The Quiet Country Life

Days later, staccato images still haunt us. A bright clear frosty morning, sitting at our dining room table having our morning coffee. Smelling smoke and going outside to see if Tom the carpenter was doing anything smoky. No. More coffee. Still smelling smoke, a strange mist outside the window. Rushing outside and finding smoke coming from every opening of the hay barn! Yelling to Tom, calling 911, Chris and Tom entering the smoky barn to find flames in the ram pen. Tom getting the rams out, stomping the boot high flames, Chris dumping the water buckets on the flames, Deborah and I anxiously waiting outside, fearing a repeat of ten years earlier. Fire trucks everywhere. It’s the water bucket heater that has caught fire. Flames out by the time the firemen come in with their hoses. Disaster averted. Don’t want to think about what would have happened if we hadn’t been right there. All electric warming devices, including heat lamps, banned from the barn from now on. Better to return to the way farmers did it 200 years ago? Barn fires are an age old terror though – electrics or not . Maybe we’ll have smoke detectors and sprinklers installed instead?

Two days later, Steve’s ewe has twin lambs. The wonder of new life times two. Then the weaker one perishes that night, presumably from the cold. But yesterday another miracle – twin lambs each born to two ewes – one right before our eyes. Within a few minutes they have struggled to stand on long wobbly legs and tried to nurse. And today they are all either scampering around or snuggled next to their mothers in the straw. The life force is strong.