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  As the night drew on, the group decided to return to the college. They walked out of the woods and crossed a few fields. The Shepherd turned around and began to walk backwards awkwardly in her snowshoes to continue to watch the spectacular Northern Light display. She should have known better than to walk backwards across farmland. Suddenly and inevitably, she fell back into deep snow when she tripped over an electric fence wire that lay only a few inches above the deep snow. As she fell backwards the long tail ends of her snowshoes stabbed deep into the snow. Her body fell so deep that her feet were above her head and her legs lay across the wire fence – which was electrically live!!!! There she lay, helpless, stuck upside down at a most awkward angle with the electrical pulse regularly shocking her. Her classmates had walked further ahead, but turned at her shout. They became so weak with laughter at her expense that they could do nothing to help her.

  Finally, three friends snowshoed next to her. They first cleverly pressed the empty glass wine bottle down on the electric wire fence, keeping it off her legs. The other two came beside her, reached down, grabbed a hand each and pulled her up and out of the snow. To say the least, she never tried to walk backwards again in snowshoes to look at Northern Lights, no matter how spectacular the display.

  Back here on Black Sheep Farm, while I’ve been dictating this book to The Shepherd a blizzard is swirling outside as the Beast from the East clashes with Storm Emma, giving us unprecedented deep snow, so The Shepherd’s practical experience in Vermont will no doubt come into use. So I needed no books for my learning. As I mentioned earlier, I followed my predecessor, Oscar, and served assiduously as his apprentice. I carefully observed The Shepherd go about her work. I moused and ratted to keep the stable and sheep-shed food clean. As I described earlier, I loved to hunt with Oscar. We stalked through fields, crouched low, sought brown rabbits and waited quietly and expectantly for that decisive moment to pounce. When he died in 2013, it was a very poignant deeply felt event for The Shepherd and pained us all. I still miss him every single day.

  When Oscar died, The Shepherd had left our farm to take the ferry across the Irish Sea to attend the London Design Festival. The Crafts Council of Ireland had selected our very own Zwartbles Travel Blanket, designed by The Shepherd, as one of the items to represent Irish craft design at this prestigious event. She travelled to London to attend the first night, at which the Irish actor Stephen Rea would be the opening speaker. He loved our blankets and there is a photo of him holding one up to warm his cheek. The next day was The Shepherd’s fiftieth birthday. She celebrated by returning to the Design Festival and exploring all the floors of the warehouse full of all kinds of modern designs for everything. That evening she went to the Old Vic theatre to see acting legends James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave perform in Much Ado About Nothing. After the performance she went backstage, met both actors and had lovely chats with them. It turned out that Vanessa Redgrave had worked with The Shepherd’s great uncle, Tyrone Guthrie, as a very young, green actress.

  The next day The Shepherd took the ferry home to Ireland. After the successful highs of London she was literally brought down with a big thump as soon as she landed back in Ireland and found that her car had been clamped. (The Dublin train leaves Rosslare docks half an hour before the ferry that crosses the Irish Sea from Wales is scheduled to arrive.) So The Shepherd phoned home to say she would be late since she had to wait for the clamper to come and unclamp her car and she had to pay a hefty fine for five hours of overtime parking.

  Her father answered the phone only to tell her the very sad news of Oscar’s death. He had seen Oscar that morning, curled up in loose hay on top of the bales in the stable. I knew Oscar had not been feeling well, so I had kept clear of him since no one wants overindulgent undue attention when one is feeling under the weather. In the early afternoon The Shepherd’s father went out to see how Oscar was doing, only to find him sneezing up blood and shivering uncontrollably. He quickly and quietly sat down in the hay next to him and started gently stroking him. For a few moments Oscar’s shivers stilled and his sneezes stopped. Her father then wrapped his hands around Oscar to pick him up and into his arms in order to bring him to the vet, and poor Oscar convulsed uncontrollably. While Oscar died, he was stroked, spoken to and held in warm arms.

