Good Food is Everybody's Business
The morning after Mama’s lambs were born we arose early and went to check on our sheep. We found we were not so lucky after all. Mama had decided that she only had one lamb, and had totally rejected the little male. When he came near her, she bunted him away. He, of course, kept trying to nurse each time his sister nursed, but Mama would whirl and butt him with her head.
Now, I was going to have to learn to do tail docking, and possibly castrating. I had made a prior decision not to use some of the cruder methods of removing these appendages.
Early April, and we were on “pins and needles” awaiting the birth of our first lambs. Even Jerry had joined the ‘expectant’ group, but we did not really know what to ‘expect’ from our two ewes. We had no background information on them, other than that Mama was the “old ewe”, and came to us with only one lamb.
Our menagerie was down to only one dog and a canary, after our beloved old fox terrier, Zip, was run over in the summer. That was a very sad day for us. We had had her for over 15 years, and she had traveled with us all the years that Jerry was welding on water towers.
In her last installment, our Minnesotan shepherdess, Lea McEvilly, with no idea how to build a fence and shorter than most of the posts, simply did it! This time we learn what winters in Minnesota mean for farmers; a good root cellar makes all the difference!
Lea McEvilly, nearly lost her ewe, Mama, and lamb, Sure to Go, to the sale barn after the wandering sheep had to be brought home at the end of ropes. That didn’t stop Lea. Just barely outweighing the lamb, with no idea how to build a fence, and shorter than most of the posts, she simply did it!
The “new” old farm had lots of surprises for a young mother, and the old ewe, “Mama,” and her new lamb, “Sure to Go,” delivered even more. It could have been an inauspicious start to sheep raising when Lea’s wandering sheep had to be brought home at the end of ropes.
In her first contribution to GoodFood World, Lea McEvilly described the decision process it took to finally sell her flock of sheep and retire after farming for nearly 46 years. In today’s contribution, we go back to the time when Lea found her farm.
