Author Archives: sophie

The Dying Art of Rural Living

by . Posted on
24 Mar

We cleaned up at the Comboyne Show yesterday.  First prizes for my Kangaroo Valley apple mint, chutney, dozen eggs; Ged’s honey and supreme exhibit as well as First Prize for Ben’s painting in the under 8’s division.  Second prize for my lemon marmalade.

Quite a swathe of approbation for our year’s faming endeavours.  But what would have been the story if the competition had been more robust?  Because the sad fact is that the Comboyne and other little farming community, shows are becoming an anachronism in our fast paced, iphone, ipad, internet, super and hypermarket world.  We have lost touch with rural life, we have forgotten how to bottle and preserve, how to make jam and marmalade, how to grow our own, feed ourselves, make gifts of the gluts and salt and sugar away excesses to feed the winter mouths and months.

We buy what we want, when we want without a care or conscience for the food miles it has travelled – strawberries from South Africa, asparagus from Thailand, tomatoes from Italy.  We are like children in our carelessness – grabbit and run and to hell with the climate or the genetically modified sprayed with every chemical crop.

But home grown, home bottled food is goodness in a jar.  You can taste the sunshine and the love (sometimes if you get a little crunch you can taste the dirt as well!)  And what can be more satisfying a sight than a pantry stuffed to the gills with goodies from the garden – chutney, jam, marmalade, honey, limoncello, mead, candles, soaps etc.,  Made by Mum with love.  And mostly given away in true farm generosity.

There is an up side to the global financial crisis.  And that is that we will halt or stop or maybe only question our rampant consumerism and learn some good old fashioned arts and skills and values – self sufficiency, being neighbourly, growing our own, celebrating the harvest, seed saving and plant sharing.  Eating more veg and a whole lot less meat.  Make and mend, making do, going without and even making our own.

These are dying arts.  My Grandmother was the Queen of all this and more – recycling, reusing, storing, saving, baking, sewing, knitting etc.  I used to mock her and she never approved of me and my wild ways and raucous laugh – now I wish she were here to help me, teach me, guide me.  Because what she knew then we need to learn now.  And our humble hearts will reap abundant harvests as we learn to sow our seeds and wait patiently while they grow.

I shall be actively encouraging more competition for next year’s show and a revival in the art of living rurally.

Bush Tucker

by . Posted on
10 Mar

Lord knows we have enough wildlife here that we need never eat meat from the butcher or supermarket again.  I don’t know why it’s taken us so long to sample Bush Tucker.

Last year we shot a goanna – a big one- that saw us as a food source and made the daily trek into the chook house for his eggs.  As Ben collects the eggs and a confrontation between the two of them was going to end in tears and skin tears, he obviously had to go.  It was the first time I saw my husband with his gun . . . he looked so comfortable with it, so at home with it, sure steady . . . safe.  He’s a good shot, my man, more reason to love him so.

That goanna made a run and swim for it and Ged got him as he clambered out of the river on a rock.  Wwoofer Carl and I rowed over to get him but wimped out of hauling him out and cooking him.  This year Ged and the Wwoofers had no such qualms, Ged shot a goanna out of the Jacaranda tree and  it went straight on the new barbie in its skin and there was much excitement at the prospect of Bush Tucker for supper.

Apparently they are a protected species.  God knows why there are plenty of them around here.  We have a simple rule at Avalon, all the wildlife are safe from us as long as they don’t interfere with our lives and business.  If they stay away they are safe.  We are not the sort of people to shoot a snake on sight.  But a goanna stealing my eggs, scaring my baby chicks, wrestling with Josephine in her nesting box, eating the baby ducklings – yup, that has to go!

When last year’s goanna ate Josephine’s baby I literally felt that biblical ‘an eye for an eye’ feeling.  A rage that only the justice of a death for a death would appease.  My duckling was gone, my duck was suffering, tears were shed by adults and child alike and vengeance was mine.  I did feel regret for the goanna’s wasted death (but only because we didn’t eat it!) but once he was killed my rage at our loss was gone.