  As The Shepherd left Rosslare Port in her unclamped car, she drove towards home with a heavy heart. Soon she had to draw over on the roadside near the great statue of the Wexford Pikemen that commemorates the two centuries since the Wexford Irish Rebellion. She got out of the car, wept and walked around the circled bronzed men with their pikes raised high in tribute to history’s fallen United Irishmen, the Croppy Boys and John Kelly of Killanne. She knew it would be unsafe if she tried to drive home with tears in her eyes, so she diverted her attention by walking around the statue singing a song she had learned as a child more than forty years before.

  What’s the news, what’s the news oh, my bold Shelmalier

  With your long-barrelled guns from the sea

  Say what wind from the south brings a messenger here

  With the hymn of the dawn for the free

  Goodly news, goodly news do I bring youth of Forth

  Goodly news shall you hear Bargy man

  For the boys march at dawn from the south to the north

  Led by Kelly the boy from Killanne …

  And poor Wexford stripped naked, hung high on a cross

  With her heart pierced by traitors and slaves

  Glory-o, glory-o to her brave sons who died

  For the cause of long downtrodden man

  Glory-o to Mount Leinster’s own darling and pride

  Dauntless Kelly the boy from Killanne.

  I‘m sure she used a bit of improvised dexterity to guess a few words as her memory might have lost some of the correct lyrics. There must have been a few passing motorists who thought there was a madwoman by the roadside, walking in circles around the statue and singing old Wexford rebellion songs, and her a Kilkenny woman to boot. They, of course, wouldn’t have seen the tear-filled eyes. If they had, you can be sure someone would’ve been called to do something about it.

  As you well know, bad things happen in threes … When The Shepherd finally got home that day she walked around the farm to see how all the livestock were, as is her usual habit. When she walked into the horses’ field, they all trotted over to say hello. She walked around them to check their legs and suddenly noticed a large wound on Ishka’s right lower-back leg. It looked as if her lower leg had been skinned – her skin was rolled down her cannon bone and collected around her pastern and fetlock, the ankle area just above the hoof. She showed not a whisper of lameness nor discomfort. The veterinarian was called to examine the leg and assess what should be done to aid healing such a wound. While they waited, The Shepherd started to clean the wound of all mud and dried blood. Ishka stood stone-still, not minding when her wound was scrubbed with a rough cloth to remove the stubborn mixture of mud and blood that adhered to the open wound. Meanwhile, I sat up on the stable window ledge well above any stray sprays of hose water or flicked soapsuds. The Shepherd cut Ishka’s tail above the level of her wound and braided the rest of her tail to keep it out of harm’s way. By the time the vet arrived the wound was completely cleaned.

  He is a soft-spoken, kindly man: ‘Oh dear, oh dear, that doesn’t look good at all. That looks nasty, very nasty.’ The vet explained how a wound in that location takes many months to heal as very little oxygenated blood can get into the lower leg. ‘This kind of wound is called “degloving”,’ he said, ‘as the skin is peeled back off the flesh of the leg like a glove.’ The vet and The Shepherd bandaged the wounded leg. Then the vet made an appointment for Ishka at a specialist equine hospital on the Curragh in County Kildare – the home of horse racing and horse-breeding – to see what further treatment might be needed. It was thought the wound was caused when mares Mystic and Ishka were at play. Mystic was one of Silver’s foals that The Shepherd broke in and t
rained and subsequently sold. At some point Mystic’s hoof, shod with a heavy metal shoe, scraped Ishka’s leg and peeled her skin down her cannon bone to her pastern. The long and the short of it was Ishka’s wound took eight months to heal. The Shepherd became very adept at cutting away the proud flesh that appears when fleshy granulation tissue grows like rising dough around and over the skin surrounding a wound. Proud flesh is well supplied with blood, so it grows faster than the normal slow-healing skin surrounding the wound. This must be cut back so that the normal skin can begin to grow over the wound as a layer to protect the open wound and allow the healing process to complete. It has no nerves, so when sliced back, it bleeds a lot but the horse feels no pain.

