Bodacious Page 8
Opening the gate often works just as well as a shake of the Magic Bucket. The rusty-gate squeak echoes across the field. Heads lift as one from grazing. Each visitor, poised with a handful of food pellets, takes pictures or shoots film as the stampede of black sheep races towards them. In seconds, sheep charge from every direction to gather around the small crowd of strangers. Some sheep jump sideways when a person moves with sudden ‘jazz’ hands or does not slide slowly sideways with grace. A friendly melee ensues, with giggles, laughter and squeaks of delight – from humans, that is. The sheep jostle, push and barge among the crowd of human legs to nibble or snatch at handfuls of proffered treats.
The Shepherd has what some individuals with long experience of tending animals call ‘The Touch’. I’ve observed this attribute quite often since our paths first crossed in that novelty toilet-seat shop in Kilkenny. The Shepherd has told many tales of her charismatic talent and seductive skills with animals who respect and obey her right away. Even though I feel she occasionally exaggerates her ability, I know from my heart that ’tis true.
One day a young human came to visit. After he had observed the ease with which The Shepherd interacted with all our cross-section of domestic animals, he was struck by her anticipation of their every move. He asked The Shepherd how she had acquired her ability to understand so well what an animal would do next. Was it an instinct she naturally had? She replied, ‘I feel body language is our first instinctive language, which is universal, so it can be translated from species to species. What works for a donkey may work for a dog as well. Now, I will tell you how I think I acquired the ability to read an animal’s thoughts and to anticipate what might happen next …’
I tell you, she has so many yarns she could easily clothe the whole farm in a woven patchwork of tales.
She went on to explain that as a child in school she had several problems that prevented her fitting into the conventional pecking orders that flocks of children construct in their classrooms and playgrounds. First, The Shepherd has dyslexia, which led to insufferable embarrassment when she was asked to read aloud. The printed word to a dyslexic can become an unreadable assortment of angular scratchings on paper. Because for them letters and words appear different, as if parts of the written words and letters disappear each time the dyslexic person reads the same page even a second or third time. I can tell you it is very similar to the misunderstandings that occur after I leave messages for unwanted stray cats to read and to let them know they shouldn’t stray onto my farm. I do this by leaving territorial markers as ground or tree scratchings, but also with the additional necessary information of sprayed smell or cheek-gland musk. If I didn’t scatter the essence of my personal eau de cologne other cats wouldn’t understand my stay-away message and keep out of here.
Secondly, The Shepherd was humiliated when she was made to stand at the classroom blackboard with a stick of white chalk clasped in her fingers. In front of the entire class whenever she was asked to deal with mathematical sums, her brain froze like a deer in headlights. (I, on the other hand, as I said earlier, have become a master at counting my flock of sheep my easy way: count legs and divide by four.)
Finally, The Shepherd had what seemed a bizarre accent to her schoolmates in Charlottesville, containing not a hint of their southern mellow Virginian drawl. She sounded like a strange bird among a flock of local magpies because she used words foreign to their vocabulary, including many Irish-English words: ‘biscuit’ for ‘cookie’, or ‘lorry’ for ‘truck’, or ‘petrol’ for ‘gasoline’, or ‘sweet’ instead of a piece of ‘candy’. So, like magpies whenever there is a stranger in their territory, they attacked relentlessly and teased, bullied and beat her. Worst of all, they shunned her to avoid assimilating her different ways of pronouncing words, as if they constituted a potentially contagious debilitating disease.
The Shepherd’s nicknames varied dependent upon the Magpie Parliament’s humour on any particular day. To escape the isolation and dominance of the pecking order she drew winged horses in book margins and worksheets. She dreamed of escape by flight mounted on the back of a magnificent Pegasus. So ‘Flying Horse’ became one nickname addressed to her in derogatory tones, a name which I personally wouldn’t have thought so bad. Her other disparaging name was ‘Dog Face’, which I wouldn’t have tolerated for a second.