Law abiding city folk will be shocked at our lawlessness.  But the law of the jungle, the law of the land, Bush Law is different.  We are wilder because we know nature, we see life and death in every day, we know the cycles and the rhythms of the seasons.  We respect life, we cherish it, and to me it is better to shoot a goanna for stealing and eat it, than it is to buy nameless meat at Coles or Woolworths with no thought to where it came from, how it lived, how it died.

These are far from the killing fields as I don’t like blood shed at Avalon, but if my boys are to eat meat I would rather they knew its name.

The Carnivore’s Conundrum

by . Posted on
03 Mar

I don’t eat meat but my little pickle does which means that I have had to get a lot closer to meat and a lot more involved with where it comes from, and, as a farmer, where it goes.

I believe that if you must eat meat you need to have raised it, fed it, loved it, looked after it, and attained its agreement to the kill.  And then you kill it or at least be there at the end to ensure it is killed humanely, kindly, with compassion and care.  After all, these are living, breathing, feeling beings with soul.

This week two of the boys went to the fat sale.  Hector has been avoiding this for years.  Mainly because each time my resolve has failed or the river has flooded or the bank balance has been boosted some other way.  Each time I have gone and talked to him and cried with him because his ending has always been inevitable yet somehow he and I had to make our peace with it.  At the end of last year he told me that he gave himself in the ultimate sacrifice and I understood that animals do this for us – not willingly, not happily, but nobly they give the ultimate gift in service to us humans.  For love of us.

And I understand and ‘get’ that – I really do.  But to get cattle to the table, first they are separated from the herd and mustered which can be long, hot, hard work and confusing to yards which often are places of fear – what happens next?  Then they are loaded on a truck – where am I going now?  There is grief at leaving their home, the land they love and their friends and family – both human and herd.

Road travel must be terrifying and then they finally arrive at the saleyards where strangers prod and poke and sometimes hit them.  They are tired, hungry, thirsty, dazed and confused.  And then they are loaded into huge trucks, crammed in together for often long journeys to the abattoir where they will smell the blood and fear long before they are stunned and killed.  Imagine how terrified they must be, how their last moments are filled with fear and the killing frenzy before them.

And yet when Hitler did this to humans it was called The Holocaust – a blot upon our human history never to be forgotten.  I remember it well.  In another life I was in Auschwitz where I scrubbed floors and the lust of two SS officers kept me alive longer than most.  But before we got there we were herded, isolated, starved and prodded and poked and cramped into ghettos then cattle trucks as we travelled to unknown destinations and destinies.  We too were full of fear.  No one, no living sentient being should be treated like that.  It isn’t right that we do this to cattle and sheep and pigs and chickens.  What have we become that we think this is OK?

We have legalised horror and industrialised death and it is not OK. We have to get back to grass roots and get involved with where our food comes form – where it is grown and nurtured and raised, where it dies and how it is treated every step of the way.  This isn’t just about chemical free or biodynamic food or farming, it is a moral dilemma and soul choice.

If we eat meat we have a moral responsibility to those animals we feed off to ensure they are treated with dignity, compassion and yes, love.

I have cried so many tears for Hector this week.  First he sulked and refused to speak to me.  Finally I reikied him on his way to the abattoir and he said ‘I have lived a good life, a happy life, I have loved my life and my ‘girls’ .  Everyone has to die eventually and I have lived longer than most.  I love Ben and would do anything for him’ and finally he and I were at peace.

It doesn’t stop the tears because I miss him and probably always will and the girls are so so sad without him.  He was the best babysitter and the proud and constant friend and protector of his herd.  Hector the Protector, rest assured that we loved you so much and this was not the end I wanted for you.  You have served us in your ultimate sacrifice and for this we sincerely thank you.  Hector, my darling, rest in peace and thank you from the bottom of my ever more vegetarian heart.

