First Lamb of 2008

Our 2008 lambing season is rife with

trepidation and anticipation...

Typically we would be pasture lambing this time of year, but winter gave us record snowfall, and little melting. Our pastures are still covered in deep snow and ice, and where we plowed to give the sheep access to the outdoors a couple of months ago is now mud and standing water. I brought in wooden pallets to construct a sheep bridge to the snowbanks so they could traverse the moat. On a sunny day, rather than a bucolic scene reminiscent of Currier & Ives, the sheep laying on the snow look like walruses sunning on ice floes at the North Pole. In a typical year, they would be dispersed throughout the pastures, nibbling new shoots of grass, the fields dotted with frisky little lambs! Not this year. We have been setting up lambing jugs in the barn, and stocking up bedding to keep everybody clean and warm. Rather than being thrilled at the prospect of lambs, we are uneasy, knowing that a break in the weather is not coming, in fact it is supposed to continue to snow all week...Having brought in a new flock of Icelandics in January with uncertain lambing dates adds to the concern...

joy and sorrow...

Last night, when I went out to feed, I was surprised to discover Eclipse, our first lamb of 2008! What joy! She was born to Aurora, one of our senior Soay ewes, who had not shown any sign of an impending delivery at midday. Not surprising with the experienced ones, who do well on their own. But only one? Aurora always twins with this breeding...we searched and sadly found the first twin, another ewe, had died of exposure during Aurora's efforts to care for the second. Eclipse must have come quickly, because Aurora hadn't had time to dry the first. We have never lost a lamb at birth before. We knew a day would come...and sadly it is here.
We joyfully welcome Promised Land Eclipse, and sorrowfully part with her twin, Promised Land Eternity, knowing that despite the loss, we are blessed.

Resignation

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There is no flock, however watched and tended,

But one dead lamb is there!

There is no fireside, howsoe`er defended,

But has one vacant chair!

The air is full of farewells to the dying,

And mournings for the dead;

The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,

Will not be comforted!

Let us be patient! These severe afflictions

Not from the ground arise,

But oftentimes celestial benedictions

Assume this dark disguise.

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;

Amid these earthly damps

What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers

May be heaven`s distant lamps.

There is no Death! What seems so is transition;

This life of mortal breath

Is but a suburb of the life elysian,

Whose portal we call Death.

She is not dead, - the child of our affection, -

But gone unto that school

Where she no longer needs our poor protection,

And Christ himself doth rule.

In that great cloister`s stillness and seclusion,

By guardian angels led,

Safe from temptation, safe from sin`s pollution,

She lives whom we call dead.

Day after day we think what she is doing

In those bright realms of air;

Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,

Behold her grown more fair.

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken,

The bond which nature gives,

Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,

May reach her where she lives.

Not as a child shall we again behold her;

For when with raptures wild

In our embraces we again enfold her,

She will not be a child;

But a fair maiden, in her Father`s mansion,

Clothed with celestial grace;

And beautiful with all the soul`s expansion

Shall we behold her face.

And though at times impetuous with emotion

And anguish long suppressed,

The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean,

That cannot be at rest, -

We will be patient, and assuage the feeling

We may not wholly stay;

By silence sanctifying, not concealing,

The grief that must have way.