For The Shepherd to survive the bullies and the teasing, she had to learn to avoid both as much of it as possible within the bounds of the school grounds. So, for her own self-protection she learned from necessity how to read her peers’ body language to prevent unwanted confrontation. She watched them approach from a distance as they walked across the playground or down a school hallway or entered a classroom. She observed their frames of mind by how they carried their bodies or held their heads. Facial expressions also formed part of the body language key, as did what their eyes said. Some individuals wore false beatific smiles across their faces but their hardened glancing eyes showed their true unfriendly intentions and gave them away as dangerous individuals who wished her ill.
She never forgot her ability to read body language, even as she grew up and looked for the next challenges in life, some pursued, others not. Animals were always her great love and she focused on caring for them even if sometimes she forgot them for a little while. After she abandoned her dreams of becoming an actress in New York City and London, she found herself drawn again into the animal world and took a job in a small veterinary practice in North London. While she worked with the vet she delved for ways to fund her next adventure. As you know, she is passionate about horses, and at this time, she dreamed of riding a horse in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson’s adventurous explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the first Caucasians to cross North America. She longed to repeat adventurer Aimé Félix Tschiffely’s ascent on horseback from Argentina through all three Americas to Washington, DC. The Shepherd was most inspired by Isabella Lucy Bird, the first lady of international travels, who walked or rode horses over the entire planet Earth except for the North and South Poles. Amazingly, she rode on her own through the American Rocky Mountains during the dangerous period when the white man was colonising the country. She was never touched or harmed by Native Americans and others as she was seen as an adventurous free spirit who was revered as somewhat sacred and so respected by all she met.
It may seem strange in our modern world since humans now can gather data online, but twenty years ago, the only way of collating wildlife and animal-husbandry techniques and veterinary procedures, she tells me, was to travel to far-off places in person. When she worked for the wildlife charity, she befriended many exotic animals. She loved Sumo, an orangutan who enjoyed her gifts of delicious mango leaves, which she passed through his enclosure bars and which he took with delicate tenderness and chewed contemplatively. At another Asian zoo, otters gathered to greet her whenever she appeared. But her favourite animal behaviour story is probably that of a pot-bellied pig, which she’s told me a thousand times …
At the North London veterinary practice, vets were often obliged to do some extraordinary procedures that one would never associate with a typical small practice in a large metropolis. They once brought in a specialist dentist to undertake tooth extractions for a lady’s pet pot-bellied pig. We shall call the pig, for the sake of anonymity, Miss Prigg. Miss Prigg arrived in a shiny black London cab. She stepped out of the taxi smack into the middle of the road, waddled across with her back end swinging side to side, and stopped all traffic until she entered the surgery. When Miss Prigg’s owner handed over the lead of Miss Prigg’s harness to The Shepherd, she asked if there was anything Miss Prigg didn’t like. Her owner said only the thing Miss Prigg hated was the sound of a Hoover.
The most difficult part of the surgery that day was to get Miss Prigg up onto the surgery table. All went smoothly, the dentist was pleased and Miss Prigg emerged from her surgery in fine dental and physical shape. As the time for Miss Prigg’s owner to take her home approached, th
e pig had not stirred from her deep after-operation sleep. She continued to deafen all in the surgery with her loud pig snores. Time became of the essence, as her black cab had been booked for a collection time to return home. Miss Prigg had to be alert enough to walk out across a busy London street, climb into the cab and then walk up to her front doorstep at home. The vet became nervous and panicky, aware that heavy Miss Prigg needed to walk off her anaesthetic before her return trip home. He nudged her, tried tempting her with delicious aromatic food, giving her healthy pats on the backside, shouting into her ears and pulling her legs to full stretch in the hope of waking her up. All to no avail: she didn’t budge. She lay far too comfortably on her post-operation mat in a cosy corner of the surgery and felt no need to budge.
