Footprints on the Web

Today was a tough day. First sight for the day was a dead ram. He didn’t make it. Second sight was a lamb coming out of a sheep I saw its head and neck and ran to put my dog back in the yurt. I came back to see 1 dead lamb and another one being pulled out of the sheep by one of the farmers. I will never forget the way she threw the dead lamb away and attended to the live one. How can you be so insensitive? But then again when you handle livestock this large in number how can you afford to give your resources to all alike -living and dead? I then went on some daily checks to see more lambs had been born. We spotted 1 new one. A lone, healthy, little guy. Or girl. We spent the rest of the day trying to induce a pregnant sheep who has not been able to stand for a month. It was long and tedious. The farmer with the most medical knowledge tried to enlarge her cervix whereas the rest of us helped – repositioning or holding the sheep, administering medications, holding lights, looking up information on the internet, etc.- whatever she needed help with. The shepherd wanted the farmer to let me try given I had small hands but the farmer profusely refused to let me. She said first I would be traumatized if the intestines and gut were to fall off. Then she said I don’t have the strength. She ordered me to hold my fingers together and aggressively held it tight and told me to push it open. I couldn’t. She was right. All I know is I was willing to put my hand inside this sheep and do whatever they told me if it would keep this sheep and her lamb(s) alive. The sheep was one tough cookie. Hearing her groan, breath heavily  continuously was difficult for all of us to see and hear. She also kept chewing on hay during different intervals. She was fighting but it was not just happening. We tried for 5 hours. Finally she started bleeding. The shepherd and the farmer with medical knowledge made the call to call a vet for a C-section and pay it out of pocket because the farm could not afford to do it. It was going to be the first C-section the farm had ever done in its history.

I walked into the barn the next morning to see 2 tiny dead lambs in a corner. The mother made it and was stitched up. She looked up at me and looked strong. This one was made of steel. I want to be her when I grow up. After shedding tears over the lambs, I got to pulling some weeds out to distract myself. In between I went on lambing checks and feeding the guard dogs with one of the farmers. Then I got to go on duck chores. I got to see the enclosures that one of the farmer’s had built for all the different types of ducks. Some were very colorful, some walked like penguins. We fed them and gave fresh water. Then we picked up their eggs some of which we saved for hatching, some to be sold to locals and 2 for us to eat. I realized I had never had duck eggs. They are so fluffy. The yolk is much larger than chicken eggs. Later that day I got to hold lambs. Sheeps once they give birth may not accept all their lambs and nurture them. In some instances, they neglect one of the lambs in which case the farm takes the neglected lamb under its care which includes bottle feeding it 4 times a day as they don’t have a machine to automate it. We take turns feeding them for various shifts. We did not have any foster worthy lambs yet. So we got some foster lambs from another farm. One of the farmers and I loaded the car up with crates and drove out of the island to the mainland and then onto another island. The farm was a much larger corporation. 3000+sheeps. The guy who ran it was very much a businessman. He had no attachment to his flock. He ran a very “hands-off” operation and was all about profits. You could tell. I was glad that I was not working in his farm. I would not have lasted. We loaded up the car with 5 of the many lambs he had. 5 little tiny wobbly things. Few minutes into the drive back, one of the lambs started crying continuously. We stopped, and I got to cuddle and hold the one crying. He immediately was at ease and fell asleep in my arms. The driver farmer got the other lamb in the crate as they don’t like to be alone. At some point, when the farmer went to get food and gas, I had both lambs on my lap and they were so squirmy. It was funny. They eventually calmed down their lanky little limbs and settled down on my lap and fell asleep with their head rested on each other. Since we had missed the ferry we had time before we caught the next ferry. The farmer showed me around- where to get my gas, vet for my dog, physician if I ever needed it, etc. Once we got back, we had to bottle feed the lambs and it was not easy. You have to hold the bottle at an angle and they don’t latch on easily. So you have pull and push the nipple to get them to suck on it. And it needs to be front and center because there is a tendency for them to suck on its side. We checked everyone’s tiny little bellies to make sure it felt fuller and not so lean as they had when we picked them up.

I had learned to drive an ATV by now. There was no training session. A few sheep had gotten away and so one of the farmer I was co-driving with had to jump and go after them and told me to jump on the driver seat and drive. What? Ok, here I go. And then I was warned the brake on that ATV didn’t really work. Great. On a later day, I learned how to actually start an ATV. And not just drive one.

Sat- I had to empty my porter potty bucket and empty my trash out this week. There was no garbage chute or big green/ blue bin like I had been used to all my life. Loading the soiled potty bucket in the gator, I drove it upto the sewer pit to dump it.

On a day with crazy thunderstorm, I decided to do some outdoor grilling. Not a big deal since it was covered. Once done, I made a mad dash to my yurt only to find my little dog who I had locked up in there because he is shit scared of thunderstorms (and fireworks), was not in the yurt. The back door was flung open by the crazy wind and water had seeped in, the roof was leaking and the dog was missing. I dropped everything and sent a message on the group chat saying he was missing. I then ran to the office where 2 of the employees were and told them about what had happened. They did not wait a second before they got up, put on their rain jackets and said lets go find him. We are talking loud, tree falling windy thunderstorm. I will never forget the way they jumped on it with no qualms whatsoever. We found him in no time. He had rushed to the main farm house and not onto the fields where there were coyotes, foxes and guarding dogs waiting to rip his intestines out- yes, this is where my head went.

By this point our foster lamb was climbing up in number. Little ones their moms had abandoned. I remember being absolutely drenched on one of the lambing checks head to toe and being so cold but none of it mattered when I had a little trembling lamb who was so soaked that I had to tuck him inside my big sun hat. Back in the farm house I got to swaddle him real tight in a towel until he stopped shivering. We kept taking his temperature every 20 minutes to make sure he was coming out of hypothermia which is anything below 37 degree Celsius for these little ones. These little ones are so tough. They never stopped to amaze me.

The feeding was fun but also not that easy because you have lambs who don’t latch on or have no idea how to suck or are “nipple droppers” which means they keep dropping the nipples on the bottles or  simply are too damn wiggly. Colostrum from a mama sheep who just gave birth is liquid gold and the best we can give to these lambs but ofcourse we can’t suck mama sheeps of them because they need to give it to their newly birthed lambs. So when we don’t have enough colostrum, we made formula milk. I was in the morning shift of feeding. Putting the nipples on the bottles was the hardest thing. They were always so tight and not stretchable. I did spill some milk and drop some bottles during practicing but nothing too catastrophic. Yet. I got the hang of mixing the formula milk in a day. Especially because we had to make lots of it as days went by.

Something else I got to do for the first time was out screens in for my yurt door. In the summers it apparently gets really hot in there, and so screens are a good idea. I messed it up pretty bad in the beginning by using screen tape to tape the mesh onto the wood. It looked so bad and was not practical. I did not know what I was doing. One of the employees explained to me how to do it, without telling me how stupid I was for what I had done. I got to use a staple gun. God, I love that tool. I wanted to staple gun everything! At the end of it, I was pretty damn impressed at my screen windows. My best creation yet on the farm.

As the days go by, I meet new people. People who don’t live on the farm but play roles here. Like the waste management person, the woman who cooks food for the staff sometimes, the hipster/yoga girl who visits from another farm to do cookouts for us, the guy who does photoshoots for the farm. Everyone is so damn nice. So real. So genuine. Unlike other people I have met in all the cities I have lived in. The people I meet here don’t give a damn what you are wearing or how your hair looks or that you are short or what your hobbies are or try to make small talk. I could go on. But I hope you catch my drift. They have no frills. And they love animals. Both of which is my jam.