The bad news:  the little ewe can’t stand on her own.  One of her back legs is stuck straight and she can’t get up.  Once up, she hops her back legs along behind her until she topples over again.  She can nurse if mom stands over her, which right now is often because she is in a small lambing pen.  But what will happen in a couple days when they join the flock?  Mom will leave her behind.

We’ve never had anything like this happen before – a lamb with birth defects.  She is bright-eyed and alert and eats well, when she can.  For the time being, we are feeding her a couple times a day from a bottle to keep her strength up and maybe she will heal.  Maybe she will learn to cope.  Maybe.

But the dilemma is obvious.  What do you do with a crippled ewe?  If she can learn to stand and walk, will she gain weight and thrive?  If she doesn’t learn to walk, we can’t let her starve.  We would have to put her down.  Bury her.

We haven’t named her.  I don’t spend much time with her, like I do with bottle lambs.  In nature, animals like this would die.  It is the way of things.  On a farm, nature is the structure we rely on, but we engineer it.  Maybe nature will decide this one for us, but I think the decision will be ours.  And it won’t be an easy one.

And so it is in the garden, that change happens continuously.  Seeds grow, water drains from the fields, eagles snatch our chickens (yes, unfortunately, this is true).  These are passive changes, though, and ones out of our control.  On the farm, there are many transitions that are dependent on us, the farmers, and with it comes much anxiety.

Last week,  Sam and spent 5 hours transplanting our tomatoes into 4 inch  pots.  Is it the right time?  Will the cooler soil shock them?  Is it wasted energy if we will put them in the ground in two weeks?  Worry.

And on the calendar for this weekend is transplanting our cool season crops like kale, broccoli, cauliflower, and chard into the field.  Are our hard frosts behind us?  Will the slugs attack?  Will the rain flood their roots?  Will our 5 weeks of growing them from seed be in vain?  Anxiety.

And so it is that farming is as much an art as a science.  It is a case of constant drama, possible failure, and certain stress.  But as I look at our thousands of starts bursting to get outdoors, there is pride.  And even though there is always that worry as we transition from one state of growth to the other, we are assured that we are following the natural state of things.  Like our children, growth can be painful and frought with danger, but that is as it should be.  We must hold on tight and enjoy the ride.

We have spent three years reconstructing this farm – repairing and restructuring buildings, feeding the soil, introducing animals.  We have come so far from the run down dairy that it was when we found it.  Second chances.

But this week we got a new beginning.  Our sheep flock is growing and so is their need for high quality hay.  Our southeast field was far from high-quality.  It had been invaded by bullrush, a weedy grass that grows primarily in swamps, which nothing eats but which grows with ferocity.  We had four acres of nothing except land which tractors feared to tread.

So we decided to start fresh.  We hired two huge tractors to come in and rip up and rototill the field.  In a couple of weeks they will be back to plant beautiful, lush pasture grass.  This grass will sustain our flock through the winter, and give a fresh start to a sad (and very wet) corner of our farm.

Here’s to new beginnings.  Happy Spring!

But to us, vegetables are much more than a matrix of vitamins and nutrients.  If you have ever tasted lettuce freshly picked and still warm from the sun, a carrot newly dug, cooly rinsed and crunched, or a green bean direct from the vine to your mouth, then you know the difference.  You can taste the life in them.  The sun, rain, and soil are still there and they deliver that natural goodness to your body.

Food nourishes our bodies and feeds the self.  Food is how we show love for each other.  Food gives us life.

This is why we have partnered with the Community Food Coop’s Farm Fund to provide subsidized CSA shares to families battling serious illness.  These families need the goodness and energy that come from fresh and chemical free vegetables to help the body heal as well as provide comfort and security.

If you are interested in participating, or know someone who is, complete and return our Subsidized CSA Agreement 2013 and our CSA Order Form 2013 .  This grant enables us to donate 4 full CSA shares (or 8 half-shares) to our community.

Cinderella never forgot who her mother was.  She followed her around, calling for her in vain when we let them out of the maternity ward and into the flock.  Their first day out was a gorgeous day with the sun shining and small shoots of grass rising from the surface.  They ventured through the muddy gate,  staining their legs, and into the pasture where they grazed, mom keeping close tabs on her sister and Cinderella running behind, trying not to lose them.

We came out to bottle feed her throughout the day, but her appetite waned.  By the evening she wouldn’t touch the bottle.  Was she sick?  Was it the distraction and excitement of the other lambs?  Lonliness?  Was she finally giving up as lambs will do?

