The Tenderest Heart

In addition to the sheep, the bees, the mule, and the chickens, we have some llamas on the farm. Though I think I am a sheep soul at last, the llamas came to our menagerie first.

Here are Camel, Llama and Musk Deer in a 19th Century print:

Early on, when we needed some grass eaters to keep the field down, we brought two young llama geldings home. They were acquired cheaply because of certain oddities in their genetics: Trace, who was born with three toes on his feet instead of the canonical two (Get it? Trés, for “three”); and Painted Desert, the color of desert sands, a smallish boy who has remained slender, not to say bony, his whole life. We call him P.D., pronounced like Petey. Llamas do have distinct personalities. They all seem a little aloof when you see them in a field with their noses held high and their aristocratic posture. But they are individuals inside. Trace has always been a bit retarded, never quite “getting it” as we would say if he were a human. P.D., on the other hand, turned into the diplomat of the group, the ambassador who greeted all newcomers, the dignified and curious llama who always reached out to others. Eventually we bought a bred female, and our first large stock birth on the farm (we don’t count the bees as “birthings” exactly) was a llama, a robust girl we named Honeysuckle. In time (it takes about 11 months to make a llama) we celebrated the arrival of her sister, Black Locust.

About three weeks ago, Black Locust lay down in the field one day and didn’t get up again. She went with the suddenness that animals sometimes do. They keep their secrets. As our friend Rose wrote, they seem to say, “I’m fine, I’m fine, now I’ll die.” Locust died with grass still in her mouth and no apparent sign of distress. Just down. Just gone.

I was not very happy about this. Locust had been a sweet girl. She was personable and affectionate, a more or less rare result in a llama. She would blow on your hair, follow you into the hay room to steal, permit stroking of her neck and handling of her feet, and would burp congenially into your face. (Let me be the first to inform those of you who have not experienced it that a ruminant burp is almost beyond pungent description.) In my mind, Locust was linked to our dear internet friend of 15 years, Joni, who had sent us a book on the occasion of Locust’s birth. Joni passed away last year without our ever having met each other outside email. I now have a double hole in my heart, one for Joni who helped us celebrate Locust, and one for Locust.

That’s baby Black Locust reading over my shoulder from the book Joni sent us.

But I am not the only one who misses Locust. P.D. has been grieving. If you do not think animals have something like souls, you have not paid attention. He spent days sitting out in the field near where she died. And though he roused himself to come at feeding time, he really hasn’t been eating much. He wanders the edge of the pasture, looking across at the rest of the herd, but not interested enough in their society to join them. Now he has taken up a solitary position in front of the barn. Maybe he is waiting for her to come out from one of her sneak raids on the hay room. He may not know what his heart is, but I think he knows it is broken.

So, I’m sorry, P.D.

I wish I could give him some comfort.

Easter on the Farm

This is me tending the sheep on Easter morning. Even on Easter, the chores must be seen to.

I’m a little more dressed up than usual at feeding time, since it is a church day, after all. Let’s hope these spotty lambs respect my Sunday best. They are fine examples of young Jacob sheep — or, wait a minute… Has someone been Photoshopping my antique greeting cards? For shame!

Best to you all at Easter, whether you celebrate the season or the worship.

Equinox Snow

I came home Thursday evening to find snow on the ground again. In town we had no trace of such a thing, and it only began to appear at the roadside as I drove up the hills toward home. By the time I pulled into the driveway, we had a nice dusting over everything. It was supposed to be the edge day between winter and spring, the Vernal Equinox. Weather comes as it pleases, I suppose, and has signed no performance contracts with the calendar. It’s a reminder, lest we begin to think we’re in control of things.

The evidence lasted over night, but was gone again by the next afternoon. It was Equinox eve, however, and we did not expect new snow to help celebrate it.

Equinox: Latin aequus nox: equal night (and, by extension, day).

On an equinox day, the Sun will spend nearly equal times above and below the horizon everywhere on Earth, and night and day will be almost the same length. It’s those moments we use to define the change of the seasons. And in spite of the snow, there are signs all around here that the days are growing longer.

