Notso...

You always hope that if you have an audience for lambing, everything will go smoothly: an easy delivery,
a vigorous lamb, an attentive mother.
After all – Icelandic sheep are famous for it!

But it was not so this weekend.

We were happy to share our farm with a friend and her dear friend who was visiting from out of state, and arrived to find a ewe in labor. The ewe was not progressing. We aren’t sure how long she had been in that condition, as we had been away from the farm for the afternoon.

It took intervention to deliver the baby. The lamb needed to be pulled and was having difficulty breathing as it had inhaled quite a bit of fluid in the trauma of birth. Our full arsenal of shepherding skills was demonstrated to our visitors – suctioning, brisk rubbing, nostril puffing, blowdrying (with a hairdryer!), and lamb swinging – everything we felt comfortable doing when resuscitating a lamb. The most difficult skill we have yet to perfect: knowing when enough is enough, that we are not in control of who lives, and who dies. He would pink, and then he would blue, he would pink again, and then blue. Finally it came to the point where I had to lay him down – my big beautiful ram lamb, whose birth I had anticipated for five months – and walk away, saying “I have done what I can do. Nature and mama must do the rest.”

Today we have a healthy lamb – a strong ENORMOUS lamb…not so bad after a not so good start. We gave the privilege of naming him to our farm visitor who had watched his birth. The only criteria for naming was that the name begin with “N” which identifies all of our 2009 babies.

Welcome “Notso”, a very clever name for a little lamb

who was not so sure whether to live or die on the farm.

"To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, And a time to die..." Ecclesiastes 3:1,2