Sheepish Read online

  The problem is that I keep forgetting the ear tag numbers of the two lambs. I return to the house and report that the black girl has drunk the whole bottle, but the white girl hasn’t. It doesn’t take long before “the black girl” becomes Black Girl, and “the white girl” becomes White Girl.

  Oops. I have named two of our ewes. That’s just ducky. Really. What an idiot. I can’t believe I’ve done this. And they aren’t even interesting names.

  We don’t go down without a fight. Melissa gives each lamb her adult ear tag: The black lamb will be Orange 1. The white lamb will be Orange 3. “We’ll use these numbers,” she says.

  For a few days we do our best. “Orange 3 nearly pulled the bottle from my hand this afternoon.” “I think Orange 1’s fleece is getting lighter from the sun.”

  But it’s too late. We slide back into White Girl and Black Girl without a word. Perhaps we aren’t the tough, bad-ass farmers we think we are.

  The Incredible Shrinking Jeans

  If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model. Kate Moss? She would have been the paintbrush.

  —DAWN FRENCH

  Through some sort of weird sunspot activity, or terrorist plot, or government secret ray gun, my jeans are getting smaller. I must buy another pair. But after I eat less, drink less wine, and actually get off my butt thirty minutes a day, the old jeans once again expand to fit me. It’s a puzzling thing.

  And it doesn’t just happen once. It happens every few years. Luckily, the universe always manages to expand my shrunken jeans so I can wear them again.

  Until now. The magic is gone. I must not only buy a larger pair of jeans, but then these shrink as well. I eat less. I drink less wine. I move more. And still, nothing changes. My mother has warned me that one day my jeans will shrink and stay shrunk, but I don’t believe her. I’m a baby boomer. What happened to the bodies of my mom’s generation will not happen to mine. It’s unthinkable.

  Shrinking pants are more than just an inconvenience. They interfere with farming. One early fall day I flee the farm for a meeting, wearing my favorite turquoise top and my favorite pair of jeans, which have shrunk just enough that I look good, but with enough “give” that I can actually drive sitting down.

  When I arrive home, Melissa is out in the pasture moving the sheep. It seems to be taking longer than it should, so I slip on my barn Birkies to help. No reason to change into my roomy bib overalls, since moving sheep to the next paddock entails nothing more than clapping, whooping a bit, and walking behind the flock.

  I forget about the whole lamb thing. Moving ewes to fresh grass goes smoothly because the ewes understand gates. But add 100 baby lambs to the mix, and moving sheep can be serious work.

  Melissa has already moved the sheep, but two lambs have been left behind. They’d either been sleeping or off horsing around in the tall grass and not paying attention. Melissa is chasing them back and forth, trying to get them through the open gate.

  Imagine a horseshoe. The flock is at one tip, and the two lambs are at the other tip. To rejoin the flock, the lambs must walk all the way around the curved end of the horseshoe to get through a gate. We try to get the lambs to do this, but they won’t go. They want to go from tip to tip, but there are two electric fences in the way.

  “Run!” Melissa yells to me as the two lambs scamper past me once again. I shuffle faster in my jeans, which seem to be shrinking even more as I shuffle.

  “I can’t!” I yell back.

  We finally force them into a corner with a netted fence. One thirty-pound linebacker leaps right over the fence, but the other gets stuck in the fence right at my feet. Here’s my opportunity.

  “Grab him!” Melissa yells from the far side of the thistle patch. I bend over at the waist but can’t bend my knees. My pants are sweaty from running and—did I mention?—a little tight. Nothing bends. “I can’t,” I cry as my hands flail uselessly an inch above the struggling lamb. My arms aren’t long enough and I can’t bend my knees. Don’t even get me started on the chafing.

  “Get him!” Melissa cries as she runs toward us.

  “I can’t!” I’m about to let myself fall on the lamb, like a denim tree being felled, when he breaks free and zooms away.

  “Or you could just stand there looking good in those jeans,” she says with a sigh.

  “Oh, that I can do.” We watch the two lambs disappear.