As long as we are onto celestial subjects like the equal points of the seasons, this week brought us a Worm Moon. Worm Moon is the March full moon which, as folklore goes, announces warm spring days, thawing ground, and worms. Those are all here, and the robins, too, in spite of the snow. In fact, I have noticed an unseemly amount of embracing going on among the earthworms in the pasture the past couple of weeks, an indication of why the old folks named this full moon as they did. For a list of full moon names, see this article in Wikipedia: Full moon.

This year, the Worm Moon coincides with the Paschal Moon, the first full moon of the northern spring (spring being the result of the Vernal Equinox) that sets the date of Easter. The Paschal full moon is early this year, in fact right on the Equinox, and so then, is Easter.

Easter blessings, and a new season to you all.

Science Friday

You-all regular readers might remember when we put in the grid for the radiant floor in the studio last fall (September 21, 2007 blog entry if you don’t happen to just recall that). It’s taken a while to get things into a condition where we could test that grid. We knew from the inspection and the pressure testing at the time that the pipes had no leaks. What we wanted to test was the flow of heat through the system.

Through persuasion and the extraordinary good will of our Neil Kelly company liaison, we acquired the loan of an infrared camera on Friday. Just at the outset, let me say how far this camera is from my previous experience with infrared photography. I can describe to you the pains required to make infrared images on film. That was in the mid-1970s when I was a graduate student in Anthropology at Portland State University. We wanted to make some infrared photos of rock paintings in the eastern Oregon desert, thinking that portions of the designs not visible in normal light might show up in the IR images.

The film itself was not terribly costly as I recall. I’d have noticed if it had been. This film, Kodak High Speed Infrared (HIE) black-and-white negative film, is sensitive to light wavelengths in the “near infrared” range: 700 to 900 nm. Infrared film is also sensitive to any kind of warmth (light is heat), so it needs to be kept cool if it is not to fog before you intend to use it. Since we were going to the desert with it, we packed it into a cooler with ice. Also into the cooler went rubber gloves, like the dish washing kind, to insulate our warm fingers during handling of the film.

The camera must be loaded and unloaded in total darkness, so we bought a changing bag, which did seem expensive. A changing bag is a heavy cloth bag, usually of more than one layer of cloth, with a doubled-over closure on one end to allow you to put the camera and film inside and close it up against light. The other end of the bag has sleeves that work backwards: the elastic cuffs go up on your arms and your hands go inside the bag where you use tactile memory to open the film box, open its inner wrapper, extract the film canister, open the camera, orient the canister the right direction, install the film into the camera and onto the take-up reel, and close the camera. The emulsion on HIE film is fairly tender as I recall, and it’s easy to damage the film with scratches, so you try to be careful. But you perform this operation wearing rubber dishwashing gloves that have just come out of the cooler, you do it quickly, and you put everything back into the cooler.

The other thing required for IR photography on film is a dark red filter, and that was expensive. Yowie. I settled for a very dark red #29 gelatin and a well-used filter holder instead of a threaded glass filter. It was still expensive. The purpose of the filter is to block blue wavelengths and pass only the red ones.

One other thing: Infrared radiation does not focus on the film plane in the same way as visible light. The IR wavelengths are longer and the focus point is further from the camera lens. The lens has a little red dot on the focusing ring that tells you where the IR image will be sharpest. You focus normally by looking through the viewfinder and turning the ring. Then you look at it, and move the ring so the dot lines up where the normal focus marker was.

One other other thing: normal ISO ratings don’t apply to IR films because they respond to heat. So you guess a lot, and just take a whole bunch of different value exposures.

Off we went to the desert with our cooler and things, and set ourselves up to go to work.

The plan was this: we thought we would overlay (at that time, by means of tracings) visible light images of the paintings and IR images, and get really neat enhanced views of ancient drawings. A pictograph is an image made by the application of pigmented material to a rock surface (a petroglyph, on the other hand, is one made by incising the surface of the rock). Some pictographs are magnificent as they come to us, like this painting of an elk on rocks near The Dalles, Oregon (this one is shown on the website of the Marysville Pictograph Project www.marysvillepictographproject.com):

But many are mere traces of color on the rock.

