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  When the sun arrives at its June zenith in the northern hemisphere, it is a tower of solar heat and may melt the best of us. I still work away at my usual labours. First, I do my early-morning rounds, walking our fields to count legs and divide by four before the sun’s heat grows too great. Secondly, after my breakfast, I sometimes go straight out into the garden to find a lovely cool spot under a box hedge, shrub or among tall euphorbia plants. I like places that have recently been weeded or dug over, as freshly turned earth is so cool. I snooze while a background buzz of pollinators fills the air with productivity.

  One May morning, I had taken up my usual position and The Shepherd had just walked past, bade me good morning and continued on her way to check on the ewes and lambs. As I lay there the soil around me warmed as the sun rose. I slowly came to the realisation that something was tickling under me. I lay back and rolled about and hoped that would adjust whatever had lightly tugged at my fur. As I put my head upon the ground I heard a tiny scratching sound near my ear. I turned and perked up my head to peer as a tiny amount of soil began to rise upwards. I sat up to look down and readied myself to pounce if this was a mouse, vole or shrew about to erupt out of the ground. Instead a tiny black head with twitching antennas worked its way up out of the dry soil. A little bee emerged with a beautiful rich foxy-red hairy back. She diligently pushed away soil. It seems I had unintentionally blocked the entrance to her nest. As I got up and looked around more closely, I saw the ground was pocked with tiny granular piles around small holes. As I watched, more and more black heads with furry red bodies emerged into the morning sun. That marked the end of my morning snooze in that particular spot. It was a most educational moment for me when I learned that some species of bees live underground while other sorts live as a community in hives. I later discovered that these burrowers are called tawny mining bees, which were thought extinct until The Shepherd informed Biodiversity Ireland that we had loads popping out of the ground here. Still, nature never ceases to surprise me.

  After The Shepherd and I have scrutinised the weather forecasts closely and think rain is not threatening, we decide it’s time to make hay. Beautiful long grasses with full seed heads, clovers, vetches and herbs must be mown. Ideally we need ten days of good weather to make sure the grass to be cut and made into hay has adequate time for full preparation. When grass is first mown it must lie for a day or two, then be spun out with a machine called a tedder, a very scary-looking rotating set of prongs, to dry.

  We hope for a good crop of hay. The earlier we mow the grass with its big seed heads and the quicker it dries, the quicker it then becomes delicious hay with increased protein content. Retention of protein means better hay for sheep, who will enjoy it and remain healthier throughout the cold winter months.

  When The Shepherd turns us felines out of the kitchen, I find hay’s scent of summer absolutely wonderful. ’Tis so pleasantly soporific that I sleep very well indeed. I even dream of the mice and rats I hope to catch when I awaken. What’s more, there is nothing like hay’s warmth, which greatly comforts all three of us cats while it’s cold outside.

  I stay well clear of machinery when grass is being mown for hay. After the mowing I walk with The Shepherd through the freshly cut grass. She hunts for any ragweed or thistles she might have missed before it was mowed. Ragweed poisons horses and cattle. Thistles and thorns may pierce The Shepherd’s gloves and prick painful holes in her hands whenever she draws hay from a bale in winter.

  I always look out for animal victims of the chop of the mowing blades. Pepper, The Big Fellow, Bear and the egg-makers all love to find a mouse or vole and swallow it whole or in bits. All of us scour the fresh cut grass for our chosen meaty morsels. The Shepherd is highly amused when a mouse or vole is discovered and the canines, felines and egg-makers race to see who will get to it first.

  By late afternoon the next day, the first tedding, or spinning out of cut grasses, occurs to assist in the evaporation to make hay. The machine tosses mown vegetation over and about. Grass on the bottom of the cut nearest the ground is now tossed up and to the top. The next day’s sun will continue to dry the moisture out of the grass, which turns it into hay. Tedding must be carried out for several days until the cut grass no longer feels cool to the touch but has turned warm and dry.