What makes an Aussie Farmer?

by . Posted on
09 Dec

When I first came here I thought it was the Akubra, the moleskins, the RM boots and the years on the land that made a farmer but now I know different.

It’s the long, hot hours on the tractor.  The stiff neck, hip and back from hours reversing up hills and clearing gullies.  It’s the permanent ‘farmer’s tan’ of face, neck and arms and the leathering of the skin in the hot aussie sun.  It’s the ability to pull a calf out of a straining cow, or pull a cria out of a birthing alpaca.  It’s knowing when to call the vet and when time and patience and a little TLC will heal.

It is knowing and loving and caring for animals.  Being brave enough to decide who goes for slaughter when.   Crying for them when they go, communicating with them beforehand and remembering them always as friends and fellow travellers and family.  It’s the understanding that we all have a purpose and a gift to give and that some of these animals make the ultimate sacrifice, give of themselves, with love and service, so we can eat.  There is no greater gift than that.

It is the watching of the seasons, the listening to the land as she speaks, working with her, nurturing her and feeling her nurture us as we live in her embrace.  It is learning to see and hear her messengers and understand their messages – the scurrying ants, cawing black cockatoos, lying down alpacas and cows saying storm coming and watching the sky turning indigo as it looms.

Seeing the babies being born and the ones that don’t survive – snatched before life has a chance to begin by goannas or snakes or circumstance.  Watching them grow and then mourning if they are taken too soon.  Nature is cruel, life is not guaranteed and ‘where there is live stock, there is dead stock’.

It is watching the eagles wheel and soar and teaching their babies to fly, talking to snakes and not being afraid of them, swimming with platypus, marvelling at the beauty and diversity of Mother Nature and having daily conversations with God and the Angels.  Finally feeling gratitude, humility and awe at this beautiful planet, this wonderful place and life, so precious, so tenuous, so brief.  After a lifetime of dabbling in death defying activities, all of a sudden I don’t want to die, don’t want to leave here, can’t bear the thought of not seeing the trees we are planting bear fruit.

Being a Farmer is all about taking care of the land that takes care of us – that feeds our bodies, nurtures our souls, and allows us and the planet to breathe.  It is hard, hard yakka.  Lifting, carrying, hauling, hurting.  Thankless, endless, relentless and often joyless.  But the rewards are spiritual as we come to see how small we are in the grand scheme of things, how brief our imprint, how enduring and changeable nature is and how we too must learn to bend in the winds of change or be blown over if we stand too proud and strong and rigid.

It is riding out the floods and the droughts and understanding that the feast and famine cycles are natural rhythms of nature.  It is knowing how to make do and paddock and bush fix things and scrape meals together from what is in the veggie patch and the pantry.  Living by the seasons, powered by the sun and becoming ever more sustainable.

It is cuts and scratches and bruises and worn clothes and wrinkles, but it is honest, and pure and worthwhile.  Down here on the farm we piss in the wind, we revel in our nudity, the animals don’t care how old or deshevelled we look, and the dirt is ingrained in hands and fingernails and no amount of scrubbing will get them clean.  And we don’t care.  Because bodies grow old and disintegrate and die and the wild dogs and goannas will feed off them.  Nothing is forever, this too shall pass and we are lucky to have witnessed creation at its most perfect and beautiful and to have immersed ourselves in the natural world.  What will happen after we are gone?  Nature will endure and all our work may well have been for nothing – who knows who will tend Avalon for future gnerations or if it will just be left to run wild and untamed as it was before we came.  And yet still we continue and persevere and keep going – for the love of it, for the deep peace and stillness she brings to our souls.

The Akubra never got worn so I sold it on ebay, I can’t afford moleskins or rm boots but I am a farmer in my wiry arms, in my wide shoulders, in my sun beaten and battered skin, in my tortured hip, in my holey clothes and deep down in my grateful soul . . .