Since pictographs are created using earth pigments for the most part, mixed with binders that might be of vegetable or animal origin, we thought we might be able to pull out images of some of the binder material where the pigment itself had faded or eroded.

Our first problem, after loading the camera, was: the cooler was not “a cool dry environment.” It was a cool, damp one. In fact, by the time we arrived on-site, it wasn’t even very cool anymore, since the ice had melted and was swishing around in a leaky plastic bag. About the second time we brought the camera out, everything was covered with little droplets of moisture: camera body, lens, and, we presumed, the film inside. So we waited for it to clear, knowing that the temperature was rising on the film the whole time. We fiddled with the tripod, we dropped things, we shot frames and frames of vaguely visible smears of color on hot rocks, taking far too much time to put and take the dark red filter between focusings and resettings of the focus point. I don’t remember how many rolls of film we shot, awkwardly unloading and loading film in the changing bag. I do remember that when we got it all back from the lab, we didn’t have any pictures that were useful at all. We had a lot of images of really hot places, some scratches, and a great deal of static scatter on the film.
I recently came across this notice from Kodak:

—Notice of Discontinuance—

Due to declining demand, KODAK High-Speed Infrared Film / HIE has been discontinued, effective YE 2007.

I wonder why?

OK. We return to the early 21st Century. On Friday evening I came home with the loan of an incredibly expensive digital infrared camera to use in measuring the flow of heat through the array of pipes in the floor of the studio. Here is Richard with the camera:

 

You do have to focus the thing, but that’s about all except to point and pull the trigger. And when you do, this is what you get:

That’s Yellowcat, outside the camera, and inside. Or, inside my camera, but outside the IR camera, and inside it.

After entertaining ourselves with looking at our cold noses and ears and such, we settled down to the science of the matter. We stuck little numbered markers all over the floor at intervals.

You can tell by the photos the light was fairly low in the Laboratory. We found that the ceiling lights were enough to give a higher temperature reading to the floor beneath them.

After marking the floor with a back-and-forth of numbers, we measured each location with a laser-beam-looking IR thermometer. Imagine this. An infrared camera and thermometer, and two sheep-raising, tree-hugging dirt worshippers using them.

Then we turned on the water to the system and went away for an hour.

When we came back to take new measurements at each location and look through the IR lens, this is what we saw:

You are looking at an infrared view of a section of the floor with warm water running through the pipes beneath the concrete. The black snake is an electrical cord, and the black lump in the corner is a vacuum cleaner. And you can see an absolutely even flow of the heat throughout. This made Richard smile a lot. Big smile. You see, this grid, with water entering through a supply manifold (on the far right in this picture) and back through a return manifold (the second, inner warm (white) vertical line on the right side of the picture) after a brief run through the horizontal distribution lines, is Richard’s design. He and Monty decided to install it experimentally, because the radiant floor man wouldn’t do it — in a normal system the water enters at one end, serpentines through the floor, and exits at the other end for return to the supply. The result is a floor that heats unevenly because heat is lost as it flows through the long line to its exit. Eventually it catches up as the whole floor heats, but the Moore-Yarnell (handsome first billing is alphabetical only!) manifold gives a more even flow of heat from the beginning. If you look at the center of the camera display, you see a little rectangle with a dot in the middle. This dot aims a temperature sensor. The sensor is looking at a dark (cooler) area between pipes. In the upper right corner of the display, the temperature there reads 44.7F. That floor was really cold. The white (warmer) areas registered about 2.5 degrees higher in temperature. That’s not a lot of difference to the feet on the floor. To the instrument, apparently it is significant.

Below is the downloaded false color image from the camera. This kind of imaging is used to make more obvious the small differences that might be recorded by the camera. Here you can see the two manifolds quite clearly on the right. And you can see  how really cold it was at the still uninsulated walls further right and the sliding glass door at the top.

We felt very scientific as we logged the temperatures at each marker. It’s nice to use your college education for something, even if it’s only an excursion into scientific method:

Make observations (That floor doesn’t heat evenly.)

Form a conjecture (There must be a better way)

Do research (Specifically, that’s a lifetime of seeing how it works.)

