The land, the flock, the dogs and I. I wish to expand on the last blog post, which was titled pastoral ease. Moves with a lot of animals are not easy but they do have a feeling that is hard to replicate elsewhere.
The word pastoral is described as land or farm used for or related to the keeping or grazing of sheep or cattle; associated with country life. The origin of the latin word pastoralis is ‘relating to a shepherd’.
I seldom use the word but when it comes to mind I think it is this that the dictionary might also mean but missed out on: Pastoral is one of those times when no other personal or worldly problem exists. the drought is not here, the imminent sale of animals is forgotten, your next move is not a concern. With each step along a move with livestock you slip deeper into existing right here and now and you know the world is right for right now. Therefore it’s a good time to be alive and present.
I do not think or feel pastoral thoughts when I am out and with the dogs and the flock on a move. But instead the activity of moving across a landscape with a group of livestock is rich with pastoral nature and thus I become infused with it. When the moment is shattered or the move is done the feeling is too, however, it always, always leaves an indelible mark upon ones soul, because that is the nature of Nature. That is to be pastoral.
The heat of the previous day kept on through the night. For the third week in a row we’re starting the day with heat. As a result of the drought the landscape is more brown than it is green; Fall season brown but without the oranges, reds and pale yellow/greens, or the crisp air.
The dogs and I are out on the prairie. The dry grass crunches beneath my feet as I walk, Meadow Brome seeds catch in the hair of the dogs as they travel. Smoke from distant forest fires in the North is in the air creating a sombre scene. The ongoing heat is tough to dismiss from my thoughts, my worry. Given the heat we’ll make do with a shorter hike this morning and try again in the evening. A spray of grasshoppers fans out in front as I walk. They hit my jeans, occasionally one lands on my forearm and involuntarily my arm twitches wildly to fling it off.
Early morning. Standing at the front widow the scene looks the same. The brown, dying landscape enveloped by a haze. The temperature dropped last night though. I step outside amidst the swirl of Kelpies eager to be off for the daily scree across the prairie and I am pleasantly surprised to discover this is a haze of fog not smoke. The air is noticeably cooler. The dogs and I cross the yard and melt into the pasture, in short order we come across a sheep trail and follow it. It will be a long hike this morning.
Not so many grasshoppers this morning and the legs and bellies of the dogs are wet, as are my hiking shoes. The faintest hint of moisture is in the air and it is so lovely to breathe it in. Not a rain at all but just a foggy mist. A wonderfully pleasant foggy mist that has added a teasing layer of dampness to the grass. There are little droplets of water hanging on the grass.
I wonder if this is the prairie calling for rain.
Early morning. Another foggy haze, greatly preferred over the prior days of high temperatures and smoke. Dogs and I disappear into the pasture, the sound of lambs and ewes calling one another travels to our ears from the pasture next door where the flock grazes. It will time for a move soon. The ewes are grazing though paddocks quicker than ever and the un-grazed grass in front of them is already dry and gone yellow. Not much feed value there. The hollows and the wetland bottoms are providing the best grazing now.
The Kelpies are wet and moving with energy of the cooler air. I have my camera along and when I have my camera I look deeper and further. I look around at nothing in particular and everything at once. This is my daily scene, my back forty, what message does it have to show and share? The grasses are holding droplets of moisture and the bottom of my pant legs are soaked. There has been no rain here for a long time but this morning it is as though it had rained. This morning is more wet than the one previous; this morning is more wet than dry, and therein lies the hope. The prairie calling for rain.
Country Roads on a misty June morning; naked grain land on the left, earth covering grassland on the right.
It matters a great deal that there be intangibles we cannot get our hands on. And it matters that we get to know these intangibles and learn to honour them because they are the internal nudges, they are the link to our own inner nature; a nature many woman have been told has no place in agriculture.
That grassland landscapes and people who steward the land with mother nature in mind are still here, matters a great deal more than we might give thought to.
It also matters that we grasp and explore the link between land and animal, sink our teeth into the natural connections and risk rearranging the pieces of our thinking about what it means to farm the land.
It matters – now more than ever.
Traveling back roads on a misty June morning. Naked grain land in foreground, grazing land at the rear.