Swarm

by . Posted on
01 Dec

I was slashing on a hot spring day on the ‘other side’  and swung past the bees as I often do to clear the long grass around their hive entrances.  Never before have I been stung but yesterday I felt them land on me and I swiped them away.  One protested with a dying deed into the crown of my head and it really hurt!  As I swung past again on my next round they landed on me again but this time I was smart enough to do nothing, still smarting from the last bee’s dying wish.

Today I almost ran into a swarm building on a long low branch of a big she oak along the river flat by the teepees.  Missed it by an inch or so thank goodness!  No wonder they were all so cranky and aggressive yesterday.

I rang Ged who is the bee expert (he loves those bees!) and he got very excited and said he would capture the swarm and put it in the last remaining empty box when he got home from Sydney.  Sure enough when the sun was warm we all drove over to watch the bee whisperer at work.  The swarm had completely changed shape in the intervening 12 hours and was now hanging like a flag down from the bough.  Ged put on his white jacket with hood and veil and tucked his jeans into his pants (they do like to climb up trouser legs) and gave the bough one good shake into the box and most of the swarm had a new home.  A few more shakes and some gentle sweeping with the bee broom and we had captured our first swarm.  It was amazing . . . my husband the apiarist and more lovely runny honey for Avalon.  Yay!

Mother Love

by . Posted on
26 Nov

My parents have been visiting from the UK.  It’s the first time they’ve been to Avalon since our wedding here on the farm so you can imagine what a huge effort we put into trying to get all the outstanding jobs finished before they arrived (the thing is, there are always a million jobs still to do on a farm . . . )

We have always fought like cat and dog.  I was so angry and felt so rejected when I was sent away to boarding school aged 8 and I hated school and didn’t try, so I didn’t get good grades and I was an endless disappointment to my parents who knew how intelligent I really was.  I was an angry and troubled soul who rebelled as a teenager.  I hurt myself as much as I hurt them – smoking, drinking, sex games etc  Of course I failed miserably in my ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels and the family myth is that I got expelled for smoking.  At least with a change of schools and a headmistress who saw past the bluff and bluster to the pure heart beyond (thank and bless you Miss Hibbert you turned my life around and were the first person who gave me reason to believe in myself) I finally made good friends and began to belong.

My lesbian liaison didn’t help relationships with my parents and my subsequent heterosexual hedonism was more cause for concern and criticism.  Then I had an abortion and ran away to Hong Kong and pastures new.

Relationships were always strained and full of censure although we always had our honeymoon periods before I crashed and burned in some way in my selfish acts of self sabotage.  Needless to say I have been the black sheep and true to form have dabbled in all the addictions and explored far and dark horizons of the soul, psyche and society.

Not surprising them that they have viewed my spiritual journey with mistrust, that they have had to pick up the pieces financial and otherwise more times than any of us care to count or mention.  If their story has been one of disappointment, frustration and despair, mine has been that of rejection, lack of love and never being seen or heard for who I truly am rather than measured up to who they want me to be.

Needless to say its a relationship of tears and sorrow, rage and rejection and failure from all sides to forgive, let go, start afresh or see the other’s point of view.  Part of the problem is that we are all so alike.  Not only did I inherit my father’s nose, varicose veins, dodgy hip and temper, but I inherited my Mother’s constant criticism, aspirational nature and love of nice things, wealth and money.

Somewhere in there though is a pure and innocent, trusting and perfect heart.

This year as you know I have travelled deeply into my story and my self hatred, I am learning to forgive and nurture and be kinder to myself.  I have been opening my heart space with my ‘Heart of Yoga’ and have released a million tears and some long held heartache.  Instead of being a cold hard stone in my chest my heart is a living breathing thing.   I have had a huge shift.

None of us are getting any younger and who knows when or if  we will see each other again or whether they will visit Australia one more time so we were all determined not to fight or fall out.  We all decided not to spend too much time together and to bite our tongues and we succeeded.  By the second week when we had hardly spent any time together we all realised how much we loved each other and even had some beautiful times and some precious memories I will treasure in my heart forever.