Think about it and make a prediction (If the heated water makes a shorter journey before returning to the source, it will lose less heat, and will heat the floor more evenly.)

TEST

Analyze results.

Make a report (and return the camera!)

Smile, smile, smile.

This is Ibn al-Haytham, polymath and an early proponent of the Scientific Method. He lived from 965 to 1039 in Basra of modern Iraq, and is honored by his picture on the Iraqi 10,000 dinar note. And here below is his moon crater, Alhazen.

If you’re good enough at doing science, you get things named for you. Maybe someday there will be a Moore-Yarnell Manifold crater.

Wear Some Green

Greetings to you all on St. Patrick’s Day!

This dear lady would have more success if she worked from the other end of her spinning wheel or, indeed, if she had anything attached to her wheel! But she does look a little puzzled, and that may account for her doing — whatever it is she’s doing with that business in her hands. Maybe she’s already tipped too many glasses in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day.

Have a happy one!

Spring Fiber Festival

Think of Market Day a hundred years ago, or two hundred, or three, in a farm town anywhere. The vendors arrive a couple of hours early in their trailers and wagons full of goods, to set up their market booths.

The one above is in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1878. Click the image to see the whole view on Houston Street.

It causes a fair amount of congestion as they unload their goods, visit a little, and help each other out to be ready for the arrival of the shoppers at opening time. As you can see in the 1797 painting below, by John White Abbot, someone is always crossing the road, looking for a parking place, catching children, setting up displays, or making quick deals before the market opens. Click to see the whole painting.

Some vendors bring livestock. This view is of the Caledonian Market in London, in the 1930’s:

Others bring made goods, knowing the shoppers will browse any attractive display. Here, potential buyers take in a display of china dishware in 1910 (click for a wider look):

It’s pretty much the same today. Those markets were the backbone of commerce in their time. Today, the little (and sometimes large) flock and fiber shows that still occur in farm communities all across the country support small farmers and businesses in ways that probably do not show up much in the Gross National Product, but are important in several ways to the participants. They still hold communities together. They support a network of growers and makers. They provide income to small enterprises that would collapse without them. One difference from days gone by: you can be certain that those who organized the market days then were compensated for their efforts; they owned the market. These days, the market event is a work of devotion and love by volunteers who put effort and hours into the planning. For the sellers and buyers, however, the sales and festivals are social events, very much like the ones of days gone by. These sellers and buyers know each other and they come together at pleasant, not to say joyful intervals, to exchange news and goods, sell a little, buy a little, eat together, envy the goods of their neighbor, or know silently that their own is a better product.

Yesterday was the Spring Fiber Festival in Oregon City. We had rain outside, but warmth inside.

The sale takes place in one of the old Grange Halls still dotting the countryside. Its wooden floors, the aromas from the kitchen downstairs (Minestrone soup, West African peanut soup, Sloppy Joes, chocolate chip cookies…), the scent of wool, the murmur of voices as buyers wander and negotiate, the sound of rain on the lot outside: it all makes for a comfortable, congenial day, profitable for those who sell and for those who acquire what they (feel they) need.

We are surrounded by natural tones

and gem tones

By the end of the day, we are steeped in scents and sights, tired from a good session of exchange on all levels, and a little richer perhaps. Some of my neighbor vendors bought as much as they sold, I noticed. But I was pleased to bring home a small purse filled enough to advance my stock a little for next time.

And I have a small sense of holding hands with those at market days of the past.

Jump, Goat, Jump

Before anyone gives me any grief about it, I know the problems with the archeology surrounding this piece.

In truth, it isn’t the archeology as much as what’s happened to the archeology: antiquities are sometimes used for purposes of imperial aggrandizement, and the facts often suffer in the presentation. But the indignity imposed on this little pot is fun to see, and I’m prepared to ignore the attempts of the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization to reframe content and timeline for their own purposes, and just enjoy what they recently published.

Here is the painting on the bowl stretched out.

Click the picture to see all 5 leaping goat images.

The artifact on which these goats (this goat, as you will see) are painted came from a grave site in Sistan and Baluchestan Province in modern Iran, excavated by Italian and Iranian teams beginning in the 1970’s, with work on artifacts continuing today.

