Yesterday morning arrived with cold temps, stiff winds and snow. I chose to feed hay right where the ewes were bedded so they could remain where they were, snug and protected from the winds. The wind keep at it all day long creating drifts wherever the landscape allowed; drifts that had to be cleared the next morning in order to feed at all.
In the evening I did not bother getting the side by side vehicle out to drive out to the flock but instead I loaded dog food and bowls into a zippered grocery bag and went out on foot. The flock had not moved; the guardian dogs barked a warning at my unusual approach on foot. I dropped down into the hollow to feed them and sat for a spell in the stillness of the prairie cold but where the wind couldn’t reach. The snuffling noises of ewes and the nudges of a dog nose now and again provided small comforts at the close of another day.
Every winter there is a stretch that draws out the pure simplicity of what needs to be done. A prairie winter simplifies your priorities in a manner that a prairie summer can never do. The chief priority of every day is getting food to animals and getting them to shelter if needed. Each morning is an assessment of where to feed that day and how. It probably bears noting here that I don’t rear sheep with any intention of mass production and therefore do not lamb in the winter. I rear sheep with the intention of having grazers on the land and wool in my hands. This minimalist approach allows some leeway in the winter workload and means I do not spend my winter in a barn. It also means that while I use a tractor to feed nowadays (this was not always the case), I’m not running numerous pieces of equipment or heating barns during the coldest months of the year.
In a season when weather can present all manner of extra steps, like clearing snow so you can access the hay feed or the route to pasture, it’s getting the work done that matters. And wether it is a calm day or an ugly one, the feeling of relief and gratitude upon getting hay feed rolled out for the ewes is present all winter long but particularly when working on one’s own.
This is only our second year of feeding using a tractor with a cab on it. As I drive out with a hay bale for the ewes, sitting in the relative comfort of a tractor cab, I am baffled that prior to this we managed feeding with an open cab tractor for eight + years, and prior to that, we managed with no tractor at all. We arrived to this place with just the two of us, no left over equipment or livestock infrastructure to start us off. When crop farming proved a dismal failure (and thank god it did) we made it work because we had to, but from my seat in the cab today, being able to warm my hands and my face for a few moments, I can not believe we did so. Feeding a large flock without a tractor feels like a distant, forgotten life; like a story I told once a long time ago. And if I take into account the farms around us, each with three/four or more tractors parked in the yard, it seems more outlandish that in the twenty first century we went without one for as long as we did.
Not having equipment, and not able to go into more debt so we could have it, is one of the many occurrences that lead us down the road of getting where we are today. And I suppose the doing of it is what gives me the perspective of knowing that the efficiency promised us by way of using equipment doesn’t really add up. And of knowing there is always a way and sometimes not getting on the industry bandwagon in the first place is the only way.