Showing my parents the pristine rainforest of Angle Creek I held my Mother’s hand many times as she clambered over rocks – I don’t remember ever holding my Mother’s hand before.  Papery, warm, small and gentle, it was beautiful and somehow in those moments in the healing cathedral of green that is Angle Creek, where Mother Nature comes to rest, heal, nourish and nurture, something between us that has been broken for 40 something years was finally mended.  A miracle happened and I realised that contrary to my life ‘s lament that I hate my Mother and that we don’t get on, I realised that I love her.  Always have, always will.

She isn’t perfect, she is sometimes very unkind, she sometimes says things that are cruel or hurtful or thoughtless.  So do I. But like me she has a golden heart.  Like me, she had a far from perfect childhood and was abused and damaged.  Like me she longs to be loved and shows her love with the giving of gifts.  Like me she has a doughy belly and snake like skin on her shins.

Maybe the reason we have butted heads so often and for so long is because we have looked in our mirror reflections of each other and not liked what we have seen . . .

But finally, aged 45, in the middle of my life, I am able to proudly say ‘I love my Mother’, I am part of her, she is part of me, she made me, grew me, nurtured me, shaped me.  I chose her for a reason – so I could learn what love is and what love isn’t and finally learn to forgive and love unconditionally.  I love you Mummy, I really do x

Scarlett, Clover and Peter Pan arrive

by . Posted on
26 Nov

Those alpacas were holding out for something, we didn’t know what!  But on the Sunday that my parents and Ged’s parents were here for lunch (6.11.11) in the afternoon I had a little whisper of intuition an took the car down the river flat to see what I could see.

There was Tara with a live baby hanging out of her.  It was the weirdest sight – all neck and spindly forelegs and two wall eyes.  She was humming piteously while Tara hummed back at her so they were obviously talking their way through the business of birth.  Tara was either resting before the next wave of pushing or stuck because she wasn’t doing anything.  I raced back to tell the others and then back to check on our big girl.  After a few minutes it seemed that the baby must be stuck as its colour was fading somewhat.  Time for midwife Sophie to pull and so I did.  I think the chest area was stuck because it was hard work and only once I started pulling did Tara start pushing again.  It wasn’t long before we had a big baby girl on the ground.  We called her Scarlett because she came out of Tara and she had a big birth splash of blood on her til it rained that night.

It was wonderful to sit on the grass on what was a very hot day and watch those first tentative moments of life.  It is a miracle every time.  And one this time that I shared with my Mother who wasn’t here when I birthed her little grandson miracle here at Avalon.

The Alpacas are very curious and welcoming of each newcomer to the herd and lick and look after the baby while the Mama eats and rests and recovers her strength.  Each ‘packer’ comes over to say hi and see what has happened and make contact with the new bub while it recovers from the shock of birth and slowly finds its feet (living on a farm you soon learn where all these old expressions we take for granted come from!)

Scarlett is not beautiful like her namesake but I am sure she will grow into her skin.  She is a big girl like her Mama and pure white.  I don’t know whether she is blind or not or just wall eyed.

When we came home from Playgroup on Wednesday 9.11.11 we had another one!  Blossom who is old and wise and has seen and done it all before just quietly produced the most beautiful of little girls while we were gone.  Clover is a stunner and friendly and sweet and curious and charming.  Warm honey colour all over and a delight in every way (we are all very in love with her!)

On Saturday 12.11.11 we were going in to Port Macquarie to stay with Mummy and Daddy at The Observatory for the night.  It was a blisteringly hot day and the usual mad panic rush trying to get everything done and organised before we could leave the farm in the capable hands of the Wwoofers.  I was just going to go for a very quick trot around ‘the other side’ when I saw all the alpacas nosing something on the ground on the hill above the office.  Sure enough, Wendy had FINALLY (a year to the day after insemination) given birth to a sweet little boy who was very grubby from rolling in the dust bowl under the tree but it was a great feeling to leave knowing we had three little babies safely landed on the ground and suckling . . . at last!