  There is only one option left. We walk up to the main flock, where the sheep are happily munching on fresh grass. “Sorry, girls, but everyone has to go back to the old paddock.” You should have seen the eyes roll. It takes major running around and yelling to convince the sheep they need to stop eating and walk back around the horseshoe into the paddock they’d just left. When they do, the two little naughties happily run to greet them. Then we have to say, “Okay, girls, now back to the new paddock.” More eye rolling. It’s embarrassing.

  Back at the house, I’m so exhausted from chasing sheep that I bury my face in a loaf of bread. Whereas my eating habits as a tired farmer bring relief in the short term, in the long term the results have not been as beneficial.

  Once I’ve stuffed myself in the belief that food will make me feel better, I’m still so hot and sweaty I can barely peel the jeans off. Because wool absorbs more moisture than cotton, perhaps I should have been wearing wool jeans. Or a larger size.

  This Is Your Brain on Oxytocin

  Being high is one of the most pleasant sen- sations available to mankind. Every day is Saturday.

  —JOHN ROSEVEAR

  People love visiting farms. Some want to touch the animals. Some want to emotionally touch nature. And a few just want to touch the electric fence. In the United States in 2007, 2.8 million sheep, about half of all the sheep in the country, lived on small farms. Most people who’ve sung “Mary Had a Little Lamb” have never actually touched one, so it’s magic when they can.

  More people are seeking out opportunities to experience a farm. Gone is the old-fashioned “dude ranch” where people sat around drinking martinis and watching others work. Today people actually pay money to visit farms and help. There are demonstration farms where people help with lambing. Kim Severson writes in the New York Times of paying $300 per night to stay in a canvas tent, complete with woodstove for heating, and help put up hay for winter. Holy Frijoles. We have a tent. We’d set it up for $300.

  The good news about all of this is that people are making connections. A Vermont dairy farmer with a B&B has noticed that thirty years ago, city visitors didn’t pay much attention to what she did. Today’s visitors want to know more about food politics, land use, and environmental stewardship. Small farms give them a place in which to learn more.

  We have visitors of all ages come to our sheep farm, but hands down the most appreciative of all of them are the ten-year-olds. They soak up fascinating facts like sponges, and Melissa is filled with facts. She also has cool farm equipment.

  A new acquaintance, recently come to Minnesota from New Jersey, brings her husband, her thirteen-year-old daughter, her eleven-year-old son, and her black standard poodle, Atticus, to visit. The woman and I talk, the husband keeps the neutered but enthusiastic Atticus from humping our neutered but nervous Molly, and the daughter stands in the shade simultaneously using my hula hoop and reading.

  The boy has the best time of all. Melissa shows him where the hens hide their eggs, and he’s able to cup his hands around a freshly laid egg, smooth and warm. He rides on the four-wheeler. He climbs into the tractor with Melissa. She fires it up and he works the controls to lift up a pile of composting soil. He visits the steers, hearing the long, mournful low of a cow for the first time. He visits the sheep and touches their wool.

  If I hadn’t rung the huge iron bell outside our front door, Melissa and Max would be touring the farm still. Max currently wants to be an architect and a pianist and a downhill skier. He might have been tempted to add farming to the list, but then he asks Melissa if yo
u could make money farming. She gives him an honest answer.

  Without small farms, nonfarmers—which is 99.3 percent of our population—would lose the opportunity to see animals, touch them, and meet the people who raise them. Shepherds and other small farmers don’t get paid to make and keep those connections, however. They must have a product to sell, and people must buy it.

  We often send visitors home with a carton of fresh eggs or a handful of peacock feathers. Whenever a family gets back into the car, a child in the group is likely holding the small piece of raw fleece Melissa has given her. She’ll hold it up to the light, sniff it, and rub it against her arm, enchanted to have connected with a sheep and be taking a little part of her home.

  Writer Meg Olmert offers an explanation for people’s fascination with farms in her book, Made for Each Other: The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond: “They come in search of something they never knew but still miss. They just want to make sure that whatever ‘it’ was still exists.”

