The snow came.
I clear drifts from the barn doors. Haul down bushels of treehay from the loft and shoulder them out to the flocks. Cart bales of hay and buckets of feed up the hill. Sinking ankle deep in crunching clean snow. No time for anything other than the necessary.
Our backup water is stored in the goat stable for when the outdoor pipes freeze. The heat from their bedding, breath and bodies helps keep it thawed enough to pour. There’s 300 litres in gallon jugs, buckets, and 20 litre cans. I sort the goats hay while I collect water containers for the fields and hill. Up the hill again to break the ice on the water buckets and refill their water. They need more water in the freeze. More refills. More carrying.
I bring the rams in from the small field. They haven’t learned, yet, that hay is edible. Or treehay. If you want smarts in sheep, you look for it in the older ewes. Rams are less … complicated. For them I harvest great armfuls of brambles, some fuschia, and an evergreen berry bush planted in the garden.
The ewes devour their treehay and grass hay. In the silence of the snowy hill the only sound is the rustle of dried leaves and the contented nicker of feeding ewes.
In the lower field the rangy rams are more circumspect. Less confident. That verdant splash of sweet green would have the ewes pelt headlong across an entire field. The rams need coaxing. Coddling. Patience. Leading. Then leaving alone. I watch them feed through a gap in the hedge. I make sure each is getting to the trough, each is getting to the fresh green leaves. No one is being bullied off the food. In summer that would be sub-optimal. In winter, possible fatal,
Snow strips from work anything unnecessary. There is time only to do what is needed. For the rams, especially, this care is pivotal to their survival. They can lose energy, and the ability to forage in a few days. But there are still moments when the shear beauty can stop you in your tracks and steal the breath from you.
The mist rises from the frozen ground forming in great drifts in amongst the clean limbed ash and fractal limbed alder. I stop. Drink in the beauty. Feel rooted to the transcendent now. Feel why I farm in the cold air in my chest, in the barelimbed trees, and in the silent clouds of rising cloud.
And then, back to the work. The rams are tangled in half consumed bramble branches and the transcendent now becomes the agricultural now. And I’m chasing a beige ram around a pasture in thick snow trying to rugby tackle the tangled bunch of bramble branches he’s gotten himself attached to.
Snow days are necessary days. Simple days. Work days. Clean and pure days. Transcendent days. Running around a frozen field in wellies days.