  Next, the drying grass is raked up into windrows that allow more drying by letting wind blow through them in anticipation of baling. Later, the dried hay is scooped into a baler where it is packed tightly in a net and dumped in the field. Freshly made bales must be kept sitting in the fields to settle and to keep from over-heating. The Shepherd and I pray no rain will soak them. We pack our bales so tightly that they will shed light rainfall. Finally, our properly aged bales, like a good wine, I’m told, are brought into shelter to stay dry and be our livestock’s winter fodder.

  My favourite activity is to help bring in the hay. As each bale is stacked onto our round bale machine, I sprawl in the cool shade. As soon as the quad’s motor is started, I leap onto The Shepherd’s lap for our ride to the shed where the new hay bales will be stored. I love the feel of the cooling wind ruffling my fur. When we reach the shed, I jump off The Shepherd’s lap and sit on a previously stored hay bale. I admire how The Shepherd reverses the quad and its trailer and backs into the shed to position a new bale and unload it. When she is ready to depart for the next bale, she calls to me and I walk, trot or meander over to the quad for another ride out to the fields for our next bale of hay.

  As our work with hay bales can be very hot, I sometimes envy that, unlike myself, my flock of sheep gets shorn. They can feel a cooling summer breeze against their skin once their thick woolly fleece has been removed. Sometimes nature seems very difficult to tolerate as the season changes because I must wait for the natural summer shedding of my long silky fur before I’m cool enough to be comfortable. I am continually clothed with three layers, much like a human. My undermost dress is fine silken fur worn next to my skin – it has been likened to a soft layer of the finest downy silk underwear. This inner layer covers my whole body. My middle layer, or awn hair, is equivalent to The Shepherd’s summer T-shirt and jeans, but this layer thickens into a comfortable woolly jumper for winter. Finally, my long coarse outer-guard hairs differ a lot from my inner two fine furred layers but they most ingeniously act as my raincoat and draw water away from my inner layers of fur clothing. Hence I’m easily able to walk through fields with The Shepherd even when the sky pours rain, lashes sleet or drops snowflakes, which just alight upon me. I give myself a good shake occasionally to rid myself of excess water and re-fluff my coat. I remain dry as an old bone and deliciously warm under my three coats as long as a strong wind or human hands do not blow or flick my coat hairs upwards in the wrong direction and let in icy wind and wet to chill me.

  Our handsome black Zwartbles sheep have a similar system of layered clothing, except the names are different. Zwartbles have short hair on their face and legs, this is simply called hair. They also have a small amount of kemp hair. This is their middle layer which can be short and brittle. It is also a medulla fibre which has a hollow or partially hollow core. Then they have an outer layer of true wool. Sheep shed kemp hair, as do most animals, after cold winter winds have subsided. While the middle medullated hairs resemble those that might become usable wool, these fibres lack elasticity and crimp, both vital ingredients for wool. Useful outer wool fibres must have the qualities that may be converted into felt or spun into yarn or threads that can be woven into cloth as warm wear for humans. This last important fibre is otherwise known as workable wool, one of the most ancient renewable fibres with which humans have clothed themselves for thousands of years. Before humans learned how to use sheep wool, they wore richly furred winter animal skins to keep themselves warm, the same furry animals they hunted and killed for food.

  A renewable fibre wool is markedly different from human hair, or cat fur for that matter, because it has both crimp and elasticity. A high number of crimps, the crinkl
e in wool fibres, per inch – such as twenty-five – makes it easier for The Shepherd and the woollen mill workers to spin raw, carefully cleaned, shorn wool into a fine stretchable yarn. The elasticity of wool makes it supple and pliable with spring that permits it to resume its natural shape after stretching or compression. Wool does not snap or break into pieces like stressed hair or fur.

  Interestingly, sheep wool is naturally fire retardant. How is that, you ask? Well, wool burns at a higher temperature than cotton because it needs more oxygen and when burnt, it forms a char that makes the flame extinguish itself. That’s why sheep’s wool is used in fire-retardant materials that carpet places like aircraft and trains.