  Although chickens are the big hit with kids during farm visits, adults like the sheep. In fact, when people are interested in getting up close and personal with a sheep (in an entirely healthy and platonic and non-gross sort of way) Black Girl and White Girl are the favorites. The other sheep are too timid to approach strangers, but not these two. One particular day, Black Girl marches right up to a young woman and shoves her nose into the woman’s hand in search of grain. Empty-handed, the woman offers another sort of treat. She buries her fingers in the wool along Black Girl’s side and rubs.

  I expect Black Girl to walk away, but instead she makes a happy grunting sound. She isn’t exactly worfling, but she’s coming close. When the woman reaches across Black Girl’s back and begins massaging both sides, Black Girl stands perfectly still and grunts again with pleasure. The more the sheep grunts, the happier the woman is, and the longer she massages the ewe.

  I need to end the tour so I can get back to my writing, but both Black Girl and the woman are in a trance. In the direct manner most Minnesotans use to confront someone not doing what they want, I say, “Well, okay, then.”

  This doesn’t get the woman’s attention so I get more aggressive. “Well, okay, then. Let’s go visit the chickens.”

  Still the woman and Black Girl stay put, neither wanting the exchange to end. Finally I manage to break the spell and Black Girl staggers away, too blissed out to walk straight. The woman glows.

  It turns out I have witnessed, right before my eyes, a little oxytocin feedback loop.

  Oxytocin: the reason farmers keep farming even though animals beat them up and batter their bank accounts. It was first identified in 1902 as the hormone that acts on the muscles of the uterus to produce labor contractions. We now know it does so much more. According to Olmert, oxytocin is released into the body through a portal at the base of the brain, and scientists now believe it helps establish social attachments between mammals.

  Olmert builds a credible case for the idea that oxytocin is what drew humans and animals together, and is what is keeping us together. The chemical can quiet the brain and allow us to see the world as a less threatening place. It creates strong feelings of recognition and commitment between mammals. She believes oxytocin might have been the hormone in both humans and animals that aided domestication of livestock:As the first farmers stroked their animals, they raised the oxytocin levels of these captured creatures, making the animals’ brains, bodies and behavior calmer and more cooperative. The warmth and acceptance felt in that touch also produced a reciprocal release of oxytocin in the keepers. Just as caring for a baby releases the oxytocin that helps mothers relax into a more sedentary, repetitive lifestyle, so the nurturing aspects of domestication appear to have released a similar oxytocin effect on most of humanity.

  Kerstin Uvnas-Moberg, a Swedish scientist, found that repeated exposure to oxytocin calmed very nervous rats. There were not only physiological changes such as lowered cardiovascular and stress measurements, but the rats were better able to figure out puzzles. Studies comparing nervous and calm cattle have found that calmer cattle can think more clearly and solve more puzzles. Most humans are more clearheaded when they are calm enough to reason out a problem.

  Kids with ADHD were enrolled in a Pennsylvania project that allowed them to visit the zoo and “adopt” smaller animals as pets. Thanks to their interaction with the animals, the kids became calmer, more alert, and better able to listen and learn. Scientists also believe that oxytocin can bolster our immune system and protect us from infection. There’s a scientific explanation why so many of us bring cats and dogs into our homes and take on the responsibility of their care: oxytocin.

  Now that I know what’s happening, it’s fun to watch Black Girl in action. She’ll stand in front of a visitor, even if there is no grain involved. People freaked out by germs won’t touch an animal, but most people will reach down and pat Black Girl. She stands there, patient, until the person gets a little more vigorous with the scratching and the oxytocin feedback loop begins.

  I watch her do this again and again. She’s an oxytocin junkie, willing to do anything to get her fix. Watching Black Girl in action makes me realize how long it’s been since I’ve had an “oxy” moment with one of our animals. Maybe all I need to feel better is a more regular “fix.”

  Or maybe I need to accept that though my life is rich with farm stories, that may not be enough. After years of shearing sheep and shipping the fleece off to the wholesalers without much thought, after years of scoffing at fiber freaks, perhaps it’s time to pay more attention to the woof running through my life.