We do love our alpacas and I can see that this herd will just grow and grow . . . particularly since Orlando is determined to making it so by clambering onto each of these recently relieved of their baby ladies and singing them sweet songs of love . . .

More Midwifery

by . Posted on
05 Nov

Our Alpacas are due and so we have been keeping a close eye on them.  The other day I came home on the tractor at lunch time and noticed Sapphire on the hill above the road and I could see that she was pushing so I raced in to tell Ged and we drove up to have a look.

Immediately I could see that the cria was dead.  Nose poking out and nothing else and so I tried to wriggle my hands in but I couldn’t get any purchase so I made Ged go in.  I don’t know how he got his hands in there let alone made sense of what was there.  It was all so tight and cramped.  He managed to pull while Sapphire was pushing to get the whole head out and some of the neck but then he could make no more progress.

So I had to try with my smaller hands.  It was so hard to feel what was what but definitely something was stuck.  In James Herriot they say to push it all back in and start again so I tried that.  No luck.  It was stuck fast.

I had to try small manipulations to try and make some sort of difference and then pull.  Finally the cria came out.  Ged was not convinced but I could see that it was long dead.  Not in utero, but just from being stuck.  I don’t know how long she had been pushing for.  She is a maiden and this was her first.  I don’t really think she knew what was happening, or what she was losing.  She just knew that she needed help.

Ged tried swinging the cria around but I knew it was pointless.  Then he raced down to the house to get Emergency Essence and Penicillin and to check on our sleeping boy.  Thank God Ben was asleep – I don’t want him to have to witness all these still births. Why is it that we have to help birth dead babies before we can have live ones?  You can imagine how neurotic we are about all the other expectant alpacas now . . . they get checked almost on the hour!

I stayed with Sapphire and reikied her and talked to her and waited for the placenta.  I needed that placenta before I could think of leaving her.  She took her time but finally a long almost skin like, grainy stocking came part way out so I reikied and waited some more.  In the end I very gently and slowly pulled and the rest came away.  It looked intact but I was worried she might have prolapsed with all that pushing.

We left the baby with her for the rest of the day so she could get her head around what had happened.  She didn’t leave him.  At the end of the day I took him away and told her what I was doing and found a resting place for him (beautiful bright white boy baby).  I told her to go back to the herd.  But she refused to leave her birthing spot.

By the morning she was back in the herd and I was able to catch her at feeding time to inject her with penicillin.  I also checked out her nether regions and saw maggots in her vulva so a hasty call to Ged and then to Pamela for help for the morrow because clearly I needed to clean those out.

Pamela came and somehow managed to get her 2WD over our hill (some people just won’t listen and stay at the gate to be collected!) and we herded the alpacas with some difficulty into the house paddock and then up into a corner where we built a makeshift fence to keep them in.  Pamela held the head end while I got into the other with a jar of hydrogen peroxide, a worming syringe and my fingers.  Ugh!  I hate maggots at the best of times and this was definitely not the best of times.

I had to find each one and get it out.  It looked like she had a tear from all the pushing (I know about that!) and the baby maggots were in there so I had to flush and pick them out.  Then I found one huge maggot worming its way inside her vagina (OMG!) and then just kept picking them out until I could see no more.  I don’t know that H202 was a good idea in that delicate area but I probably overreacted at my horror of maggots.  I am squirming just thinking about it.

Dr Google has just informed me that maggots are essential for healing and only consume necrotic or dead or infected tissue and leave in their wake fresh, clean tissue so maybe I should have just let them be and let Mother Nature do her own sweet healing.  Clearly it is only my antipathy to maggots which forced my own intervention, and my abrasice techniques may well have made Sapphire worse.  I don’t know that she will ever conceive again.  She has had Penicillin for almost a week and now won’t let me near her with the needle (so surely she is feeling better?) Time will heal and tell.

Here’s hoping for live alpaca babies soon.