Go here for an overview of the site and some of the work: Burnt City, Key to lost civilization but bear in mind this is not a scholarly website and offers some imaginative interpretations of the material.

Getting back to the leaping goat(s). Someone looking at this sweet little bowl noticed the sequence of goat paintings, and has used the magic of digital editing to combine them into a Zoetrope-like presentation that has real charm. See it here:

http://www.cais-soas.com/News/2008/March2008/04-03.htm where the goat leaps up to bite the fronds of the tree.

Academics, lighten up. This goat animation is cute as the dickens, and I do not think very many people will be deceived into believing the Shahr-e-Sookhteharians had laptops on which to view the result. Just give up being offended by the “inauthenticity” of it and smile for a minute. It’s remarkable enough that some early artist conceived the technique of animation “cells” much like those created by the Disney animators — even if they were to be viewed statically– and that some analyst in a museum room full of old pots recognized the effect.

Besides, that wild goat jumping reminds me of my “domesticated” Jacob Sheep, who will also jump to get what they want.

Chickery-chick

I remember a song from when I was little… I believe I remember only the chorus actually. I think we can blame the WWII era for this — it’s an abomination of a song. The part I can bring to mind went, “Chickery-chick, cha-la, cha-la, check-a-la romie in a bananicka, bollicka-wollicka, can’t you see, Chickery Chick is me.” Or something like that. Now I can’t get the tune out of my head and wish I’d never thought of it.

It’s chick time again.

My friend Barbara and I drove down to Hubbard on Friday evening, about 40 minutes south of Oregon City, to the poultry hatchery, to pick up our day-olds. We have ordered our chicks through the feed store in the past, and we are both frustrated with getting late notices of their arrival and having to choose among the poor little left-overs. Let’s go to the source! we said to each other. Barbara phoned in the order for us, and we pooled with her other friend Deb, and off we went in an evening rainstorm to get them. (Note: when I arrived home from this expedition, Richard greeted me with the project described in the previous post. Scroll down for the rest of the evening.)

Our laying flock was pretty well decimated last fall, about the time the days were getting short and the hens sleepy in the morning, I found them short count one day. And then shorter the next. I never did figure out exactly how the raider got into the hen yard, but I found remnants of my fine girls at the edge of the woods and down beside the road. Whoever it was was smart enough to carry them away from the yard before getting down to the business of breakfast. We set out a box trap at the time, and caught several of our own hens in the box, but never did get a sign of the thief. When I found myself with only two poor girls remaining, I gathered them up and put them into cages in the barn. They were not especially happy about it, but I could see no reason to keep subsidizing the neighborhood chicken franchise.

Normally I add ten or a dozen layer pullets to our flock each spring. That lets us cull a few of the older girls who have worked their way into old age. The usual pattern is for me to stock a different breed each spring so I can tell their age by appearance: one year it will be Plymouth Barred Rocks (my favorites for good nature and productivity); when they are a year old, I might add Araucanas and get green-shelled eggs; the third year, maybe it will be Rhode Island Reds; and so on. This year, being that I am down to two hens, I ordered a mix of the Barred Rocks and some Araucanas. That’s them above, sleeping in their cardboard nursery. They will outgrow that box in about a day or two. Their habit at this stage is to sleep in a pile, sharing warmth and heartbeats. The ones with the stripes are the Araucanas. The black ones are the Plymouth Barred Rocks, which we affectionately call Barcodes.

If you look for the tiny wing of this one, you can already see the barring on its primary wing feathers. It doesn’t take them long to turn into what they are.

Little darlings. In a couple of weeks, they won’t be so cute anymore. They’ll have stiff new feathers replacing the down and they’ll be loud and smelly. Eventually, though, they will grow into lovely yard hens.