The Shepherd had been out of the surgery to run an errand. When she returned, only fifteen minutes remained before Miss Prigg’s shiny black cab was due to arrive. As The Shepherd started to pull the Hoover out of the cupboard where it was stored, the panicking vet yelled at her, ‘What are you doing? This is not the time to Hoover!! We need to get this pig up and walking about!!!!! NOW!!!! Put that bloody thing away!!!’ The Shepherd, undeterred by her boss, continued to pull the Hoover out and plugged it into a socket. She brought it close to Miss Prigg, switched it on, then quickly switched it off again. Miss Prigg’s snore turned into a sneezing squeal and she scrambled to her feet. She looked all around, completely mystified as to what had just happened. Her owner had not yet arrived, so the vet and nurse stood on either side of Miss Prigg and slowly walked her from the operating room of the surgery to the entrance. Whenever Miss Prigg paused or thought how nice it would be to lie down again, The Shepherd flicked on the Hoover behind her. Miss Prigg rapidly got over her first wobbliness after surgery to the tune of a buzzing Hoover. By the time they got her to the front reception room, the cab had arrived. As luck would have it, it drew up over the kerb right next to the surgery’s front door. The Shepherd hid the Hoover from Miss Prigg’s owner. Then owner, vet, nurse and The Shepherd all helped a hefty, fat, but no longer groggy Miss Prigg clamber into the taxi for her short ride home.
During the summer months on Black Sheep Farm we sometimes have an extensive dry spell. This dry weather is at first most welcome for shearing sheep and making hay, but once we’ve completed these jobs, we welcome the rains that alternate with sunshine. Our fields need rain to grow our mixed fodder of herbs and grasses, along with the sun to heighten sugar and protein content. If the drought lasts too long, it hinders fresh green growth in the pastures and the soil starts to split. That means I must walk with great care to avoid putting a paw into these deep earthen cracks.
Occasionally I catch up with The Shepherd while she walks a field, head cast down as she scans the soil and grass to see how they are doing under the pressure of no rain. One evening in July, during a spell of drought and after she had a few glasses of wine with her dinner, I surprised her singing a song she had composed. She sang it to the tune of George Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’. She called it ‘Waiting for the Rain’.
Summertime and the shepherd’s been real busy,
Green sweetness Shearin’ done and the hay is drawn in.
Come on, sweet baby, we’re just waitin’ on rain
So come on, sweet rain, come blow in my way.
One of these clouds is gonna blow in rainin’
Then your green growth will unfurl and sweetness will climb
in grass sprouts climbs so high, ewes’ milk increases so lambs thrive, thrive, thrive …
I usually keep a bit of a distance or climb into a nearby tree to watch from a branch in cool, leafy sheltered shade as The Shepherd paces the fields with her semi-demented singing. Pepper will lie down in one shady spot only to watch, with The Big Fellow seated next to him as The Shepherd walks back and forth, while Bear, with youthful diligence, trots along behind her to keep her company, and our newest addition, tiny Inca, trips and rolls along, every hillock and mound of earth a mountain for her to climb.
The Shepherd’s favourite evening task in late August is to cook summer squash or marrow. It’s not a vegetable I fancy – too watery for me – but she loves marrow and ginger jam and is quite partial to stuffing a marrow with a spicy minced meat mixture, rather like a Bolognese sauce. A marrow is an overgrown courgette or zucchini, which most people throw onto a compost heap, thinking it a hard-skinned inedible vegetable. She, however, slices it in half, takes out the seeds then halves each again, before parboiling till the marrow is just soft. She puts these on a baking tray with her cooked mince stuffed in the hollows and into the oven for a half-hour bake. She pulls it out to sprinkle with a lovely white cheese. A deliciously meaty, cheesy smell fills the kitchen, but even though I look hopeful, there’s no marrow meat for me. She tells me that the onions in the mince mixture are bad for me, even though I’m not sure I believe her. This stuffed marrow is served with a white sauce and fresh parsley on top. Her pièce de résistance, as she calls it, is her famous ratatouille, a mountain of fresh summer veg: aubergines, leeks, red onions, carrots, courgettes, peppers, even parsnips, sliced in chunks then layered with garden-fresh oregano, salt and pepper, dosed in olive oil and drizzled with her ‘finest dark balsamic vinegar’. She then roasts this vegetable pyramid in the Aga. Who knew that vegetables could smell and taste so good?
