Snow arrives, the mountain vanishes.

Storm heading our way.

Another backdated post today. The first part of Friday evening flew by preparing for the winter storm predicted to start Saturday. Propane for the grill, gas for generators, extra feed down to the barn, top off the pantry; all the usual things one does when you are at the end of the power lines and bad weather is on the way. We usually get by without problems, but there have been occasions . . .

After the most urgent chores were done, Susan and I let the boys hide out at the in-laws before the expected day of shovelling and sheep chores. We took advantage to run up to Winchester for a late dinner out at Passage to India before we get snowed in for the weekend. Tomorrow, snow pictures.

A little dinner.

Settling down for the evening.

Yes, they do grow their own sweaters, but no, not quite like this. She was getting chilled in the sub-zero weather, but we didn't want to take her from her mother. Then Susan dug out an old dog sweater. . . I had my doubts, but what can I say? It worked.

More of the barn at evening bed check.

During lambing time we go down and check for new arrivals before heading off to bed. Here is part of the flock wondering what the disturbance is at 11:00 p.m..

Mother and son.

Some of our sheep are a little more colorful than others. Here is a brand new Harlequin lamb.

We are freezing here on our hillside. Oh, the house is warm enough, but outside wind chills are driving eight degree temperatures into the sub-zero range. If any of you are checking in from overseas, the pre-wind chill temperature is minus 13 degrees Celsius. I'm sticking with Fahrenheit. Eight degrees is cold enough. I have trouble wrapping my mind around minus 13 even on the Celsius scale. The sheep are packed into the barn out of the wind, but the temperature still drops enough to put an inch of ice on the water buckets by morning. With one or two lambs a day coming now we cross our fingers and hope they make it through the weather. Tomorrow, snow.

Gentlemen at breakfast

This is the view from home this morning. Last night clouds moved in and left snow swirling around the house at midnight.

SNOWY MOUNTAINS

A sudden snowfall comes in darkness,
black clouds hang, heavy and somber.
The mountains also can get grey hair:
don't be surprised that their sides are turning white!

Tsung Ch'en (trans. Jonathan Chaves)

Lambs and Liturgy

I missed church today, not an uncommon occurrence during lambing season. One of yesterday's twins had wedged itself under its mother's water bucket and greeted the morning too chilled and hungry to stand on it's own. When I found him, the fifteen minute morning feeding turned into an hour of first aid, followed by some additional care for his sister back at the barn. By the time everyone was back in their place, it was too late to get to mine. Traveling to church means an hour and half drive to St. Mary's, my home parish. This can be tough with farm and family commitments. Lately I have been attending the Greek Orthodox church in Winchester, about forty miles closer to home, just down the road by rural driving standards. Either service required a head start I just didn't have today. The Greek church has been a new and interesting experience, and I find that being there is valuable for more reasons than proximity. Although I can read only a few words of Greek and speak none, it is enough to follow along and pray together with the rest of the flock. I say "flock" with no pun intended (or at least no pun of mine) as in fact in some services the gathered Orthodox worshipers are referred to as the Lord's "rational sheep." Well, this morning was spent with God's irrational sheep attending a gathering of a different sort of flock, which I hope was nonetheless acceptable to the Shepherd over us all.

I've cheated a bit by back dating this entry. The reason is that my usual end of the day blogging time was spent checking in at the sheep barn. We have been expecting more lambs any day. Since the first part of the week was beautiful, unseasonably warm and altogether pleasant, we knew the sheep would hold off and wait for the inevitable return of bad weather. Sheep have an instinct for this sort of thing. Sure enough, the end of the week brought a cold front behind an inch of rain. Temperatures today did not get out of the thirties, and tonight will drop to 21 degrees. The damp ground is freezing iron hard and every little breeze bites. Of course, three ewes chose today to go into labor.

