Barnheart Read online

  I could visualize Jazz shaking his head at those sheep-dogs. Like an old Baptist preacher watching wayward youths rob a liquor store, he would surely be despondent seeing his own kind having fallen so far from the faith. Siberian huskies keep the Gospel of Wolf alive in every fiber of their being. I could just imagine myself on the trial field with my Siberians, yelling “Away to me, Jazz! Come by, Annie!” and the crowd would see the fastest sprint clocked in sheepdog-trial history as my sled dogs ran toward the flock. They would be in awe at the grace and beauty of my dogs as they loped with the bliss and agility of Russian ballerinas rolling on Ecstasy. And then they’d scream in horror as Jazz and Annie ran down and began eating the ovine contestants.

  Sigh.

  So the dogs were at home. I felt as though I was cheating on them, and all I was doing was window shopping. I wanted to be a shepherd and I was living with wolves. It was a complicated situation.

  There’s a reason I’ve chosen a wolf with antlers to represent Cold Antler Farm. It’s because he’s the symbol of how I feel about my passions — the mix of opposites, the chaos of contradiction, the need for balance when you love things that are so different from each other. And the possibility of seeing a wolf with antlers in the wild felt as unbelievable as the possibility of my becoming a shepherdess with a trial dog.

  While all this was churning in my head, I bought a shepherd’s whistle at the merchandise stand. A small souvenir to some, but to this girl it was the crucial key to a life I knew I wanted but had no idea how to attain. At the moment it seemed like all the start I needed. Maybe someday a wolf with antlers really would trot by the farm. I’d just have to wait and see.

  Coming home to the cabin after a whole weekend of sheepdogs was jarring. I’d been given a taste of a life I felt an intense connection with, but I was still limited by my current circumstances. Leaving the trial grounds felt like breaking up with someone I knew I could love.

  My mind was made up. I was going to be a shepherd. I knew this with the same certainty a kid playing in the summer sunshine has that school will start again in September — it was what systematically happens next.

  Somehow I was going to become a shepherd, and it was going to happen right here. I didn’t want to put it away in my mind and wait for some perfect moment or some perfect home. I don’t see the point in waiting for things to happen to you or hoping the perfect circumstances arrive. I wouldn’t jump into the world of livestock without the proper research or intentions, but I wasn’t going to wait for the stars to align either. My backyard might be small and scrappy, but it could grow wool.

  The first step: find sheep, then ask for permission to raise them. The second step: build them a proper shed and pen. I have this theory that if you are constantly thinking about something, it finds a way to wiggle into your life. Kind of the same way that if you start thinking about an old college friend long enough, someone else brings him up in conversation or you get an e-mail from him, as though he heard the dog whistle of the universe.

  After a month of driving around New England to visit herding workshops, see beginner trials, and watch private lessons, I was starting to obsess a little. My mind was woolly, and I spent my spare time learning whatever I could. I joined the Northeast Border Collie Association (NEBCA), ordered DVDs from its library, and watched them on the futon in the cabin after long days in the garden. My life was becoming about three things: the office, the farm (such as it was), and becoming a shepherd. Eventually, sheep found their way to me.

  One day during our fiddling hour, my friend Shellie brought up the idea of a barter — I would get a few of her sheep in exchange for giving her lessons. My heart pounded. I told her I absolutely wanted them but I needed to get permission from my landlady first and set up a shed and pen for them. That same night I asked for permission and got the good word: yes.

  Within a few weeks of catching ovine fever, I was getting the green light on a trio of my own. I was going to become a shepherd.

  The backyard farm I was creating was starting to look less like a backyard and more like a farm. The chicken hutch now housed adult chickens, my pair of gray geese, a few ducks, and a fat turkey. I had installed a hive of bees and built a compost pile behind the rabbit hutches. All this occupied an area roughly the size of a basketball court surrounded by a dead-end dirt road. The garden had exploded into more than a dozen raised beds of varying sizes. The neighbors had gotten used to, and even said they enjoyed, having the chickens wander down to their driveway or the geese float in their stream. My little farm was a free-range poultry wonderland.