Menopause or I don’t want to die

by . Posted on
15 Oct

Just as I had really started enjoying the summer of my life, with my little boy, my farm, my lovely husband, I turned into a raging Monster with a heart and soul black and dark and thick with anger and frustration.  Then the hot flushes started.  And still I didn’t have the sense to marry the two together.  I blamed toddlerdom (even though I have an angel child), Ged and the world at large.  My marriage almost didn’t survive the onslaught.  I couldn’t believe that Menopause could happen to me aged only 45.  We wanted another child . . . every time last year my period came later and later I was convinced I was pregnant.  I didn’t see the writing on the wall … didn’t even know there WAS writing on the wall.

I thought menopause happened in your fifties, not your forties.  I thought I was in my prime, not starting the steady decline to death.  I thought anything was possible and the world was my oyster.  Instead my ovaries were shutting down, changing me forever from woman to wasteland of broken dreams, lost opportunities and babies terminated before they ever had a chance to become.

Menopause is a bitch.  The mood swings, the violent rages welling up from nowhere, no reason and no way to control them.  The hot flushes which take over and rule my life.  The feeling of being ill and at the mercy of something so far beyond my control as to make me look like King Canute trying to stop the waves . . . The constant pain in my uterus, the grief – the endless waves of grief as I farewell my child bearing years, the little girl I didn’t get to have and hold, the sense of myself as young, that glorious feeling of ripe fertility only possible in late pregnancy, the sense of limitless possibilities . . .

All of a sudden I, who have duelled and diced and danced with death so many times in my lifetime and have longed to fall into his peaceful embrace am screaming and sobbing ‘I don’t want to die’.  Clearly one has to see one’s one ultimate destiny and the steady decline towards it unblinkered in order to appreciate just how precious this life, and every moment in it, is.

After all, we don’t know what is going to happen next.  I was flirting with the idea of getting pregnant again, not taking it that seriously, thinking I had plenty of time . . .

Baby is dying too.  She has Cushings and she is going downhill fast.  So I am also screaming and sobbing ‘I don’t know how or who to be without Baby’ and ‘please don’t go’ and ‘just one last summer together please’.  I’m letting go of babies real and ethereal – those who are and those who were never meant to be . . .

You see, I was so busy being busy, so determinedly procrastinating, saving the fun and enjoyment and play til some  ‘later’ in the ever diminishing future when all the work is done that I didn’t realise that we have to have fun NOW because we just don’t know what tomorrow may bring and the greatest gift we can give anyone, can share with anyone, can spend is TIME.  Sweet, precious, limited, ever ticking time.

Like Peter Pan before me, I never wanted to grow up.  I succeeded pretty well.  I only ever thought of myself as grown up last year and now it appears I am old, dried up, used up, washed up.  Old before my time with creaking joints and sore, tired muscles and wrinkles like clothes left too long in the dryer.

I didn’t know this was around the corner.  I never imagined how debilitating, depressing and daunting this particular female rite of passage could be.  It feels like transition in labour – totally out of control, completely uncomfortable, sick making, overwhelming and I’m trying to stand on the merry go round, yelling ‘I didn’t sign up for this, let me off!’

Why the code of silence Women?  Why don’t we talk about this, map the stages and ages of our ovaries and life’s passages so we know what to expect, when and how to wear and bear it.

The addict in me is appalled at how many pills I am taking at the moment.  And how many I seem to need.  My naturopath says ‘why not?’ and ‘stop fighting it, this is beyond your control.’  But really I would rather just ride it out and get it over with.  But I can’t.  I have a little boy to look after.  A little boy of three who knows what a hot flush is, where the fan is, and hates having to have all the car windows open while I ride one out.

I have to try and manage and mitigate and massage some of my moods into something resembling normality.  For my own sanity.  For my child’s future psychological health.  For Ged’s peace of mind.  If only I could sleep how much better would all our lives be . . .

I completely understand why my Mother’s generation took HRT.  Instead I am on red clover, licorice, zizyphus, vitamin E, iron, B6, zinc, st john’s wort, the occasional kava, some sort of anti stress pill and who knows what from my acupuncturist.  The grief I can handle, the physical symptoms are driving me mad . . .

