EcoHearth Environmental Website - Best ecology websites, environmental blogs, news, activism, green jobs, green products

As I shared in my previous two blogs, my family recently WWOOFed for three weeks in Italy. Among the farm’s products, pecorino cheese and a sweet, mild yogurt counted toward the virtues of sheep. Additionally, sheep’s wool is nice and their lambs are cute. Otherwise, they are despicable creatures. I quickly understood why these beasts collectively became a religious metaphor for the flock of followers. They look pious but are devious. And they cower when someone seeks to exercise power over them.

At least an hour before we approached their pasture, the goats and sheep would bleat relentlessly, desperate for us to relieve them of their milk. We always began with the easy customers: the goats. After extending a rope line between two trees and hitching each goat by the collar to a carabiner—several of which were knotted in increments along the rope—we were ready to take one at a time to a milking post. A full can of mangini, their cereal, kept a goat or sheep eating calmly as we milked. Sheep were also tethered, if we could catch them and they hadn’t managed to slip their hornless heads through the collar. Those who escaped the rope line lollygagged at the edge of the scene, pretending to graze while their shifty yellow eyes scanned the two milking posts.

On one such evening, I had just settled into a comfortable milk-squirting rhythm, tugging and squeezing the warm udders, when in rushed a lowdown sheep. Like a padded, stick-legged football receiver, she thrust her bulk against the goat and stuffed her gluttonous snout into the bucket of mangini. I quickly withdrew the pitcher of milk from between the goat’s hind feet and poured it into the milk bucket, snapping on the lid so as not lose the booty in the ruckus. Grabbing the sheep by the ears, I yanked her away from the bucket. Levering her low, hefty weight against my slight, tippy build, the ewe pulled away. Mohammed and Jitta came to my aid, but the ewe immediately bolted. She went right for the mangini supply, popped off the plastic lid with her teeth, and upended its contents. All but a few animals still fastened to the line charged to the spill like a crowd of fanatical Wal-Mart shoppers at opening time on Black Friday. While Mohammed attempted to salvage the cereal, Jitta milked the last couple of sheep as they gorged themselves.

After that, I was demoted to sheep guard, shouting Scio! (Shoo!) or Ma dai! (Go on now!), bopping them on the butt with a big stick while Mohammed and Jitta milked.

***

One morning I learned that a ewe had given birth the night before. When Jitta took me into the stall, I found a spindly lamb with brown splotches, barely able to stand. The mother would not feed him, so we tried with a baby bottle. Mohammed entered and commented that he doubted the newborn would survive. Taking hold of the bottle, he forced the nipple deeper into the lamb’s throat, causing him to suck harder.

In the afternoon I led my husband and daughter to the stall to see the lamb. Adjusting my eyes to the darkness, I focused on the tiny creature, which had burrowed into the straw and camouflaged itself next to a two-by-four. We lifted him out and tried to feed him. He was too weak to stand, too weak to suck. That night, the lamb perished.

We thought about leaving the farm a week early to travel around and see more of the country. But Elisabetta had a children’s camp that week, and she thought my daughter would enjoy the activities. Also, my husband had planted hundreds of cabbage seedlings, crauti, that he wanted to nurture along. So we stayed. On the last day, my daughter Noel was assigned to calm a cat while she gave birth. Noel quickly overcame her revulsion when she saw how quickly the kittens were cleaned up, and how appreciatively the new mother gazed at her.

On the flight home, I asked my daughter if she had enjoyed herself. It was, after all, a rough, working vacation—nothing like resting on a beach somewhere. She gave a bored, teenage response. “It was different. Anyhow, if it had been a beach vacation, I wouldn’t have anything interesting to tell my friends.”

See Part 1: Goats, Elderberry Flower Juice and an Unprincipled Potbellied Pig
See Part 2: Party Animals and the Splendid Panda Adventure

Comments (2)

Show/Hide comments

Write comment