  I was excited to be graduating to hoofstock. In my mind, the farmer I wanted to be lived and worked with larger animals than chickens and rabbits. She had a goat on a halter and a whole pile of sheep munching on grass around her in the pasture. She had a working horse that plowed and pulled a cart and maybe a few cows on the hill or a pig in her barn. I was grateful for the wool bunnies and egg layers I already had, but a girl’s got to dream big. And this part of the dream seemed to be coming true.

  THE HOOVES HAVE LANDED

  I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT’S LIKE to wake up the morning of an actual barn raising, but the morning a carload of friends were coming to the cabin to build my sheep shed felt special. It must have had the same air of purpose and community as a real barn raising. Early on a Saturday morning in late summer, a car pulled up to the farm with volunteers, tools, and extension cords. We had no plans, only a rough idea and some spare wood and roofing.

  I was glad to see them — relieved, actually. See, I’m not handy. All the tools I now possess I’ve picked up from the hardware store because friends who came to help at the farm asked for them so many times. Hand me a leash or a livestock halter, and you’ll see some competence. I can tell good hay from poor hay. I can set up a flock of chickens in a new coop; just don’t ask me to build the coop. My skills are sloppy. I live by Joel Salatin’s motto, “The pigs don’t care if the feeder isn’t straight.” Functionality always wins over form. So my “construction jobs” are cob jobs and rarely pretty. Usually they don’t last as long as they would if they were built by someone who understood water runoff and knew how to use a level. That said, I’m also not a complete idiot or a debutante when it comes to carpentry. I’m not scared of the hammer. I do try. But my nonmathematical brain makes everything crooked and wonky. So when something as important as a four-season shelter for my first trio of sheep was in the works, I wanted something solid. I asked for help.

  At the office I approached my friends Phil and James, who had become my closest confidants in the state. Knowing my level of skill with power tools (and lack of them), they offered to come help build the shed if I got all the pieces in one place. I could handle the staining, fences, and gate installation once the actual shelter was constructed.

  I was excited! All summer I had spent my weekends driving around New England, going to sheepdog clinics, workshops, and trials. I had been spending most of my nonwork time either in my garden or among shepherds, who had become agrarian superheroes to me. I was still shocked that being a shepherd was a viable career choice in the twenty-first century. These people found a way to make herding a part of their modern lives, worked with and among animals every day, and were bringing real products — food and clothing — into the world in a wholesome way.

  It was a side effect of all this time around meat farmers that I started doubting my vegetarianism, too. Sheepdog trials and herding clinics are places to share recipes and roast lambs on spits. It was a part of their culture and soon to be a part of mine. I made a mental note that if I ever went back to the world of meat eating, it would be lamb that would take me there. Sheep were responsible for the wild ride I was currently on and would be responsible for many more: border collies, buying land, knitting from my own wool. It seemed only proper that they’d take me to a place at the dinner table as well.

  And so, on that sunny morning, the three of us and my neighbor Casey (who supplied most of the tools and all
the lumber, which were floorboards he’d rescued from an old Arlington sawmill), set up our sawhorses, plugged in our extension cords, and started measuring out boards and planks. Hearing the ruckus, my neighbor Roy sauntered over in his signature sweatpants and T-shirt. He saw all the tools and lumber and asked me what I was planning on building, because he didn’t want something unseemly ruining his view. I actually laughed out loud at this, thinking he was joking. He looked serious as a health inspector who’s just found rat droppings, so I changed my tone. I mumbled something about it being tasteful, and that I would be getting three sheep, and he walked away looking fairly upset.