  One day while The Shepherd was cutting away proud flesh from Ishka’s leg, a van pulled into the yard. The Shepherd had Ishka tied up outside the main yard but her blood from the proud flesh flowed down the slope around the corner into the main yard. Three lads rounded the corner when The Shepherd called out a welcoming hello. She was still busy cutting into Ishka’s leg and blood poured over her hand as she spoke to them. She looked up just in time to see one of the lads being caught by his two friends as he nearly fainted at the sight of all the blood.

  Due to the distraction of caring for Ishka’s injury, The Shepherd got over Oscar’s sudden death. However, I only discovered my lack of ability to hunt rabbits when I tried to hunt on my own without Oscar’s innate skill. It took me many months of work but after one spring of practising on young rabbits, I finally got the hang of it. Ovenmitt sometimes comes out to pretend to help me. Of no use at all, he just sits, flicks his ears, twitches his tail and watches as I do all the work. Despite his inadequacy as a rabbit hunter, Ovenmitt does hunt very well when he chooses to seek rats, mice, voles and birds.

  Once Oscar had died and his death had been mourned, I shouldered the mantle of top cat with ease. My authority was never questioned by any of the other resident felines or canines.

  My status is particularly helpful when The Shepherd is preparing the many meals she cooks when there is a glut of good food, which, when cooked and frozen, will see us through the long, bitter winter. September is our month of many harvests, after all. We pick apples and pears, and a local man also collects apples from Black Sheep Farm to make into cider and apple brandy, which The Shepherd tells me is delicious. We dig potatoes and harvest the wether (castrated) lambs for eating.

  The Shepherd makes delicious lamb stews with lovely lamb chops, fresh carrots, potatoes, apples and pears all cooked together. I watch for hours, giving pointers to her as to what garden herbs and spices she should add to these future culinary delights.

  Huge pots of stew or chilli, shepherd’s pies, soups or pasta sauces are produced and then frozen in portions for two people. That way if there is a sudden influx of visitors ’tis easy to produce a quick homemade meal. She thanks me with raw meaty bits or a raw egg. Our feline and canine work crew lines up several times a week for chopped morsels of raw liver and heart, which we all love and which are naturally rich in vitamins and minerals. These meat treats help us to grow our thick coats for the coming winter months.

  We also have a most pleasant lip-smacking job to which we are all very diligently attentive, which is to pre-rinse pots, pans and plates before they’re placed in the dishwasher. Sometimes a real treat comes along in the form of raw milk. Now, raw milk, unlike homogenised or pasteurised milk, is fine for felines as Dr Francis Pottenger’s ten-year research into the diets of felines shows. He conducted his research way back in the 1930s and 40s, discovering that a diet of raw meat and milk produced far healthier cats than a diet of treated milk and cooked food – so don’t let anyone tell you raw milk is bad for cats. It is the pasteurised and homogenised version that is harmful to our feline digestive tracts. I will say nothing about raw versus pasteurised milk for human consumption as our carnivore traits and tendencies differ and I firmly believe to each their own. Humans, being omnivores, can be picky and will choose a dietary preference to suit their own cultural, societal, philosophical and financial preference.

  Part IV

  WINTER

  10

  The Early-Winter Chills

  Still air lets chimney smoke sail up ramrod-straight, no bends anywhere in its smoky grey trail of vapour. Stars glitter in clear black sky. Grass grows slowly now as autumnal nights lengthen and we await the first frost. Will winter be hard or will it be mild enough for grass to grow slowly through its dark months and perhaps permit the sheep to graze?

