 27 hour journey home from the Sheep Is Life 2016 event with wonderful tales to tell and more additions to our Navajo Churro flock. It was a grand adventure, but we definitely bit off more than we could chew. This trip evolved much like a Lord Of The Rings movie and it didn't take me long to figure out that I'm a hobbit, folks. I'm a hobbit.

We'd all like to be elves, beautiful, elegant, powerful, and talented, but I'm just a simple hobbit. I like my life in the Shire and I'm not a big traveler. Taking a road trip from Texas to Tsaile, Arizona for a Navajo Churro Sheep convention was a major undertaking but with people you can trust at home tending the ranch, we bit the bullet and decided to make the journey to learn more about these sheep, take a cinch weaving class, and pick up some more genetics for our flock.

Then the adventure began to take shape. A word of advice - New Mexico and Arizona are like Texas. Everything is much farther away than it appears on the map. When you tack on the extra drive time in mountains, the trip takes even longer. Not fully appreciating this little factoid, we opted to stay with relatives in Farmington, New Mexico to get a little family time in while we were there. Unfortunately this proved to be next to impossible. The drive between their house and the show site each day took hours and this ate up any free time we had, thus we had very little time to visit and were exhausted when we did. We were staying across the mountains from the show site so each day it was a 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hour journey one way through the mountains, or a 3 hour trip around the mountains. The trip was beautiful but driving a standard transmission large truck through switchbacks, we felt like hobbits going through Mordor.

We did go through some really pretty scenery.

And the people. The Navajo Churro people. The Sheep Is Life people. Everyone welcomed us into the world of Churro sheep. Even Other Half had a great time. He attended classes on shearing and butchering sheep while I was taking my cinch weaving class. Since he's never met a stranger, Other Half made a lot of new friends.

We entered the laid back world of showing sheep in a trial by fire. We were just handed a leadrope and told,

"Take this one into the ring. You're showing it."

Yep. With no experience whatsoever, we wrestled and dragged reluctant sheep into the ring. It's easy to lose your fear of being embarrassed by a misbehaving animal when you're watching other handlers carry, drag, and be dragged by half-wild sheep. We didn't stand out a bit. (Except for me when I put the sheep halter on upside down. Hey! Sue me. I use collars because I hate those halters. But after wrestling and showing sheep all afternoon, I think I've got it down. LOL)

Even Other Half got sucked into showing sheep... and . . .

drum roll please . . .

He liked it. And he and his ewe lamb won their class.

Lest he get a big head, I'd like to point out that my ram lamb and I won our class too. Let me be quick to also point out that these wins in no way reflect upon our showmanship skills. The sheep we were showing were really well bred animals and all the credit goes to the breeder. I will definitely buy sheep from this breeder in the future.

Overall it was a great trip. We saw a lot, we learned a lot, and like happy hobbits, we survived our journey through the mountains and desert to return home.  What was a 17 hour trip there, became a 27 hour trip back home. We brought seven sheep home with us and so we took more and longer stops. Because of the sheep we drove through the desert at night. I hate to offend anyone, but let me go on the record and proclaim:

"I do not like green eggs and ham. I do NOT like driving in the desert with a lamb, Sam I am."

At the end of the day, the trip was definitely worth it. It takes a lot to get the Hobbit out of the Shire, but sheep did it and probably will again.

It was only his Matrix-like evasive maneuvers that kept him from bouncing off her horns like red rubber dodge ball against a brick wall. Don't mess with Momma.

Yesterday was Jerri Springer's first day out. Since this was an unplanned pregnancy, poor Jerri has no other lambs to play with and thus she trails beside her mother like a sidecar on a motorbike. On one hand I feel sorry for her because she has no playmates, on the other hand, she enjoys the protection of her mother's status as the baddest bad girl ewe in the flock. No one messes with Jerri Springer or her mom will send them to the moon!

And so it was that Jerri Springer met the Livestock Guardian Dogs. Briar, a veteran of lamb introductions had the good sense to take her olfactory inventory at a distance, but Judge and Jury waded right in to see the new baby.

I waited for the explosion. Mariannie was a bit stressed, but as long as Jerri was calm, she was okay. All was well as a slightly confused Jerri basked in the glow of all the attention. Everything was going well until Dillon, the Labrador Retriever, rushed up from the pond, bounced into their bubble, and gushed,

"OOOOH! A baby! I wanna see the new baby!"