  It never occurred to me that people in an agricultural/woodland community like Sandgate would get hung up on the aesthetics of an outbuilding in a neighbor’s backyard. Actually, I was shocked at the idea that someone would be more concerned about the physical appearance of the building than its purpose. I would be much more concerned about “why” the kid next door was putting up fencing and a small barn than about how it looks. This assumption was, of course, utterly naive. When he was out of sight, Casey (who was holding a circular saw and talking loudly over it) told me that Roy was from New York City, that what he saw from his back deck was of grand importance, and that I should expect this from any flatlanders coming into the country. I scoffed. I guess country living was okay with them as long as it had curb appeal.

  With all the distractions and spectators behind us, we got to work. I was given the task of nailing the plywood wall to its bracing posts, and did my level best to nail it straight. It was still a tad crooked. (My day job is safe.) James shook his head while he marked the planks with a pencil for cutting. Phil was busy digging holes to bury the cinder blocks at varied depths, so that the building could be level on the uneven ground. Casey set up the sawhorse and ran power from the chicken coop’s humble night-light. Soon conversation dwindled to work talk and simple requests. Hand me that. Cut here. Are there any more screws? How long is that piece of plywood? We fell into the rhythm of the work, and I did my best not to get in the way. I tried to stay mindful that these people were giving up their time and resources to help make this happen, and I was truly grateful, but I lost my serenity the third time I hammered my thumb into the plywood.

  Realizing that nailing-only jobs were few and far between — most of the work now lay in setting planks on the frames, using a circular saw, and measuring things properly — I went inside to make everyone lunch. I had a warm loaf of bread from earlier that morning, sun-ripened tomatoes from the garden, and some local cheese. Making do with what I had in the kitchen, I offered everyone a cast-iron-skillet panini and some lemonade.

  While we all leaned against Casey’s yard tractor and surveyed what we were about to complete, I took in the scene. With four sweaty people, an old sawmill, and some cordless drills, we had built a shed large enough to hold three sheep comfortably. It had three solid walls with a ventilated, slanted roof and was raised up on cinder blocks (off the wet ground). Its front side was only half open, meaning the beasts would have near-total protection when the winds howled or heavy snow fell. It still needed a fence, a gate, and some staining, but those would come soon enough. I sipped my lemonade and thanked everyone. It had taken only three hours to come this far. I beamed.

  Thirty-six hours after the first power tools were plugged in, the pen was complete. We built the majority of the simple structure that morning. The next day I stained it, pounded fence posts, put up fencing, installed the gate, and built a hay feeder. The final touch was a real metal roof, a gift from James’s father, who had bought too much for a home project and had a piece exactly the right size for the shed. James came over with Phil to put the final screws in the roofing, and it was done. Right there in my backyard were a tiny barn, fence, gate, and water and grain bins. No sheep graced it just yet, but they would soon. Everything seemed too pristine to be real. The gentle green moss. The slightly turning leaves of the sugar maple that hovered over the new roof. The straight and perfect fences. The crystal-clean water in the black-plastic trough. It was poetry.

  By the time the job was completed, my eyes were welling up. I’m not normally one to cry at wooden structures, but this was an ark. There was no way I could’ve done this without these people. Like so many things in the self-sufficient life, the more deeply you get involved, the less self-sufficient you become. I needed people more than ever before. Learning to build a sheep house took help. And not just help with the construction, either; it took a willing landlord, gifts from neighbors, a delivery from the fencing company, trips to buy T-posts and screws — all of it took a small army to give three woollies a nightcap and a hotel. Four brave souls spent the weekend at my homestead making it happen. With their generosity, sweat, and gifts of wood and metal, my sheep would have a home. My training-wheel farm was causing community to happen.

  The night before I was to pick up my sheep, I took the two red halters I’d bought and hung them over the fence. I stepped up onto the swinging metal gate — a real farm gate, like the one my friend Diana had on her ranch in Idaho — and leaned my body over the top rail. The shed still smelled like the near-black stain I had coated it with. The grass inside the pen was soft, inviting. The water trough was filled, and a mineral lick was waiting. All this shepherd needed to do now was get those three fine animals into this pen. This was something of a logistical complication, as I didn’t have a truck or even a trailer. But I had a plastic tarp and a Subaru. Farmers had started with far less.

