Jury-Rigging in the Barn

What makes someone a true Vermonter? I think about this sometimes. I wonder about the Vermont dairy farmers. These hard workers are as much a part of the Vermont landscape as the barns and silos. Do they feel like true Vermonters when they're marking their territory with the manure spreader?

If it isn't your job that makes you a Vermonter, is it your wardrobe that does? Is a closet of Carhartt work clothes, serious mud boots, or handmade hemp clothing a tip-off that you're true-blue to the state? Are wild patterned wool socks, peeking out from Birkenstock sandals, a Vermont calling-card? Or the felted wool hat you purchased from the sheep farmer?

Perhaps it's the contents in your freezer that reveals your true status? Freezers filled with meat, wrapped in white paper, without a grocery store name. Packages that indicate one knew where this animal lived and grazed. A pantry lined with canned fruits and vegetables, all plucked from your garden. So is this the secret sign, being conscientious about where your food comes from?

Some folks say that if your grandparents were born here, then you can call yourself a true local. Others say that if you have relatives up in the Northeast Kingdom, who bury their money in the back yard, never trusting the bank, then you have serious roots in the state. Still others will look strictly to your accent as the true mark of a Vermonter.

While there are many theories as to who is a true Vermonter, I suspect I could qualify on a few levels. My grandparents were born and raised in this state. I still have relatives up yonder, a few that I suspect have the hidden money thing going on. I eat locally, including raising and slaughtering my own sheep. I have mud boots and help muck out the barn. Yet, in all this I have never actually felt like a true Vermonter. No, for that to occur something out of the ordinary would have to happen, and it did.

I pulled on my farm boots this particular morning and headed to the barn for a quick fill of the feeder. I walked in and discovered some of the sheep wandering freely in the inaccessible part of the barn. Normally they are confined to their area with two barriers: a metal cattle gate and a long hay feeder. The hay and feed supplies are stored in the back for obvious reasons. My job was to figure out how the lambs and smaller ewes had gotten back there.

Soon I saw it. A gaping hole in the metal fence. The bar which vertically supports the fence was dangling in pieces. The horizontal support bars completely bashed in, courtesy of an angry alpha ram. In the middle of these poles were 2 by 3 grid fencing which now had a sheep size hole through it. Hay bales strewn apart were now covered with sheep poop. The escapees stood munching away, enjoying the all-you-can-eat smorgasbord.

I looked at my fence; it was in sorry shape. I looked at my checkbook; it was in sorry shape. There was only one option: jury-rig it. I scrounged up some spare fencing along with some blood-red twine from unbound hay bales. I began to patch the hole. I tied and knotted the spare fence pieces in various places. The twine hung down like ribbons on a package. The grid fencing was bent in odd contortions. I yanked, pulled and continued to tie the metal pieces together to construct a barrier. It looked awful, like a twisted metal patchwork quilt with twist-ties. But the task was done; the hole was fixed. I had solved the problem like a true Vermonter, with scrap metal and no money.

I expect my pathetic looking fence will stand there until my angriest ram decides to completely beat it into a pile of rubble. Then I'll have no choice but to buy a new one. But as for this old one, I'll always remember it as the bent, battered gate that turned a girl in Vermont into a true Vermonter.

The Wind-Blown Hydrangea

I was entranced as I watched a dried hydrangea blow along the church pathway this blustery, winter morning. Light and billowy, it flitted down the path like a promise of spring, waiting impatiently to come. It bounced along, skidded on top of ice and frozen ground. It was like a cataclysmic clashing: of winter and spring, of hard and soft, of frozen ground and budding earth.

The wind-blown hydrangea hit the heavy, dark, church door, and bounced off; the wind whisking it off in another direction. I was sad for a moment as I thought of that hydrangea as God's Spirit that blows among us. Does it find our church doors shut, our teachings vacuous, our services unwelcoming? The church that morning was stark, and cold.

My mind's eye returned to the image of the hydrangea hitting the church door and blowing away. It is an accurate picture. We have shut the door on God in this state, and not politely either. Not like the old lady who declines the salesman at her door, bidding him another time perhaps. No, we have slammed the door, with clinched fists raised toward heaven. We've told God to go away and not to call.

I ponder this when a peace descends on me, reminding me that the Spirit does not need buildings of mortar and stone to call home; it needs the heart's soft flesh. We cannot stop the blowing of His Spirit, for when our churches close their doors; the birds will sing its liturgy. The novelist will write of redemption. The songwriter will fill a smoke-filled room with truth, and the Spirit, like a wind blown hydrangea, will still blow in and among all of them, bouncing off mortar yet piercing through flesh.

Stella

April blew in like a gust of north wind. The ground frozen solid, the air biting cold. But temperature and mother nature could not control when mother ewes would deliver. This early April brought us a cluster of new lambs. They snuggled with their moms for body heat unaware that another month would have been a more welcoming time to be born. One particular night was especially bitter. Strong winds blew through the vented barn gate and onto the new born lambs. They all fared well, except for one black lamb named Stella, who contracted pneumonia. Stella quickly lost strength, soon she was unable to stand or nurse.

But while life is happening in the barn, it is also happening in the house; sometimes the two being completely unaware of the other. While Stella was struggling to breathe, the kids were finishing lunch and stuffing books in their backpacks for afternoon tutoring. Soon we drove off unaware of how sad the remainder of the day would be.