  There is another important way it differs from my fur or from human hair. Sheepskin naturally produces lanolin, a fine, soothing water-resistant oil. Lanolin oil naturally protects sheep wool and skin from the detrimental effects of wet weather and rough environments. ’Tis also important for the skin hygiene of humans, so much so that when shorn wool is washed before it is spun, the lanolin oil is saved and then processed into creams to soothe and protect human skin.

  Wool is the only natural fibre that can absorb up to 30 per cent of its weight in water. When exposure to wet occurs, a chemical reaction in wool fibres produces heat. The Shepherd experienced wet-wool natural heating first-hand a few times, but most notably a few years after she had returned to the family farm in Ireland. In March rains, the River Nore often rises high enough to break over its banks and flood our riverside fields. The Nore, known as one of the Three Sisters, along with the Barrow and the Suir, rises in the Devil’s Bit, before flowing all the way to Waterford, through a valley known as the Valley of Death because of the large number of ancient burial sites that can be found there. It flows past our three fields, named ‘inches’ from the Irish word inish. The Upper Inch is the furthest up river and the Middle and Short Inches the next down river. The Short Inch’s name reflects its history because its upper section was a small field that was named the Well Field since it had many springs that percolated up through its soil. ’Twas sold long ago by The Shepherd’s grandfather, who needed money for vital repairs to the farm.

  One March day, The Shepherd and her father had a rush of blood to the head and decided to canoe down the River Nore from below the house down to Inistioge, a distance of some seventeen kilometres. The countryside is lovely, with a mix of willow, oak, ash, beech trees, grass fields, gardens, castle ruins and tumbling-down old mills all along her banks. The river is filled with crayfish, trout, eel, while seasonal salmon and the extraordinary-looking lamprey come to spawn among the otters and kingfishers along her banks. The river is also home to the famous Nore River freshwater pearl mussel, the only one of its kind in the world.

  Stopping off in the village of Thomastown to meet an old friend, a travel writer, for lunch, the pair set off again, but misjudged the old salmon trap downriver from Dangan Castle, well beyond the safety of the huge stone arches of Thomastown bridge, and took a cold early spring bath from their open-topped canoe. The Shepherd’s father, who had been wearing fleeces under his rain-gear, quickly succumbed to the cold, but The Shepherd’s woolly jumper soon began to feel strangely warm, due to the heating quality of the wool. Quite what both of them were doing on the river at this time of year is anybody’s guess, but thankfully, they survived.

  Historically, wool used to be a mainstay and dependable income for many sheep farmers around here, The Shepherd tells me when she’s in reminiscing mood. There used to be woollen mills as well as flax- and flourmills all along the River Nore. There is a road that runs along the river just across from our farm that is called the ‘Woollen Grange Road’ and not too far down our road are the old buildings of what was once called The Merino Factory. Here, a pair of local landlords produced high-quality cloth from Merino wool. The Merino sheep came from a flock imported from Spain. Some of these very same Merino sheep were later exported to Australia as part of the introduction of the Merino sheep to that country, which are now great flocks that produce fine white wool. Now there is only a flour mill and all the woollen ones have long since closed, so our wool must travel twenty miles to Graiguenamanagh for it to be spun into yarn.

  Despite The Shepherd’s use of modern social media to sell our sheep products, she still loves traditional agrarian products from the Olden Days when they were made to last for generations. The Shepherd tells me, rather grandly, that Philip Cushen of Cushendale Woollen Mills has been ‘a vital part of the evolution and organic growth of Black Sheep Farm’s wool products’. He is a highly skilled weaver, she says, with an innate understanding of the naturally sustainable fibre that is wool and the process it must go through, from a sheep grazing in our small green fields to a finished woven blanket of the highest quality that can be sold under the Zwartbles Ireland label. She is prone to lecture then, telling me that this art of great craftsmanship and the understanding of wool is greatly under-appreciated in these modern days of overprocessed artificial fibres. I can imagine, but of more importance to The Shepherd was the help Cushen gave her in understanding Zwartbles sheep wool and what could be done with it.

