The last couple of yarns were sort of cliffhangers, and even the ones about lambing were never really resolved. Like so much in life, these stories are not really finished, but at least here’s an update.
It wouldn’t be WGW without some kind of experiment in progress, and this winter is no exception. Read on for an account of NQS: Not Quite Shepherding.
Well, lots has happened in the last seven months. You may remember I was on the point of starting the first lambing I’d done in several years (Call the Midwife). As it turned out, none of the things I was worried about, and therefore prepared for, eventuated. Unfortunately, I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of an infection that would cause most of my lambs to be stillborn, late in pregnancy. Of the 25 or so lambs conceived, only eight survived. Unusually severe spring weather contributed to the losses.
It doesn’t often come up in farming conversations, but my title is officially Dr. I’m not the useful sort of doctor, though — just an academic. In retrospect, I should have studied medicine, as I originally intended. Instead, my academic qualifications extend to explaining climate change, but are totally useless in the project that is about to take all of my time and energy for the next few weeks: lambing 33 ewes.
This is the first time in six years that I’ve had lambs of my own. I had lots of good rationalisations for why it was a good idea to buy in lambs, but the truth is I chickened out. Lambing, like ageing, is not for the faint of heart.
An early season bush fire on my farm earlier this year led me back to studying the knowledge of indigenous Australians about using fire to shape the landscape and enhance biodiversity.
Note to self: you need to change your mindset well before shearing next year. Let this be your reminder to practice staying in the present moment almost all the time, rather than just occasionally. If you don’t, you will, at the very least, leave a critical gate open and lose your sheep into the back country when you really, really don’t want them there, and don’t have the time to gather them back into the fold. There was a lot of swearing, none of it particularly inventive, when I did precisely that two days ago on my fifth straight day, and 7th out of a total of 12 days of shearing.