We sat and watched the flock bed down for the night.  The usual ruckus ensued with lambs jumping and wrestling, mothers calling them to bed.  But when we watched Cinderella, we were aghast.  This little girl had figured out how to nurse.  She watched and waited for her sister to begin nursing, then she snuck in between mom’s back legs, found an udder, and drank.  Mom was none the wiser.  This little girl would rather fight for her mother than take the warm bottle that we were offering.

Today, she is still stealthily nursing.  She didn’t take the bottle once.

Evidently, there is more to eating than nourishment, and Cinderella finally has what she needs.

Maybe one walked away and mom followed, forgetting the firstborn.  Maybe mom knew the larger, healthier one had a better chance of survival.  Whatever the reason, the end result was the same.  We had an orphan lamb.

I spent the better part of a night trying desperately to get mom to acknowledge this little girl as her own, to care for her.  I tied her up so that she had no choice but to let the girls nurse.  I watched for an hour as mom pulled, cried, nearly hung herself trying to get free.  The desperation in both mom and in myself was palpable.  What was I doing?  Was this the right thing?  Would it work?

I tried tricking mom by rubbing a strong-smelling salve on her nose and the rumps of both baby girls.  Nope.  I tried talking gently to her – one mom to another.  Nope.  In the end, at 2 o’clock in the morning, I had to realize that this scrawny little girl was ours.

We began to feed her formula the next morning and she began to plump up.  Every four hours – morning and night – we are up feeding who Oliver has dubbed “Cinderella”.  Always on the lookout for illness or evidence that we are feeding too much or too little, we care for her.  But most of the time she lays in the hay alone.  Mom and her sister snuggle ten feet away, completely ignorant that she is family.  That they have orphaned her.  And we are doing our best to raise her.

Winter is a lean time – plants are dormant, the world is sleeping, and chickens are not laying.  The gap between fall and early spring can be a difficult one and luckily we both have jobs off the farm and a grocery store a mile away.  I imagine a different life, however, where survival for your family depended on surviving the hunger gap.

My 21st century worries are about our egg customers that we have been assuring for months that “any day” our chickens will start laying again.  Just two weeks ago we delivered 4 dozen eggs – that was our weekly haul and we didn’t save any for ourselves.  Tomorrow Sam will deliver 25 dozen with pride.  Yet another reminder of the uncertainties of farming, of what a fragile relationship we have with our food, of how fortunate we are for the wealth of food in our lives.

And now, to make an omelette.

They have learned self reliance, as they have had hours to entertain themselves as the endless workload marches on for dad and I.  They have learned about birth and death, and how closely related they really are.  They have learned about the true power of seasons; about the ways of predators.  And what we have hoped most of all for them to learn is the value of hard work and responsibility.  This is the hard one.

In the picture is Oliver, our youngest.  He doesn’t remember ever living off the farm – he was two when we began this adventure.  He has spent his short life trailing behind his dad, working day in and day out shoveling, digging, repairing, weeding, building, hauling, and fencing.  He loves to work.  Loves it.  I have never seen a five year old with the stamina to cut onion tops for an hour and a half.

When I took the picture, I was out feeding the sheep in the cold early morning  hours.  I stepped up into the barn with an armful of hay to see Ollie sweeping, still in his pajamas.  No one asked him to.  He saw that hay had dropped, work needed to be done, and he did it.  And in that moment, more than any other, I saw it.   In his smile I saw his pride, the work ethic that we dream of instilling in our children.  Time will tell if this will stick with Oliver.

Yesterday we had a ewe in labor most of the day - Sweet Girl named because of her habit of walking across the barn for a quick scratch and a hello from us.  And  while I suspected that something was awry, I did not know the extent until she was in hard labor and we saw three hooves.  Both babies were trying to come out at the same time.  After working to get the rear twin realigned, she labored for another hour or so, only to have two stillborn lambs – still warm, partly cleaned off by an unaware mother.  I know I could have saved these lambs if I had acted faster, trusted my instinct, and pulled them from their mother when I could.  But I did not.  And now what I have is regret and a lesson, learned all too well in the world of farming:  So much is out of our control.  These things happen.  Learn and try again next time.

And today there was a next time!  Sweet Girl’s sister, Broken Tail, went into labor this evening.  Tonight when we went out to feed them, we were greeted by the high-pitched call and wobbly legs of a just-born baby boy.  What a welcome sight, a reminder that for everything lost, something is gained whether it is in something learned, something gained, or the joy of new life.

My sons remind me when I wallow in the impossibility of this job that nothing is ever lost, it just changes form.  Today I was reminded of that.  Below is a link to a video of this blessing of a boy taking some of his first steps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGpZ5QIoxy8

Who knows, maybe collard greens will become the next big thing!