  Of course, I will have to take her word for it, as I personally have never visited Philip’s woollen mill on a tributary of the River Barrow in the village of Graiguenamanagh, as the spinning mule might roll across my magnificent tail.

  Since the 1890s, the mill has skilfully turned fleeces of raw wool into yarn. First, they are cleaned, then teased and followed by carding into a rolled-up sausage of roving. Next, they are rubbed out into thin webs of thread, and finally, the mill’s huge antique spinning mules spin the threads into yarn. Most of their wool to yarn machinery is old – from early 1900s – so visitors can be transported back in time as wheels of the spinning mule trundle across the mills’ wooden floors. Indeed, The Shepherd describes Philip moving up and down his spinning mule while it spins yarn. He talks of his spinning mule like it is human: ‘She speaks to me,’ he says. He listens to the machine as she rolls rhythmically back and forth. He watches for breaks in the thread as it is spun into yarn. If a thread breaks, he quickly reattaches one to the other with a quick roll of the woollen fibres between his fingers. As spindles fill he will stop the machine to replace filled spindles with empties in a practised rhythm that comes with long years of experience. Like Black Sheep Farm, these mills have been in his family for many generations and The Shepherd likes that.

  Going back to my coat, of course I can shed my heavy hairy winter clothing to keep me cooler in oppressive summer heat. Yes, I need help grooming the fur that I’ve shed from The Shepherd, but I can barely stand it when she pulls at a matted tangle or snags in my knotted hair.

  Unlike me, our black sheep are unable to shed their thick winter coats that derive from centuries of selective breeding by humans to improve their lustrous renewable fibre. So as weather warms in spring and summer, sheep lanolin runs smooth and thin in the heat of the day. The Shepherd rattles her Magic Bucket of sheep nuts and the sheep answer her call and trot in from the fields for shearing. Spinners and felters come from all over the Irish countryside to choose their favourite sheep and watch it being shorn. They ensure that they will have a lovely rich fleece to take home and spin into yarn.

  Early summer often evokes The Shepherd’s memories of her childhood trips to Black Sheep Farm with her older sister. She frequently tells the story of how her parents sent the sisters to Ireland from their home in the USA. Children were much less expensive to buy tickets for in those days. At age five she and her eight-year-old sister boarded an Aer Lingus plane at New York’s Kennedy International Airport. Their mother was reassured by the cardboard dog tags with their names on them that were strung around their necks. They were looked after by Winnie Hayes and her team of friendly cabin crew.

  To pass time during the flight to Shannon Airport, a very young Shepherd tried to make butter in the tiny containers of half cream, half milk that passengers were given for their tea or coffee. Neither her siste
r nor the cabin crew did anything to discourage her, so she happily whipped half and half for most of the trip. With no success, I might add.

  The plane flew across the Atlantic to land in Shannon, where the girls were met by their granny and grandpa, who took them home to their Kilkenny farm that many years later would become Black Sheep Farm under The Shepherd’s care.

  One time, her grandparents asked a group of nuns returning to the USA to keep an eye on the young sisters. Clad head to toe in their traditional long black and white habits like a huddled flock of penguins, the nuns took them under their wings for the flight to Kennedy Airport. For some reason the flight was cancelled, so The Shepherd and her sister had to spend the night with their flock of nuns, who fussed kindly over them. When the delayed flight took off the next morning, the nuns intently protective of their young charges didn’t simply sprinkle the cabin with a little holy water: they soaked The Young Shepherd, her sister and their childhood colouring books. She finds this terribly amusing in retrospect but at the time she was quite cross as the holy water prevented her crayons from working in the wet colouring book.

  I have to agree that childhood memories bring forth all kinds of feelings in humans and animals. I learned the hard way how a pond covered in green duckweed might carry the weight of a frog but definitely not that of a cat. It’s still a natural law that experience is the thing you acquire just after you needed it!