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Where My Walks Take Me

There was a hefty dump of snow overnight and for some reason in my mind the snow automatically equated to deeper cold. And between rising from bed and slipping back and forth between the shop house and the real house, since we live in both places right now, I never took a moment to feel what the day really held.

When I dressed for exercising the Kelpies I dressed warm and tight. Hiking boots were replaced by tall boots better suited to keeping snow out. Layers of clothes, thick socks, tuque with hood of the bunny hug pulled over-top, insulted overalls, heavy overcoat, good gloves – that sort of dressed.

So attired the dogs and I headed out just before the first crack of light entered the day. We headed southward, cutting through the paddock where the cows and horses reside before entering the large hilly pasture space beyond. I love walking this prairie land. I often wonder how much of the collective agricultural perspective would shift if individual farmers and ranchers walked their land every day. Not for the purpose of testing it and recording its yield and production but for the sake of getting to know it. For the sake of asking the land questions.

There is enough fresh snow that the effort of walking in the powdered fluff is real. I expect the ewes would be late to rise today. The tall boots were needed but by quarter of a mile in I am sufficiently warm to chuckle at all the clothes. It is a gorgeous winter morning. The skies have been winter grey nearly all month long, and today’s skies were par for the course. The light is flat. The barest breath of wind and several inches of fresh, powdery, quiet snow made me feel enveloped by the open prairie space, which seems a bit contradictory.

The dogs and I do a second walk each evening, just as the last crack of light is fading from the day. But we go down the grid road since unlike the am walk where more light comes along as we go, on the evening walk more darkness will come along as we go, and I prefer to have an easy route to follow back home in the dark. On these dark walks the black coated Kelpies disappear into the darkness beyond the pale natural light there is to see by. The initial tension of trying to follow where they go fades as my eyes adjust to the darkness. Often I don’t see the Kelpies as they crisscross the road, or leave it and cross the fence line into the pasture, but I hear them. Wren, the guardian-dog-drop-out who now accompanies us is the easiest to spot given her all white coat.

A couple nights ago on our evening walk the temperature was beautiful like it was this morning. Sitting a couple degrees below zero with no wind. There was the same enveloping feeling experienced on this morning’s walk. There is such stillness and calm in the dark just as there can be in the daylight. Although there is less light to see by there is just as much to see.

When I walk my mind swings back and forth between thinking so hard I don’t notice where I am, to not thinking at all and just absorbing the immense splendor of the place. The last year has been wrought with change and change always brings a peculiar amount of unsettlement.

Change with things in our life, like building a home, but also greater changes that are altering the perspective of agriculture. I’m in a province where big agriculture is king and the regenerative, grass-based type agriculture is still the underground agriculture. But there is the beginning of a shift happening and this makes me feel hopeful.
On the other hand, the pendulum has started its swing and so there are also many misguided stories on agriculture being shared and touted as truth by folks who have never been on the land. And I don’t know what that means for those of us who are giving it a good go but getting lumped into the bad flow. I love this prairie land too much and I know I’ve shied away from taking a stand, and now it seems the time is short.

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It’s A Winter Scene

It’s a winter scene here. The rams, cows and horses have been moved home, the ewe flock is still out grazing though. The portable water stations have not been in use for some time as cold weather put a stop to those.

The first cold always seems the most harsh, not because it’s particularly cold but because I am never quite ready to embrace the chores and challenges that snow and cold bring. It takes me a bit to settle into the cold and I wonder if it is the same for the flock and the dogs or if their finely tuned senses of all things natural allows them to glide into the seasons with relative ease and knowing.

Normally at this juncture of winters arrival I’m well set into a slower paced creative routine and embracing it wholeheartedly. But this has been a full Fall season with work on our house taking up a good deal of our mental energy and weekend/spare time. We are not living in the house just yet however the cold weather put a damper on doing concrete pouring for counter tops and staining of baseboards outside. Needing a warm space for this work drove the decision to move my studio space out to the house to make room for a work area in the shop we still live in. So it is that my art table is now set up in a small dormer space of the upstairs loft with a gorgeous east view of prairie land. When I sit in this space I feel rich beyond measure.