No man could handle menopause.  No woman ought to have to.  It’s too much, too soon, I’m not ready, can’t cope and don’t want to die . . . .

Two Dead Lambs

by . Posted on
02 Oct

We have been waiting and waiting and waiting for our big ewe to birth.  Checking her udder every day and saying ‘surely it can’t be much longer’.  Every day as Boo and I drive past I have said ‘What is she waiting for?’ and 2 year old Ben has replied ‘Christmas’.  I hope not . . .

This morning when I went for my run at about 6 she was standing on her own obviously labouring.  I went back to the house and googled sheep birthing schedules and positions.  After my experience with Daisy I determined not to get in there too early so I decided to go for my run and check on her when I got back.

She was still straining when I got back so I consulted google again.  I should have got in there a lot earlier (hindsight is such a wonderful thing!)  Ged went up to the office (she had returned to her favourite spot under the office) and said there was a nose poking out so we grabbed the camera and Pickle and walked up to the office all excited, expecting to see a lamb or two at last.

But when we got there it was still just a nose and it was definitely time to go in.  So we hung up the camera and I put my hand in.  Bush midwifery – no antiseptic, scrubbing or gloves!  The head was stuck and the lamb was definitely dead but I couldn’t get any purchase and couldn’t get my other hand in.  Ged took over and I do not know how he got both of his big hands in there.  After some manoeuvring he pulled out one huge dead lamb.  My poor child witnesses too much death on the farm.  One can only hope that what he learns  is that death is a constant part of the incredible cycle of life.  Natural, inevitable, not to be afraid of . . .

I sent Ged back to the house for the Emergency Essence, Bug Buster, Penicillin, hot water etc.  The lamb smelled pretty bad and had obviously been dead for a while.  She knew she was birthing death.  When he got back Ged wanted to go back in in case there was another lamb.  I said ‘surely she would still be straining’ and was convinced that the size of the first lamb precluded another.  But when I felt along the flank I agreed that there was probably another and this time he soaped up before beginning his grim task.  The squeamish should turn away now . . . I am sorry to say that the lamb came apart in the process (long dead).  We shielded Ben from the gruesomeness.  He kept saying ‘I don’t want a dead lamb’ . . . neither did we.

The worry now was the poor ewe.  The uterus was obviously infected and she was exhausted.  I administered Emergency Essence orally and over her head, Bug Buster orally and a penicillin injection.  We cleaned up the vagina but it didn’t look good.  She was so weak and tired.  I gave her water too and we got her some food.  She had a huge drink but she wasn’t interested in food.  Ged didn’t think she would make it and certainly it looked very unlikely.

We walked home and I left a message for the vet to call us and rang the sheep breeder for any tips or advice.  He had nothing to offer us but luckily the vet was more helpful.  He told us to go to the Dairy and borrow syntocin to encourage uterine contractions to expel any retained placenta or other debris.  And also to borrow Ketol for energy and prevent pregnancy toxaemia.  And keep up the massive doses of penicillin.

We did as we were told and she made a truly miraculous recovery although she was pretty depressed for the first week.  We knew how good she was feeling by how difficult she was to catch!  Ged’s rugby tackles improved significantly in a week but he sustained some decent bruises in the process!  She’s a big girl!

We were all pretty depressed that our first foray into sheep breeding had delivered such sorrow although we have to be grateful for opportunities to improve our livestock knowledge and midwifery skills . . .

Two weeks later we awoke one morning to two live lambs huddled by their proud Mama.  They are now frolicking in the fields as one would expect for a lush spring at Avalon.

As Sticky taught me long ago and as farmers have been saying since time began ‘Where you’ve got livestock, you’ll have dead stock.’  Such is the nature of life.  Witnessing the bright brilliance of birth and the sweet sorrowful surrender into death is the privilege and humility of the farmer’s life.