An hour before sunset, we spotted a ewe in the field with brand new twins, dry, but still wobbly on their feet. While we were getting her and the twins settled into a pen, a second ewe already in the barn went into labor. We put her in the last open pen and I held her head while Susan pulled out a single enormous lamb. Just before 11:00 p.m. I walked down to check up on the new arrivals, and found another ewe standing in the middle of the barn over a new lamb still wet from birth. Part of the birth sack was glued over his head and mouth and it was struggling to breath. Once cleared away, he came around quickly; breathing well and starting to move. I rigged a temporary spot between two other lambing pens, which should hold them until morning. The project for tomorrow; rearrange the barn and set up more pens!

Mother and son

The view from home 1-13-05

Sometime last week I ran across a post on Hugh Hewitt's blog about a PR company offering passes to screenings of a new movie, In Good Company to bloggers in exchange for discussing the movie on their sites. O.K., I say to myself, someone is willing to cover the movie half of dinner-and-a-movie with the wife because I write the odd paragraph about scenery and sheep and would be willing to throw a movie review into the mix? That hit high enough on the whimsy scale to be worth an e-mail or two. I got a prompt response from Emily at Grace Hill Media with notice of the time and date for a showing in Bethesda, Maryland Tuesday night. Susan had early Wednesday morning appointments with schools in Maryland so was planning to spend the night in the city anyhow. So, on Tuesday I left work early, finished up the farm chores, checked that older and younger son were settled in with the in-laws and headed the blue pick-up into the city to meet up with Susan.

It was a great evening out on the town with my beloved, and as a bonus, the movie wasn't bad either. Now we are not talking Citizen Kane here, but it was a cut above what passes for a comedy these days. Most remarkably, it is a film for grown-ups. Sure there are young stars who get a fair amount of screen time, but the heart of the film is Dennis Quaid's character, a 51 year old ad sales manager whose life is turned upside down when a corporate takeover finds him demoted and playing second fiddle to a 26 year old. Quaid has aged wonderfully and hits the mark as a decent man holding on to his values as his world inverts around him. There are perhaps too many plot lines running at once here and everything doesn't always hold together. But nonetheless, when was the last time you saw a film with a little drama, a little farce, some sharp satire and a bit of romance that ultimately comes down on the side of hope and fidelity as the keys to a good life? Like any other modern artifact, pieces will fall off if you shake it too hard, but it's well worth a watch.

The very first post to this weblog, back in March of 2002 ended with a quote from Flannery O'Connor. Now I find that some kind soul is blogging on her behalf: If Flannery Had A Blog... which describes itself as a "blog of quotes about and by the great Catholic author Flannery O'Connor." Here is a sample:

I think that the Church is the only thing that is going to make the terrible world we are coming to endurable; the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.

Apropos of the ongoing discussion about the lack of popular support for contemporary poetry, this article, City Journal Autumn 2004 The Classics in the Slums by Jonathan Rose, is a revelation. Here is a key comparison between pre-war (WWII) literacy among blue collar folk in England versus contemporary Americans taken as a whole: Even more impressive is a 1940 survey of reading among pupils at nonacademic high schools, where education terminated at age 14. This sample represented something less than the working-class norm: the best students had already been skimmed off and sent to academic secondary schools on scholarship. Those who remained behind were asked which books they had read over the past month, excluding required texts. Even in this below-average group, 62 percent of boys and 84 percent of girls had read some poetry: their favorites included Kipling, Longfellow, Masefield, Blake, Browning, Tennyson, and Wordsworth. Sixty-seven percent of girls and 31 percent of boys had read plays, often something by Shakespeare. All told, these students averaged six or seven books per month. Compare that with the recent NEA study Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, which found that in 2002, 43.4 percent of American adults had not read any books at all, other than those required for work or school. Only 12.1 percent had read any poetry, and only 3.6 percent any plays.

Is the problem in our poets or in ourselves?

(via Gideon Strauss and Arts and Letters Daily )