  I folded down the backseats of my Forester and spread the tarp over them. The cargo area was roughly the same size as a truck bed but painfully shorter. I’d read about people transporting sheep in cars before, but usually they were lambs in dog crates. I, on the other hand, was on my way to put four hundred and fifty pounds of ovine goodness in the back hatch of my station wagon.

  I had traded three adult sheep for fiddle lessons: ten lessons each. They had been part of a hobby flock, and with winter coming the owners, Shellie and Allen, wanted to save on hay costs. They were thrilled to make the barter and I was even more thrilled to accept it. I’d first met my new flock the weekend before at a picnic. We were already on a first-name basis. The three sheep were Maude, Sal, and Marvin. Maude was the sole purebred, a Border Leicester ewe with an ear tag and papers. The others were wethers (castrated males) and were a hardy mixed breed — Border Leicester crossed with Romney. Both breeds are renowned for their wool, coveted by hand spinners. As someone eager to get her hands on a spinning wheel, I thought this trade was looking better and better.

  When the car was loaded with its tarp, halters, and a small stepladder (which I’d rigged as a gate between the cockpit and the hatch), I pulled down my hat over my ears and hopped into the car. I was driving over into Hebron, New York, a small farm town a few back roads from Sandgate. I was so excited, I can barely remember anything about the trip there. This was a culmination of years of hope and research and a summer of rain-soaked sheepdog trials. I was miles and minutes from becoming a shepherd.

  I do remember pulling into Shellie and Allen’s farm. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and their four-year-old daughter, Lucinda, all curly hair and tan skin, was standing barefoot on a rocky outcrop above their driveway. She laughed and waved to me as I pulled up to the house. Shellie came out in her muck boots and pointed to where I should park. As I backed my hatch toward the sheep-pen gate, I felt my hands shaking a little. This was it, Jenna. This was it.

  We used an old dog leash and the halters I had brought to pull the sheep into the back of the car. I thought it would be more difficult than it was. We discovered that sheep like moving forward, and if the two front feet were set up in the back of the station wagon, they would accept being lifted in the rest of the way with little fuss. All of the sheep complained a little, but within moments we had the trio baaing in the backseat.

  We all agreed that the short ride (only twenty minutes, if that) would calm them. Originally, the idea was for me to pick them up a
nd take them home one at a time, but this seemed to work fine. Sheep are simple creatures and generally roll with it, as long as they’re surrounded by familiar creatures. They stood, stomped, and then pooped copious amounts before finally lying down on the plastic tarp.

  We closed the hatch door and shook hands, and Lucinda peered in the window to say good-bye to Marvin, her favorite of the group. I thought this would be heartbreaking for her, but she was all smiles and waves. She knew she’d see them at her next fiddle lesson. I thanked the family for the billionth time and turned the station wagon out of their driveway toward home.

  As I drove, three big, woolly sheep faces loomed in the rearview mirror, their red halters contrasting with their white fleece. I caught an eye and winked. The sheep stared back at me, uninterested in my flirtation. I had no idea who was who but I was beginning to learn some visual cues. I knew Maude had the bald head and no spots. (She was also the only one with an ear tag.) Marvin had a cut left ear and a spot on his front leg, almost like the brown knee pad a gardener would wear. Sal had a big mop of curly hair on his head and lacked tags and spots.

  Every now and then, they rattled into a bleat fest as I turned a corner or rolled down a window. “Relax, kids,” I’d semi-whisper to them as Sam Beam played on the stereo. “You’re going to a great place. And although I’m going to steal your outfits in the spring, you’ll eat well. And I built you a hell of an apartment.” They still just stared. I guess we’d work on our communication skills later.