Motherhood and the realities of farming

One of my favourite farm jobs is drafting. I'm far from proficient, especially if we're drafting 3 ways on the basis of something like ear tags or gender or tiny weeny spots applied by a conservative farmer wielding a near-empty spray can. But it's definitely easier than counting sheep, at which I totally suck, and it's more exciting than drenching or needling.

Last weekend we needed to separate the lambs and ewes down at the block (a few hundred acres about 10 min away from the main farm), and truck the lambs back here. R was busy driving around and around paddocks towing a boomspray, his brother was in hospital (long story), so it was down to R's dad and me. And I got to draft.

Lambs in the yard:


I got about half way through the first mob, thoroughly enjoying myself, when I started to notice the increasingly plaintive cries of the lambs in one yard, and the equally heartrending efforts of their mothers, in the other yard, trying to locate their lamb. Once found, the ewes would nicker softly and try to nuzzle them through the weldmesh, and I could imagine the messages of consolation and reassurance they were trying to convey.



It became increasingly hard to concentrate on drafting, and I was mentally apologising as I'd swing the gate across to block a lamb charging down the race, face pressed against his mother's flank, trying to stay close to the only comfort he's ever known. That contact would probably be the last they'd ever have. The ewe will return to the paddock where she gave birth and stood all night over her infant, defending him from foxes and the night, and watched him grow, first standing on unsteady legs, nuzzling urgently at her udder, and later gamboling with the other lambs on the dam bank. The lamb will be loaded with many others onto a truck- the first of a series of trucks that will carry him back to the pastures of the home farm where he was conceived, and eventually away from here to some far destination where his throat will be cut. They'll never see each other again.

Ewes calling to their lambs:




So when we'd finished, the first load of lambs was heading off down the road, and R looked over the mob of ewes grazing on the hillside and commented, "I bet they're glad to have their independence back again", I scooped my own well-grown little man into my arms and disagreed.




Anthropomorphism at its worst, hey?




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And now for something completely different...

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Farmboy with his bottle of homegrown peas (it's a long story):


Barefoot Farmboy without a hanky: