Do you remember the first time you saw the sky?

It was a big day for the lambs yesterday. I opened up the barn and they got to see and feel Mother Earth for the first time. I was thinking that it would be interesting to be able to venture back and remember our first moment we saw sky. I kept thinking about it through the day and I came to the conclusion that perhaps we do remember it, we just aren't able to verbalize it into straightforward sentences, so we put it into art and poems. To those who are scientists, bankers or non-artists- maybe they might verbalize it in their personalities–maybe those that saw their first glimpse of sky as cloudy bursting forth with thunder and lightening became scared in new situations, maybe those who saw snow became light of heart and always remained childlike.

The month of steady down pours got to everybody, including me, so the first day of real warm sun yesterday was so...rewarding. I took a chair out into the field and watched the lambs. I didn't take my camera, I just needed to soak it in, and enjoy them. But I took this one phone shot of Otis eating with his little herd.

We wait on the mothers

The elder matriarch spends most of her day resting. She is very arthritic now, and pretty much stands with her head low to ground so laying down is more comfortable for her. This will be her last season. I have to admit that but she has had a very good life and she has given us so much. She lives with the mothers-to-be who are due to lamb this week. I thought we might ave some today but nature isn't ready.

I like to sit out in the barn with everyone - the mothers to be, Daisy, and her elder daughter Lilly who was one of our first lambs back in '05. Cornelia the pig continues to sleep by Daisy which nearly breaks my heart every time. Daisy is patient with her and doesn't mind her eating near her so she goes to her for warmth.

I decided to breed last fall, before we decided to move to Maine. At first when we knew we'd be moving, I kicked myself for breeding. But now I'm glad I did. I think it will be a good way to finish my shepherdly duties here, I hope so anyway. I told a friend I felt like I wasn't here, but I wasn't there either-and I try to breathe, feel my feet on the ground and be present. But limbo is no fun, it's unsettling and quite draining.  I'm finding that walking is good, and any hands on work with my animals and land is healing-as it always has been, but perhaps in a slightly more raw way right now.

It's interesting that some things have happened in the past months that are clear messages to me from the land itself-the lavender finally bit the dust and it was its time to die as it is 12 years old and due to the rains this winter, sheep damage and age, they just all died. I am not sorry, it was time. Little things like that-or the fact after 12 years we finally had a dog mauling of one of our sheep and I just thought, "I'm tired, tired of trying to keep everyone safe." I'm not tired of the sheep, it's the daunting fact I have to keep them safe in nature itself. I am not the queen of Nature.

So lambing might give me some more messages like this.

But every day, White Dog looks in my eyes, and I feel comfort from him as we say together,

Everything is okay.

"Here, Girls! Come over!"

This morning,calling the flock-(copyright Apifera Farm) #farms #sheep #apiferafarm #foglove

A video posted by Katherine Dunn / Apifera Farm (@katherinedunnapiferafarm) on Nov 10, 2015 at 9:44am PST

Many a time someone has said to me,

You need a herding dog.

Nope.

I am not against herding dogs. Although I do get cranky when I see people with a few sheep who have herders, and simply use their sheep as props for the dog. I know of one person who kept her sheep in deplorable shape but had a business training sheep dogs so the sheep were just that-training targets.

If I had a larger flock, with more land, I can certainly see a need for a good herder. But for my needs, my voice has always done the trick. Occasionally, and The Dirt Farmer will shake his head in agreement, my flock does not listen. This usually occurs on a Sunday, most often in the summer when I want to get my barn chores done earlier than normal so I can rest and sip wine by six. Upon arriving here, we rarely sat down before eight pm. Now, we have learned it is best, and appropriate, to sit our bones down earlier. So on some summer days, nearby farms and properties might hear me losing my patience, to put it mildly, as I am calling,

"Here, Girls, here, Girls!"

The sheep have their own clock and dusk is usually when they return to the barn.

I spend a lot of time with my flock. They trust me and I can call them down from any hill on any part of the property. This morning I got up and wanted to catch a photo or two in the fog. Wild Otis is so striking against the white and faded Payne's Gray.

Seeing them run across the field when I call them over fills my well for the day. I really love working with sheep, and seeing them in the field. This morning when I got up from bed, I looked out the window and saw Otis looking down into the lavender field where the sheep should have been. He had a confused look on his face, ears erect and forward-I looked down into the filed to make sure there was no strange presence there. But I saw no sheep-it was that foggy. I had to really look to make sure they were all there. I think Otis was having the same problem,

Where have the sheep gone?!

Early days of Apifera and Nature as friend

I took this photo last night of Wild Otis, at dusk. The clouds were so powerful. The morning fogs have returned and I was contemplating this last week at some point-that fog was my blanket when I first moved here. I had moved to Portland from Minneapolis in 2002, single, and two years later, I was married and moving to a rural area where we knew nobody. I only knew one person, my brother, in Portland before I met Martyn.

Arriving here was not only culture shock, it was a physical and emotional uprooting. While I was beginning the dream of owning a farm, I was a fish out of water. Martyn and I had a joke back then, when he'd drive off to his project sites back in Portland each morning, I'd stand at the door and say in my best Mayberry RFD twang,

"Don't leave me here without a gun."

Those were days of hard work and unrest, but each day there was the old barn, the land, the big top sky and the stars at night were our theater. I do remember driving around to try to get to the store thirty minutes away, thinking,

What have I done.

Change is unsettling. Change is powerful. Change brings so many new things into a life that one looks back and thinks,

If I hadn't had the courage to leave Minneapolis, I would not have met Martyn, and Apifera would still be floating, waiting for me somewhere.