  As autumn slips into winter, The Shepherd is reminded of long-ago season-markers when she lived in the Appalachian Mountains. She dwelt in a log cabin on a farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains next to Shenandoah National Park. She recalled how after the first really frosty nights of autumn, scents of burning pig hair and rendered pig fat drifted up from the glen below her cabin. Local families butchered pigs they had fattened all summer till autumn, or fall as it is called in America. They had brought them down to icy spring-fed mountain streams. There they built fires beneath vats, burned off pigs’ hair and rendered pig fat for cooking throughout the next year.

  Another vivid memory that The Shepherd often shares with me was of riding her horse through fields of cattle she helped to look after. One day she startled a black bear stalking a cow which had just calved. Very likely the bear was only looking to feast on the afterbirth, but The Shepherd could not risk the bear remaining so near the newborn calf and mother cow. She squeezed her legs to urge her horse to gallop straight at the bear. At the top of her lungs she yelled to frighten it away. The bear fled across the field to escape the mounted demon, half horse, half woman, whose hoof beats thundered, speeding towards it, long hair flying, a female rendition of Chiron the Centaur or a Scythian warrior maiden. The speed of the fugitive bear was incredibly so much faster than the human anticipated. She had expected she would get close to the bear on a horse at full gallop, but instead, as the bear gathered speed, the frightened animal ran straight into a four-foot wire cattle fence. When The Shepherd grasped the terrified bear’s predicament, she pulled the reins of her snorting horse and slowed down so the bear could resolve its panic and think how to escape. The bear sped along the wire fence, came to the corner of the field and leapt over and away with a magnificent jump. After landing safely on the far side, it splashed across the small stream that separated the cattle fields from its homeland and disappeared into the deep woods of Shenandoah National Park.

  The only cattle wrangling The Shepherd does here in Ireland is when a neighbour needs help, which happened about a year ago. We were just walking across our farmyard to do some work when a stranger pulled up in a car and ran up to us. He had been for a walk in the fields on the far side of the river from our farm, when he saw a cow break clean through the electric fence that bordered the field and fall down the ten-foot bank into the water. He could see that it could not get out. Our farmhouse is visible up on the hill where it overlooks the river valley, so he had assumed the cow was one of ours. He called up to let us know, which was very neighbourly of him.

  The Shepherd thought for a few minutes, figured out whose cow it was and called the owner. Then she jumped onto the quad and raced down to the road and crossed the field to the river. Sadly, she didn’t let me go with her, so I had to rely on her report of the drama when she got home …

  When she got there, the cow was in deep water trying to keep afloat. The Shepherd tried to make her walk upriver to a shallow incline, but she would only go a few paces. The Shepherd told me there was heavy vegetation on the bank above the animal so she only managed to find a spot with no trees or shrubs, but the beast just couldn’t manage to get out. The cow’s owner turned up. He got into the river to try and help her walk upriver to an easy place in the bank to get out. But she was exhausted so The Shepherd called the vet and another neighbour, who had a JCB machine with a telescopic handler, somewhat like a forklift. The cow’s owner, who was still in the river, managed to attach belts
around the cow while the others on the bank attached the belts onto the fork prongs of the machine. They then lifted the huge, heavy animal out of the river.

  Two vets attended the rescue operation in case anything went wrong or if the cow needed some veterinary attention. Six humans collected there to help rescue the cow, who was a bit shaken, but who recovered from her ordeal. The Shepherd loves how there is always a great willingness among farmer neighbours to help each other in times of need and at a moment’s notice. They drop whatever they are doing and come quickly to help each other out.

  Only moments after The Shepherd got back to our yard after the dramatic cow rescue, she got a phone call telling her more cattle from another neighbour had broken out of their field onto our busy main road. The Shepherd leapt onto our quad bike and buzzed off with Pepper riding shotgun behind her to herd the escaped cattle off the road. On other occasions, neighbours have helped The Shepherd to recover our sheep when they have escaped onto the public road below our farm, or have brought hay out to livestock when the quad broke down or during deep snow.