Apifera Farm - where art, story, animals & woman merge. Home to artist Katherine Dunn

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©Katherine Dunn.





Monday, March 05, 2007

Shepherdly expectations


The onslaught of lambs is about to begin. I was sure we'd have some births on Sunday night, and even dreamt something about lambs, but all mothers are still in waiting. We spent Sunday outside in the front sheep field, worked on fencing fixes - or should I clarify and say that Martyn redid all of my crooked 'monkey-house' fencing I did a year ago...he even had the nerve to use a string line. The new fence is straight, imagine that.


Rosemary has a lovely goddess belly to me. A field of waddling, goddess bellied sheep - it's heaven. After 2 lambings under my belt, I'm no expert, but I can see the signs - of my sheep anyway. I won't go into details, as it's rather graphic, but novice shepherds may email for the gory details. I'm especially anxious to see what we get from breeding our newer ram, Mr. T. I have been seeing lambies all over the area, and kid goats, calves...it's a wonderful season. Sunday and today the skies cleared, the warm air returned, and you could feel things growing. Smells returned, the frogs were singing.

My day began with seeing Sky in her pasture, staring down Ethel and her two fawns about 20 feet from her. Looking over at the donkey pasture, Pino and Paco, usually up playing tug of war by now, were laying in the sun, dust covered. All the nearby horses that I can see from our property were also laying on the warm earth. It was contagious - after morning chores and work, I took an hour or so to hang out on a warm cement brick with my coffee.

For one whole day, everything was perfectly perfect. No one thing - man made, business related, or financial - could ruin the feeling of this day. I still have it.