It was like lighting a string of firecrackers. Mariannie rammed him three times before he could get away far enough to run. It was only his Matrix-like evasive maneuvers that kept him from bouncing off her horns like red rubber dodge ball against a brick wall. On the third ram attempt, he growled at the ewe as he ran backwards. Dillon is good natured, but he figured enough was enough.

And that's when the giant dog rushed in and slammed Dillon into the side of the horse trailer.

And then apologized for it.

Dillon ranks well over the Anatolians in the canine food chain around here, but when the Labrador growled at the ewe, something rose up inside Jury and he took action. His brother rushed behind him as backup, but never made physical contact with Dillon. Under the onslaught of an enraged ewe and two Livestock Guardian Dogs, Dillon decided that retreat was the best option.

Jury reminded me of a rookie cop dealing with his first family disturbance.

"Please. Seriously. Don't do that. I'm sorry about this, but you can't do that. It's against the law. Excuse me. Stop that."

When he becomes a seasoned veteran, with no apologies whatsoever, he'll slam that Labrador in handcuffs so fast his head'll spin.

Jerri's mother has refused to take her lamb into the pasture with everyone else, preferring instead to lie around the relative security of the barnyard. We took a short road trip to buy feed in the afternoon and chose to leave the sheep and goats out while we were gone. Because the pups are not allowed to run loose while we aren't home, I locked them in the runs behind the stalls, then I didn't give it another thought.

Until I came home.

Lying in the driveway in front of the barn, with sheep grazing around him, was a large white spotted dog. Apparently Jury had dug out of his prison while we were gone. He was clean and dry so it doesn't appear that he slipped underneath the field fencing and went 'walk about' in the forest as is his habit. From the looks of him, he just dug out, and then hung out with the sheep. (Or he was out so long that he had time to run the forest like a drunken frat boy, and then come home and sleep it off. That's a possibility too.) Regardless, when we drove up, he was doing the classic Livestock Guardian Dog thing, lounging under a tree while sheep grazed around him. Nevertheless, my heart was still thumping wildly as I took off in search of Jerri Springer because I didn't trust a year old giant puppy with a tiny baby.

She was fine. Her gray grizzly bear mother was dozing beside her. My worries melted away as the groggy baby stood up on wobbly legs. The dog pushed his way along with me. Clearly he'd not been a problem in my absence because both mother and baby were fine with the dog bouncing around.  So I could breathe again. For the moment, all was well on the farm.

Our accidental oops lamb seems to be doing fine and The Boyz are growing up and becoming more responsible. Genes can only carry you so far. You still have to train Livestock Guardian Dogs. You have to be responsible for their behavior when they can't. Save them from themselves until they're mature enough to make good decisions. We aren't there yet. The pups just turned a year old. They aren't mature enough to be loose all the time like the older dog, Briar. Since they dig, no field fence can truly contain them. It's impossible to run hotwire around the base of every fence around here. The best I can do is monitor them closely and when I can't monitor them, lock them in a run with re-enforced flooring at the bottom. I lay cattle panels on the ground along the dig areas. This helps eliminate the digging in that one place, but from time to time, (yesterday) they will spring a new hole. We live with it and make adjustments accordingly. And sometimes, like yesterday, they surprise me. After all that effort to get out, they still end up just sleeping beside the sheep. It makes my heart smile.

My first clue that something was amiss was when everyone else filed in and Mariannie stood behind the hay barn staring at me. The Border Collie did a loop to pick her up but the large gray ewe tilted those impressive horns in the dog's direction and stamped a foot. Alrightie then. Houston, we have a problem.

There was clearly a reason why she felt she couldn't come into the barn with everyone else. I walked over there, half-expecting her to be snake-bit, but what I found surprised me even more. Mariannie was in labor.

Whoa.

I don't have a ram. My mind quickly reeled back to when I purchased this batch of sheep - November 20. Nope. She didn't come already bred. That's a shame, because if that had been the case at least the lamb might be a Navajo Churro or half Jacob. But since the gestation period on a sheep is 5 months, there could be only two suspects:

Cash - young Dorper ram who sired this year's crop of Dorper lambs. I had taken great care not to expose Cash to the Navajo Churro ewes because who wants a cross between a sheep known for its high quality wool and a sheep known to shed its wool?