The crowning glory of a Black Sheep Farm summer, though, is showing our fine Zwartbles sheep during the summer agricultural shows. If we decide to show our Black Sheep Farm ewes, rams or lambs at their very best, we actually have to begin to make our plans as early as December and January. First, she selects the most noble and elegant-looking sheep, one whose distinctive white blaze goes unbroken from their poll (right between the ears) down to their muzzle. They need to have at least two white socks on their hind legs that resemble American bobby socks. White socks can be on all four legs, but sock height is strictly limited up to, but not beyond, their knees or hocks. The last beauty requirement is a bold white tip of the tail, less than halfway up the undocked tail. Finally, there cannot be a single white hair in the dark fleece or on the ears or belly.
Once these white markings seem to be correct on the group of screened ewes and rams, The Shepherd has to spend ages carefully looking over those sheep who meet the criteria, checking scrupulously each point of conformation. For example, she examines their pasterns – the ankle area between fetlock and hoof. Are they straight but not too straight and definitely not sunken low? A nice long black back with well-sprung ribs and a slightly rounded rump above a strong wide pelvis is essential. This anatomy first ensures the easy birthing of lambs, and second, that there is adequate room for a wide udder to make nursing milk easily available to a suckling newborn lamb. The configuration of the jaws and head are particularly important. The teeth must bite firmly and fully onto their pad on the upper jaw. Teeth must not over- or under-shoot, because it makes a sheep’s head look like a duck’s bill.
Once The Shepherd has selected what she thinks are the best sheep, she then pairs them against each other to try and decide which is the better animal of the two. They will have been shorn in mid-winter to grow a fresh fleece that would show off their thick, springy true black fleece with a good crimp. The tips of fleece hair must not yet have become bleached by the sun so that the sheep appear at their most chic in the show ring. There are many tasks to finish over the final few weeks before a show: grooming, primping, preening, cleaning and hoof-manicuring.
Usually, The Shepherd is so busy with visitors to Black Sheep Farm that she is only able to choose one show in a summer. One year, she chose the Clonmel Agricultural Show in south County Tipperary, which presents the Zwartbles Sheep Irish National Championships. The week before she was due to attend the show those sheep she had selected were led onto a sheep-grooming stand. This device has a lever that, when pushed, helps raise the platform upon which the sheep stands high enough off the ground to a workable height for a human to stand to groom. There is a cradle which keeps their head
in position while The Shepherd bathes, grooms and trims them from head to toe. She does this with hand-held shears and a teasing wire brush, much like the traditional tool used for carding shorn wool before it is spun into yarn. It may be hard to believe, but some sheep love this kind of attention. They fall asleep standing up. When their grooming turn is over and the stand is lowered to ground level, they sometimes need to be pushed off their preening platform! I can’t stand being groomed by The Shepherd, let alone refined titivation.
Part of this spruce-up process involves using a carding tool to fluff and fill out the fleece and trim with shears into a nice, evenly conformed shape. Careful carding helps to enhance or hide different elements of the particular conformation of each sheep. The carding brush is an unusual vital ovine grooming tool. Like a hedgehog, it too has prickly spikes. Each spike is metal with a small bend at its tip. The bent tips catch the crimp of the fleece and tease it outwards, which adds length to the hairs and volume to whatever area of the body that The Shepherd thinks might need a touch of enhancement.
I often sprawl in a shady spot to watch these laborious proceedings while Ovenmitt enjoys taking part. Often The Shepherd sits on a battered old wooden kitchen chair as she cleans and trims legs, hooves and bellies. Then Ovenmitt will jump onto The Shepherd’s back and stand on one of her shoulders to oversee the work. On one occasion he jumped from The Shepherd’s shoulder onto Alfie the ram’s back. He crouched there and begin to knead with clawed paws the ram’s woolly back, a feline carding brush helping primp Alfie’s wool.
Much to The Shepherd’s great surprise, our ram Alfie won the Irish Zwartbles Ram National Championship at the Clonmel show on a hot day in July. She jokes that it was a non-hurling victory for a Kilkenny Zwartbles ram in enemy – Tipperary – territory. She was well pleased. Hurling is something of a religion in County Kilkenny, and as every Kilkenny person knows, the ‘Cats’ as the team are called, are the best. The Shepherd is never prouder than when flying the Kilkenny county flag at the farmhouse, its black and amber bold against the deep, green fields as another hurling season reaches its peak.