These chickens are listed on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy website as among the “heritage” breeds that are becoming rare these days. Their value to the small flock-holder is great, but they have not “made the cut” to graduate to prominence as a commercial breed. This is a mixed blessing. What happens to a livestock breed that does rise to the level of economic importance is that it moves from the farmyard to the factory. It becomes uniform in appearance and behavior, it becomes a cog in a production machine that cares little for the attributes that once made it successful as a kitchen flock. If the breed is an egg-layer, that’s the only feature of its existence that matters, and it must begin laying on schedule, must produce its egg a day in a metropolis of other hens just like itself, and that egg must be identical to the one its neighbor lays, and that they both laid yesterday, and will tomorrow. If the breed is a meat breed, it must reach its intended butchery weight at precisely the moment its colleagues do, and not a moment earlier (which would mean feeding it needlessly past its optimum input-to-output ratio), and not a moment later (which would mean it did not maximize its potential for the amount of feed, light and housing invested in it). The life of a production bird is not a happy one. But what happens to the breed that remains a “heritage” breed is that interest in its continued production falls off. The big money is in factories, not in back yards.

So what makes these hens good enough to raise and love? These birds were once the best part of the breakfast and dinner tables of the mixed farm in America. They are sturdy, good-natured, healthy, undemanding, full-bodied birds suitable for both laying and bringing to the harvest. But they, for instance, do not mature into a butchering bird of 5# in 6 weeks. They have colorful plumage, meaning that when they are plucked the places where the feathers grew still show, and the fryer market surely does not want that. Some breeds have a natural pale yellow to their skins, and the market wants white skins. I’m here to tell you these are good birds, and they deserve to be cultivated. And I love having them worry about the yard here, picking at insects and weed seeds, engaging in their chicken squabbles, running to greet us at the gate in the surety that we will have a treat for them. These little chicks will be good birds for us, and they will have a good time at it.

My niece once asked why, if these breeds are falling in numbers and are, depending on the breed, “rare” or “threatened” or “watched,” why we eat them! Here’s the thing: a farm animal has to support itself if it is to succeed as a breed. You can’t just keep an endlessly growing number of offspring, feeding them and treasuring them. They have to make it to the table or they truly have no value as breeds on a farm. It pertains to our sheep as well as the hens. They have to bring something to the deal.

I have been asked also if we hatch our own chicks. Right now we don’t. But when we buy these little hens, we are supporting the industry that does grow them, just as if we were producing them ourselves.

So here we are, restoring a decimated flock. They’ll do well and we will enjoy them. And I am looking forward to the day, a few months from now, when I come from morning feeding with a warm, small (the first eggs are always small), pale brown egg in my hand, and know that no egg was ever fresher when it came to the stove. And I will be sure as well that no egg was ever a healthier link in the food chain: One of the best reasons to keep your own flock is, it’s good to know what your dinner ate ahead of you.

They Will Drive You Crazy

Let me explain about fences: the purpose of a fence is to circumvent the wish of a person or an animal to be someplace it is not desired.

So, when the septic field excavators were about to arrive, we erected some construction fencing to keep the sheep out of the way of the machines and the trench and, more important, to keep them in their enclosure. Regular farm fence was coming down at unpredictable intervals, to allow the passage of tractors and diggers, and in fact, the new line was going to pass right under the paddock fence. We made a nice alley of plastic fencing where the machines could work inside it and the sheep could watch from their front yard.

Here is the scene I am setting for you. You can see the alley where the excavators have been working, and how any reasonable intellect would understand this space is intended to be respected.

No fence was ever made that is not subject to violation.

This one waited until almost all the work was done to fall to the inevitable. The excavators went home on Friday. It was also on Friday that Jenna, our newest and least tame Jacob ewe, found a way through the construction netting and under the old fence, and into the house yard. This was not where she was supposed to be. The rule of fencing had been invoked.

When I came home from town, Richard greeted me: “We have a #$@%&*! sheep to catch.”

Jenna was not in a mood for capture. It was dark by then, and Richard had already spent some time in daylight walking around the yard with a sheep ahead of him, trying to coax her into some kind of proximity to a gate or a rope or a corner of the yard. He said the excavator was pretty amused to watch them.

“You try,” he told me. “The minute she sees me she takes off.”

I assessed the situation. Jenna and I walked around for a while. I brought some feed in a bucket, rattled it a lot, set it in a corner of the fences, and stood by to wait for Jenna to come get some.

Not a chance. Not within 10 feet.

We have a little pen in the yard where we keep ram lambs from time to time. At the moment, we have just one fella in there, who was watching all this with real interest. Aha, I thought. I can use that pen.