Although I had no recollection of Cash getting loose with the churro, it's possible. Anything is possible if you have a ram.

The other possibility was more of a Jurassic Park adventure - Hermionie, the hermaphrodite ewe.

Yes, she/he has boy parts and girl parts.  Hermionie has a vagina, but she/he also has an easily visible scrotum that appears to be empty. I've been told by vets that Hermionie may have testicles in her abdomen. Alrightie then. Does she have a penis? As I stared at Mariannie lying in the sand behind the hay barn, I couldn't remember if we checked to see if Hermionie had a working penis because she/he clearly urinated from the other end.

Yes Folks, this is the kind of crap that you deal with if you have a farm. Life is beautiful. Life is cruel. Life is exciting. Life is a lot of things, but life is never boring.

So there you have it. Mariannie was clearly having someone's baby. We ushered everyone inside and moved the Livestock Guardian Dogs outside. Since things like this cannot be kept to yourself, I grouptexted my local churro sheep tribe. (If you didn't get a text don't feel offended, I hate group texts myself and try to limit their use. I only texted the folk who would have beaten me over the head with the phone had they not been real-time involved in this adventure.)  Anyway, a lambing stall was prepared, a ewe in labor was in it, and now all we had to do was wait. And wonder. Who was the daddy?

It was decided that since the black-headed Dorper trait is so dominant that if Cash was the father, some combination of that would probably show up. When considering the possibility of Hermionie as the sire there was much talk of the Jurassic Park Jeff Goldblum quote,

"Life will find a way."

Up until I discovered that Mariannie was pregnant it was my understanding that Hermionie 'identified' as a ewe and used the Ewe Bathroom. If Hermionie was the 'baby daddy' that would seriously complicate things because although I have nothing against them, and in fact, I really like Hermionie and want to keep her/him, I'm not in the business of breeding hermaphrodite sheep. If Hermionie was the father then I could no longer keep him/her with ewes, nor could I sell him to someone with ewes. Or even with a ram, because for sure she/he has working girl parts. I'm not sure if she/he can get pregnant but it isn't a chance I want to take.

And as my 'tribe' pointed out on group text, what if Mariannie wasn't the only ewe pregnant? Gotta love friends who will point out the worst possible scenario in the middle of a crisis. I decided to cross that bridge when I came to it. You can only handle one situation at a time, and the crisis at the moment was prayers for a healthy birth. I didn't care who the daddy was as long as Mariannie and the baby/babies were okay.

Three and a half hours after I first noticed her in labor, Mariannie delivered a vigorous baby girl. As a nod to our "who's ya daddy" mystery, I named her Jerri Springer.

(For those of you who live a full life and have no clue who he is, Jerry Springer is a television host of a somewhat sleazy talk show that often deals with "who's the daddy' paternity tests.)

Jerri is solid black. This gave no clues as to who was her daddy. There was only one thing left to do. Just minutes before midnight, Other Half and I stood in the barn and argued about it. I won, so we awoke and sexually assaulted poor Hermionie to determine if she/he actually had an external penis. I can now report -

drum roll please . . .

 . . . that she/he does not.

Therefor it is physically impossible for Hermionie to be Mariannie's baby daddy!

Which leaves the equally undesirable option that little Jerri is a Navajo Churro/Dorper cross. Oh joy joy.

Oh well. Jerri is healthy, Hermionie is healthy, and Cash now lives on another farm miles down the road so there will be no encore performance. Cash had a soft plushy coat so there is no telling how Jerri will end up. I need another pet sheep like I need another hole in the head, but I also believe that God doesn't make mistakes. Somehow Jerri ended up with us and so be it. She's a cute little thing.

Hopefully Hermionie will soon forgive us for the midnight home invasion and assault.

I looked into his eyes and stepped back into another world, into another person long since forgotten. A lifetime ago, before I went into police work, and then retired to ranching full time, I was a sixth grade Science teacher. For ten years I taught children about life before finally deciding the public education system wasn't for me. I loved the kids, and I loved teaching.