The change of place has unsettled my creative routine, but in a good way I suppose. It’s exciting to be in the home you built and that excitement has me fluttering about like a moth around an evening lamp. Having a small string of commission work that needs to get done is a hidden blessing as it forces me to stay on task and being active with the task of creative is what spurs the ideas for future artwork of the subjects of this land and livestock life my existence revolves around.

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Solo Sorting

This week required sorting a few Clun Forest types from the flock for private sale. Allen is away the whole week so the task fell solely to myself and the Kelpies. I decided to sort a sub-group and then let the individual pick the few sheep from the smaller group rather than trying to pick a handful from several hundred.

Coyote Mic was my choice of dogs for gathering out on pasture and getting them home. We headed out in the morning and came upon the flock still loosely gathered and not yet headed off for grazing. We both started at the rear of the group and just our presence there started the flock moving off from us. We pressed on them a bit and then retreated, letting them string out. I figured I could split the group while out on pasture and just take a portion of them home to sort further.

We start with a beautiful and frost covered morning.

Back on the Ranger I moved up to the midst of the column of sheep and split the bunch. I took the front bunch further along and figured the ewes left behind would slow up and stay put. Not a chance. They came along behind us. I put Mic on the ground again and we attempted to encourage the rear bunch to turn around and go back. They went far and wide around us and sped up to catch the front group. It twigged on me that the ewes figured this was a pasture move; no one was going to be left behind.

So instead, we took the whole bunch to the gate and once there I just let what I thought was a reasonable number go through then stepped in a cut the rest off. Those not allowed through the gate were dumbfounded! Having Mic on board allowed me to get through the gate without more streaming out. The ewes let out were already moving well ahead and beginning to spread out, exploring the new-old pasture. Mic and I picked them up and took them the rest of the way home. At the yard we turned them into the barn paddock and from there Mic handled bringing them up the hill to the building with ease.

At the yard. Mic bringing the group up the last hill to the building. Rams in an adjacent pasture look on.

Typically the hardest part of flock work is getting all the sheep into our alleyway along the building. Perhaps it was the lesser number that made it seem easy this time. I was pleased, Mic was pleased – and she sure there was a lot more work to be done, and slipped under the gate in an attempt to convince me to let her have at it.

Turning sheep into the alleyway alongside the building.

I was tempted, but really wanted to give this job to BlackJack. He’s been getting a fair number of the ranch jobs this summer and while he completely made a mess of one or two of them, he also stepped up in unexpected circumstances. BlackJack is a pup out of BJ and like his mom he works tight and is more than willing to come forward and force.

Our raceway is located inside the building while the wider alley leading up to it is located on the outside. The outside alleyway curves around the end of the building, enters at the back and narrows into the raceway. This means that when I have to run the sort gate located along the raceway there is no way to see out or manage what’s going on in the alleyway. It means I have to leave the dogs to work as they will, and rely on their work.

When I work right alongside the dogs I bring an expectation of how the work should go and how the dog should carry out the work. This expectation stems from a learned, stereotypical approach to working border collie and kelpie type stock dogs. When being directed on how to do the job the training the dog has is heavily relied on and can often override his default approach to the work. The expectation presses on the dog somewhat even when I determine to not let it. But I’ve had enough of these solo work situations now to appreciate there is a difference. When I’m not directly alongside the dog yet in need of the help, the expectations are not adhered to – indeed, the lack of them is not even seen/known. Now the dog works in his default fashion with whatever training he’s had to aid him and I have to trust that. The job has been set up but no one is telling him how to do it. This latter situation is much more like working with another person. Here’s the important distinction about our work this time around – BlackJack didn’t do every thing perfectly, I didn’t do everything perfectly – far from it in fact. But BlackJack and I got through that job together and we got through it honestly, and I was so genuinely pleased to have the dogs help on a big job and he was so pleased to have helped. I knew it and he knew it, and that type of knowing transcends expectations.

flock work with kelpies

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