So in the dark, terrifying him with my flashlight, I caught the ram and moved him out of play. Then I set the gate of the pen like a fish weir, and baited it with the bucket of grain. Jenna obediently walked around and around the pen. Outside the pen, you understand. She went in once. The moment I conceived the thought of closing the gate, she was out again.

Then she walked around some more.

“Hey listen, sweetie,” I told her. “I’m going in for dinner, so you can just relax and check things out, OK?” And I did. I went in and we had dinner. And afterward, I went back out, and Jenna took one look at me and ran straight out of that pen where she had indeed been relaxing.

So here is what we did. Along about 10 o’clock at night (I, so tired by then — we’ve had the grippe here for the last week and a half — I was close to tears, but outwardly so patient, so patient…), we tied a long rope to the gate of the pen. Really long. Thirty feet long. And Richard went out to the end of it, in the dark, and stood behind a post, and hid. Meanwhile, I went to the ewe pen and caught Willa, our sweet, compliant, helpful, glad to be led anywhere sheep Willa, and took her to the catching pen. I tied her inside and baited the pen again. Lucky Willa! She thought this was a good deal I imagine. I walked up the hill to the back door and made a big noise of going inside. “I’m going inside now. ‘Bye.” Rattle. Slam.

Here is Richard in a “nightshot,” waiting to spring the trap.

For about 20 minutes, Jenna didn’t move a muscle. She just stood there in the yard, completely aware she was the center of a set-up. Then she walked up the slope about halfway to where Richard was hiding behind the post, and gave him a good look-over. Satisfied that he was what she thought he was, she went back to stand in the yard some more.

Do not think for a minute that Jacob sheep are stupid. This little girl had wits and stamina enough to keep us out there for a couple of hours all told, waiting for her to make her way into capture.

Finally, at last, she obliged us by stepping into the pen.

But her butt was hanging out.

Another step.

Willa was getting all the treats, you know.

One more step.

Richard pulled on the rope, the gate swung, Jenna made a run for the gap… but she was caught.

He laughed as he came in. “That miscreant,” he said. “We’ll never get to use that trick again.”

At least we know we’re still smarter than they are. But it will drive you crazy proving it.

Of the First Water

Some of you may remember the drilling of our new well last June (If you don’t, the blog entry is here: Ceci n’est pas une pipe « The Shambles under Highland Butte).

It took a long time to get down to the water, and has been longer still waiting for the installation of the pump that brings it to the surface. At the time of the drilling, the team of guys said, yup, it was good water. They had tasted it, but neither of us had been here at the time, and once they’d taken their sip, they pulled up their equipment and went away. So we have looked at that bit of well pipe sticking out of the ground for some time now, wondering what we bought down there under the volcano.

Last week the pump man finished his job, and we now have water running from the new well. It was time for a sample of the goods.

A taste test is a formal thing. First you must catch the free run.

Imagine how far this water has come to spill from that glass! Actually, I don’t have to imagine it. I know it’s come 545 feet to the surface, and then a short run to the hydrant. But let me wax appreciative of the long years this water has lain in an aquifer beneath us. I do realize these actual drops are part of a cycle of flow and replenishment, but as a unitary thing, water underground is a long-term asset. And though it may flow copiously when we open the pipe, it deserves our respect and our special care now that we have brought it to the surface.

On with the ritual of the first taste: assess its appearance.

Looks good. Clarity is a relief.

Take a sniff…

No nose. That’s good.

Down the hatch. This is not wine, so no sipping. It takes a great good glug to know what you’re about.

And the verdict is…

Yes!

Yes, it is good. It’s interesting to set it against the water from our old well which, though it comes grudgingly from its vein down below, is water we like very much. If there were more of it, we’d have been happy to leave well enough in the well. This water is, how shall I say? It has a softer feel. Neither has much of any mineral flavor, no chemical flavor (are we not relieved?), no breath of taste that returns across your tongue when you breathe over it. All good. But they are different. It would be worse than describing the subtleties of a market wine to try to put labels on the differences. But the drillers were right, it’s good water. Sweet day!