We had barely gotten home when the phone rang. It was bad news. My neighbor and friend had passed away from her battle with cancer. She was a single mom of 7 kids. This was devastating news. I stood dumbfounded, trying to process the information. Meanwhile, my oldest was in hysterics outside by the chicken coop. One of the chickens was dead. Jackie was very upset and puzzled as to why I didn't seem to care. I stood there, weighing the death of a neighbor and our chicken. The chicken no longer mattered.

We fished the chicken out of the coop, and tossed it off in the woods. Jackie was then sent to the barn to fill up the hay-feeder. Soon she was running back towards the house in tears. "Come quick," she tells me. I followed her to the barn where we found Stella at death's door. Jackie picked her up, tears falling down her face. "You just can't let her die, you just can't!" she said. She stroked Stella's wool, holding onto her for dear life. "It's a day of death," she said. "First the chicken, then our neighbor, and now this lamb is dying. I can't take another death today, you have to save her!"

I prefer to let mother nature take her course, but it was heartbreaking to watch my oldest child learn the effects of living in a fallen world. She was witnessing the effects of the curse: death, suffering, disease, hardship, unfairness, and a whole lot more. She was learning that life is messy, it isn't just love, friends, mac and cheese, and Christmas gifts. She was realizing there is a whole other world outside the four walls of our house. This cold April wind blew its chilly breath on a defenseless newborn lamb and blew a new knowledge into a little girls heart.

Stella came into our house that night. She slept in a laundry basket in the front hall. We fed her with a bottle of milk-replacer. The next day I gave her a shot of vitamin E and an antibiotic. Eventually she was moved to the upstairs bathtub. We covered the tub floor with hay for her to lie on, as we continued our struggle to feed her. Stella did not want to drink from the bottle. We persistently plugged along and soon Stella was standing in the tub.

We followed the vet's instructions and in two weeks time we were able to move her back into the barn, where we hoped she'd be taken back by her mother. She wasn't. Her mother rejected her and I no longer wanted her in my house. My bathroom now smelled like the barn, and the smell was beginning to slowly slip out the bathroom and invade the rest of the house. The kids were now thoroughly grossed out by the manure covered hay and sheep urine in the tub, their expressions told me that I would be the one cleaning it, so I did. I cleaned it once with bleach, twice with bleach, and it still smelled like the barn. It was as if the pores in the woodwork had opened themselves up to drink in this new essence and then seal it in. I opened the windows to usher the odor out, but it stayed. Stella was in the barn, but her essence stayed in the house for weeks.

The fact that Stella's mother would not take her back left us with quite a chore. Every couple of hours we had to go to the barn, catch Stella's mother and restrain her while Stella latched on. The mother ewe grunted, butted, kicked, fighting this like it was a great violation against her, but we kept hoping she would re-accept Stella of her own free will. She wasn't interested. It wasn't long before this find mom, catch mom, restrain mom, let Stella drink (tank-up) routine became quite laborious for all of us. How happy we were when she was old enough to drink water and we could end this process.

This little lamb, named in Latin for a starry night was fully alive. She grew bigger and stronger. We had saved her but as the months wore on we would be sorry we had interfered with the laws of nature. Stella would turn out to be anything like the peaceful pleasure of a starry night. She would be an exasperating headache and a tough lesson for all of us.

Ajax's Horns

It is holy week, an appropriate time to think about sin. You might not think a sheep with attitude could teach me anything about the topic, but Ajax the ram did just that. Ajax and his horns taught me a valuable truth about hidden sin.

I remembered seeing some blood on Ajax's cheek prior to this day, but blood on a ram isn't usually alarming; it's typical. Ramology 101 says: rams fight, rams get bloody, rams still fight. That's life. His bloody face made me uncomfortable though, so I looked closer. Horns were the problem. Ajax's horns had grown too close to his cheek, leaving no room for air flow. The flesh underneath was breaking down. Ajax was in distress, bashing and rubbing the side of his face into the cattle gate to get relief.

I called the vet, described what I saw, and he confirmed my suspicion. "His horns need to be cut," he said. "You can use an OB wire if ya like."
A what wire? Steve and I cut Ajax's horns, are you kidding?
Being a good Vermonter, the vet had given me the you-can-do-this-at-home-for-free option. If it had been another ram, my husband and I might have considered this, but without a stun gun or knock-out pills, there was only one option...call the vet.

The vet came and Steve helped restrain Ajax while Kent did the cutting. Both of them struggled against Ajax's strength and dominant will. Finally, Ajax's horns fell to the ground. Now, everyone could see what Ajax had been so desperately trying to relieve. He had two gaping holes for cheeks, oozing with maggots. The breakdown of skin had led to an infestation of fleas, making way for the maggots. The vet sprayed Ajax's face. One spray for infection, one to kill the creepy-crawlies.

While Ajax hated the manhandling, he was instantly relieved when the sprays began to work. Now with proper air flow, his cheeks healed in just days. He could go back to fighting, he was officially itch free.

In the business of life, we could have overlooked this horn problem, but eventually it would have killed Ajax. The wound was hidden, but still present. His flesh had been slowly eaten away. Hidden sin in our lives isn't much different. It to gradually eats at us. Ajax's face needed air, hidden sin needs light. Bringing the offense into the open is the first step to healing. Light and air, two things we take for granted until the lack of them causes problems. Then we appreciate them for their glorious contributions.

Ajax is now back to the things that alpha rams do; he's just doing them with shorter horns. He continues to live and fight in the red barn, with the flaking-off paint and the half-dangling cattle gate. It may be rough around the edges but the place beams with life and lessons that burst through when we least expect.