  PART THREE

  Spinning Yarns

  Woolology 101

  A love affair with knowledge will never end in heartbreak.

  —MICHAEL GARRETT MARINO

  As a shepherd, I’ve learned a great deal about sheep: how to keep them healthy, how to move them from point A to point B, how to interpret their sproings and worfls. But since our main farm product is meat, not fiber, I know almost nothing about wool itself. Perhaps my aversion to fiber freaks closed my mind to learning more. This doesn’t seem fair to the sheep, or to me, so I’m unlocking the padlock, pushing open the rusty gate, and entering the Pasture of Wool ... just to educate myself, mind you. Nothing more.

  I begin my research and find my first humiliation: If you look at the inside label of nearly any wool garment, you’ll see the phrase “100% Virgin Wool.” Where does virgin wool come from? As comedians like to say, “From the sheep that runs the fastest.” I thought “virgin wool” came from a lamb that had never done the deed.

  Wrong.

  Then I thought that virgin wool was from an animal that had never been shorn before. Still embarrassing, still wrong.

  It turns out that virgin wool is simply wool that has never been used for anything else, but has come straight off the sheep. Virgin wool can come from an old ewe that’s been bred every year, and shorn every year. Back in the day, wool was regularly recycled and reused, so I suppose the label was developed to differentiate new wool from reused. Why didn’t they say “100% New Wool”?

  I think I’m allergic to wool until I read there are fewer allergies to wool than to any other known fiber. So why do over 30 percent of Americans believe they’re allergic to wool? One possibility is that people with sensitive skin might be allergic to the chemicals used to wash, treat, and dye fibers of all types, including wool. For example, chemical abrasives are often used to wash raw wool for processing, and chlorine and mothproofing chemicals are routinely applied to conventional wool before turning it into a finished product. To test this idea, I hold a hunk of our untreated, unprocessed fleece against my skin. Nothing. No itching. There might be something to this.

  A more likely explanation for thinking we’re allergic, however, comes from wool’s structure. A wool fiber is made up of overlapping scales. Imagine clay pots stacked inside each other, and you’ll have the structure of a strand of wool. Some of us with sensitive skin can feel the
sharp edges of those “pots,” or scales.

  The size of wool’s scales can vary. A strand of wool is measured in microns—the lower the number, the finer the strand—and microns range from seventeen up to forty. The finer the strand, the less likely we are to feel those edges because they’re so small. That’s why baby blankets and soft, drapey sweaters are made from the wool of Merino sheep, or from alpacas, because that fleece has a lower micron count.

  Unfortunately, clothing labels don’t list the wool’s micron count. But the people who buy wool for textile manufacturing know. Several years ago a 200-pound bale of 11.6 micron fleece was sold at an Australian auction for $237,000. Yowza. Wish my sheep had created that wool. According to the article in The Shepherd , an Indian fabric manufacturer planned to make it into about fifty likely very expensive men’s suits.

  How wool feels against our skin depends on how it has been spun. Most of the wool used in socks, sweaters, scarves, and coats has been spun into woolen yarn, which is fuzzy, with little bits sticking out. Wool spun using the worsted method is smooth. Most wool suits, pants, and skirts are worsted, and won’t have the fuzzy bits.

  I learn about black wool versus white wool. When we bought Andy, a large Hampshire ram with a black face and black legs, we introduced color into our flock. Soon our lambs were a riotous mix of all white, speckled, spotted, and all black. One lamb was white with a black spot on his back. Another was black with white spots on his face. Another looked just like a Dalmation. Black Girl came to be because we introduced Andy’s genes into our flock.

  But when he shears, Drew is adamant about keeping black or speckled fleece out of the wool bag, so we separate any fleece with black and throw it away. This isn’t racism but reality. Wool with any color in it—black, brown, tan—will not take a dye in the same way as white wool. So wholesale wool buyers need all the wool to be white for quality assurance. If the end product is your burgundy wool suit, you expect the entire suit to be burgundy, not burgundy with random bits of brown or black.