Here is a stream of consciousness practice I use in the morning where I pick out storyworthy moments from the previous day.  It is very much a draft remembrance so don’t expect spit and polish.  Do expect spark and hellish.

My friend Charlene called last night on Zoom and told me a story about a book she’d read that had come to her ithrough a slant connection. A friend of hers told her about a memoir of a family of Polish emigre who were separated and then returned: We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter. The story about how it came to be written was retold by Charlene.

In high school a student had been allowed to research and tell the family narrative using a research strategy dubbed by Ken Macrorie as the I-Search. Charlene shared that with me because I had told her how that strategy was at the core of my freshman comp classes. I love these kinds of connections. They seem way better than the small world connection that is familiar to many of us. Thanks to Charlene for sharing.

Busy life today: Humanure Day and First Lambs Day.

We gathered together about six months of humanure barrels and carted it over to the bush hog with Green Mama, our trusty giant wheelbarrow. You have to be strong and be able to work together as a team to accomplish this.
We took it out and spread it in the upper southwest corner of the field. We will gather together some seed before the next good rain and scatter it then.

I mowed some branches in the big field and noted that I had some work to do on the tractor and the bushhog. Hydraulic work and three point hitch and blade sharpening.
Before we had gone out in the tractor we had noted a ewe in the first stages of end labor: separated from flock, up and down and on her side, first pushing. By the time we had returned from the humanure practices she was getting a baby lamb out or she was trying to. Elaine went down and found out that there was a huge breech baby stuck or at least that mama had exhausted herself on getting out. She found two legs and pulled. Pop went the baby. My wife reported on progress so I came back with her to see for myself. Another lamb was well along. It looked like a third was there as well, but I could not make sense. It was a malformed half of a lamb. Spooky how my first reaction was, “This makes no sense.” Worse, it always makes us feel like the other shoe is going to drop: are the other babies OK?

Mama got a molasses water bucket and she perked up from her lambing stupor. Her babies were both upstanding and eager for a milk faucet. I picked them up and put them in the barn (the lambing jargon for that is “jugged up”). The mama ewe was making “don’t hurt my baby” chuckles.

We need some instant lamb colostrum for future incidents, but all was well this time. Elaine took down a just in case bottle of lamb milk, but the ewe appeared to be making milk. That was around 9 pm. First lamb twin success. A hopeful omen.

I called Larry, our hay guy, to arrange to pick up some hay on Thursday. Full stop. Let the lambing begin.