What I didn't like was the direction public education was headed. I still firmly believe that standardized testing and teaching a curriculum aimed at merely passing tests is a mistake. This does not lead to a well-rounded education. The education system is losing too many talented teachers and students each year as it doggedly marches down this path. In the mean time, those left are doing the best they can while their hands are tied by an out of touch system. Like tired swimmers they dog paddle along, trying to keep afloat while more and more responsibility is heaped upon the tiny raft they cling to. And bless their hearts, they keep on swimming.

It's been such a long time since I've been in the classroom that I'd almost forgotten the best part of teaching, the simple joy of watching a spark of interest ignite in a child's eyes. Away from the standardized tests, and the lesson plans, and the endless series of time segments marked by the ringing of bells and the scuffling of feet and backpacks, the essence of teaching is about lighting fires. In this age of information, where the world is only a tap on the smart phone away, true learning is still no different now than it was forty years ago. An education is not simply a regurgitation of facts, it's an accumulation of life experiences, an awakening of interests, a love of learning, and the knowledge of where to go to find out more. Knowledge is power. The art of bubbling in answers on a scan sheet is not knowledge. It's a skill.

It rained so much this week that I didn't bring the sheep to Pioneer Days. When my husband impulsively volunteered me to demonstrate spinning raw wool into yarn, I wasn't too keen on it. The idea of participating in Pioneer Days may have been fun if I'd had period clothing and the time to prepare, but this was pretty short notice. All I had was muddy sheep, some leather snake boots, an oversized cowboy shirt, and a black belt I made myself from Navajo Churro wool. I also had raw wool in various states of preparation, and my trusty Kromski Sonata spinning wheel. And a distant memory.

I remembered what it was like to awaken a spark of interest. I remembered what it was like to blow on that spark to make a flame. And I remembered when to let go, to let that flame take off on its own. And it did.

Children still tickle me. None of them woke up that morning with any interest whatsoever in wool or spinning yarn, and frankly my goal wasn't to teach them to be expert spinners, it was to awaken an interest in a dying craft. It was to give them something they can't find on The History Channel, a real tactile experience. Touch it. Smell it. Feel the life of the sheep in your hands.

I could have provided a history lesson on spinning. I could have tossed out the neat little factoids that interest me so much. For instance, did you know where the term "spinster" came from?

In Colonial America spinning was serious stuff. Wool was big business in England and the Colonies. Massachusetts even passed a law requiring each family to spin a pound of yarn a week for thirty weeks. They were charged money for every pound the family fell short. Because of this many families brought in unmarried relatives or friends to help spin wool. This is where we got the term "spinster.

But I digress. Kids don't care about taxes. Kids want to touch things. They want to hear that spinning yarn is a skill they can master, like dribbling a basketball. They want to pick things up, and smell them, and feel the grease on their fingers. They want to sit on the stool, touch the magic fiber, peddle the treadles, and watch the wheel turn that fluff in their fingers to yarn. And they want to take that yarn home. The yarn will stay in their pocket for the day. It'll be dangled in the faces of family members, and in time, it'll be thrown away, or stuffed in the back of a drawer. Maybe, if it's lucky, it'll be tucked in a cherished place with other childhood treasures. The important thing isn't the yarn, it's the spark of interest in the child.

And they were interested. In no time they gathered to spin. The kids took to spinning faster than the adults. There was a line of children waiting for their turn at the wheel. My little Sonata wheel was very forgiving of their efforts. The wool liked the children and in most cases twisted itself into yarn with little or no trouble. As soon as the child on the stool had mastered spinning enough to produce a decent amount of yarn, they yielded their seat and taught the child behind them. Not only was this non-threatening to the next child in line, but it was empowering to the child teaching the new skill. They now shared some ownership. And what we own becomes more important to us. Nothing was stolen. Nothing was broken. The kids were very careful with the wheel. They left with a piece of yarn, some memories, and a fragment of a skill almost lost.

And I was richer for the experience too. Some reenactors from another booth came over and asked if I'd do a spinning demonstration at their event next Fall. I agreed, but with some reservations. My wheel is not a period wheel, and I don't have a period outfit, but we can probably work around that. We'll see. On a farm it's easy to shut yourself off, to fall into the routine of caring for animals and thanking God for the sunrise each morning. It's easy to enjoy our blessings and forget that we need to give back to others. This experience reminded me to share those blessings, and to reach out and touch the next generation. The things and skills that are important to us, these things we don't want lost, can only be saved if we share them with others, if we awaken a passion in someone else.