So I was thinking about the fog, and how in our early days here, it was my blanket, and it still is. Unlike snow, it has less of a sound. Snow is a wonderful blanket too, but fog engulfed me, wrapping her arms around me on my farm with the raggedy fence protecting me from perceived wolves of my new environment. I have always gone to Nature when I felt the label of Misfit or weirdo being applied to me-either by another person, or by inner chatter. When I was six, we lived in what to me was the perfect place, a 5 acre plot with a carriage house that the main landowner sold us-so we were surrounded by his land, and there were horses all around and trees and forests. I had a grove of sumac and I'd disappear for hours, into my sumac forts-small rooms cleared out by deer-and I'd strip naked and lie under the sumac leaves, with the blue sky above streaming in when leaves blew in the wind. No matter where I am thrust or have to go to in my coming years, I know there will always be some kind of sumac fort for me-if I seek it out. Nature gives us friends all over the world!

Fog is as much a part of Apifera as the dirt or animals. But Apifera first and foremost was birthed from my heart. It can not be contained by land. It goes where I go.

The black beauty, Otis

When I visited the llama farm last spring, one of the reasons I chose Otis immediately out of a sea of llamas was his jet black coat. I could imagine him up high in the fields, where the sheep look like little specks, and his blackness would stand out in the golden fields of late summer. I think he has fulfilled that view for me.

He is a bit over a year, and still young for reliable guarding, but he is bonding with the flock well. He also is getting on with the donkeys, although they keep different schedules. I also find that Otis is a bit above them perhaps in rank, even at this age.

The first days after Aldo died, Otis seemed lost. In fact, when I needed to try to move him from the field, I tried a few tricks to no avail. And then I called out

"Aldo! Aldo!" and he came down to me. Rather heartbreaking, but also a beautiful tribute to Aldo, for me. He knew the sound of Aldo's name,but not his own since I always relied on Aldo to do the shepherding of Otis.

But now when I call out,

"Otis!", his ears prick forward, and he looks towards the sound.

He is going to do just fine.

At the moment he is the resident Apiferian goofball, tall, skinny with a space between his teeth that reminds me of Kukla, Fran & Ollie puppet.

Aldo's legacy-life and purpose

Aldo is gone but I can sense him everywhere a day after his death. Yesterday afternoon, I visited the spot where he died. It's a beautiful spot. It was one of his many final gifts, to die in a spot where we could see him. He likes the woods nearby and he could have easily lay there for days without us giving it too much thought.

I shall lie here and go to sleep, this is a good vantage point for me, and them, he could have thought.

When I arrived at the Aldo's Spot as it is now known, the young male llama was nearby. The flock was on the opposite side of the cross fence, so he was searching for a herd. Aldo had served a purpose for this youngster-he gave him stability and grounding in his new home on his first days. He showed the young male the ropes and was clearly the leader of the two. That might have changed, but Aldo did his job and it helped me out. The elder statesman could be relied on by me to bring in the youngster at night, if I wanted gates shut.

I have always believed that elders can have a role, a significant place of respect not only in the human world, but in our animal world. It is the young that have the loudest role in commerce, commercialism and often the family. Nature also culls the elders. It is part of keeping the rest of the herd safe, and healthy. To each there is a time-it should not be feared, it should be the catalyst for enjoying and respecting the life that is given, no matter how long one has.

In Nature, the elders show us they are transitioning out of the herd or their rightful place. I can't speak for every species, I am not a animal expert and won't pretend to be-but I do know my flock and I see how the eldest are now spending more time separating. I count them every night, the flock, to make sure old Daisy has made it back.

Aldo's life was repurposed when he arrived here. I try to do that for the ones that I take on-watch them and see what seems to make them content. Sometimes I move them into a different field, with different pasture mates, and they fall back into themselves, into a role they understand. Aldo was this way. On his arrival, I had him in the orchard, to get to know him. When he saw the flock, he went to the gate. He clearly told me he wanted to be there, and he settled right in. When the flock moved, he wanted to go there too. His old age and fallen pasterns and thin condition, made it problematic sometimes to always be with the flock-since I was trying to put weight on him. So I created another flock for him-crippled goats or piglets. If there was more than one body to watch, no matter the species, he was in his element. His little elder goat sidekick - Scooby Keith- that he arrived with followed him at first. But eventually, Scooby made it clear he wanted to be with me, so he came to the upper barn, and then in time, he was able to acclimate more to the goats.

We are trying out the name Otis, Wild Otis to be exact, for the young black male. He has gone from being Ollie Ollie Oxen Free to Wendell, and now Otis. I hopes this name sticks.

I went to the field to relocate Otis, figuring this could be a long process. But I was able to encourage him along and then into the lavender field.. From there he hugged the fence line where the rams were. So I went and got our resident love machine-Birdie-and haltered her, led her to the field where Otis was, and within time, he followed us back to the new barn, into a stall where I could grab and halter him.

Each time I have to halter him it is a lesson for him, and he did better this time than last. I led him over to the donkey paddock where the sheep now live at night. They then wander up to the high fields for the day, returning at night. This morning, I was so pleased to see him up by Old Oak, sitting amongst his flock. And this morning, he went right up with them to the fields.

In his passing, Aldo the Elder created space for Otis do to what he has come here to do-guard sheep. The elder statesman did not mind dying. And Otis now has purpose.

Snap shot moments

The great and powerful Itty Bitty Etta-what is she thinking, you wonder.

How did I become Queen so young?

And if you look carefully in the bottom photo, you will see one the recent arrivals.