Here is a picture from a few days ago during the snow. As you can see, sheep are very serious about eating.

Another backdated entry; our cable connection has been acting up causing posts to vanish into whatever quasi-metaphysical space there is that houses thoughts attached to electrons gone astray.

I am writing this after rummaging through dresser drawers in search of old glasses. I keep a spare at the office, but here at home I find only one relic from the early nineties, tortoise rimmed and goggle-sized. I wore them about two prescriptions and several turns of fashion ago. What, you may ask, happened to my gold-rimmed bifocals, appropriately styled for the new millennium? Sheep happened. Our barn, like Caesar's Gaul, is divided into three parts. One is our working area together with the four lambing pens. The second part opens into the paddock where the ewes with lambs stay. The third opens to the barnyard and larger pasture where the ewes still expecting come in for the evening feeding. This evening feeding was later than usual as Susan and I had met for dinner at the South Street Grill in town. (Nice place, classic diner food, cheap by big city standards.) So there I was after dark down in the barn. I had put out the feed for the ewes with lambs and let them in. They were in a bit of a rush, as they did not appreciate the delay in dinner. I was putting out grain on the other side of the barn when I noticed a lamb had gotten caught in the press and was upside down under a feed trough. I knelt down and reached through the gate panel dividing the barn, head pressed against the metal tubing as I stretched towards the lamb. Behind me was the gate to the barnyard, the gate chain stretched to the maximum as hungry ewes pressed against it. One ewe was convinced that, if only she could get my attention, food would be forthcoming. She put her head between the bars of the gate and lunged. In a classic illustration of the continuing effectiveness of Newtonian physics on a macro level, her head struck my head which in turn struck the gate in front of me. The vision in my right eye blurred. Disoriented, I started feeling for the incipient lump that signaled an oncoming concussion, and found instead that there was no longer a lens in the right eye of my glasses. Picture a man on his hands and knees in a darkened, dirt floor barn, right eye closed, peering through a left bifocal, trying to find a small oval of glass while sheep hooves are stamping around him. Not much luck there. I did get the lamb upright and out of the crush before walking back to house, squinting like Popeye as I picked my way up the dark hillside.

I have been reading in the poems and essays of Joseph Brodsky lately. One surprise, at least for me, was the discovery that Brodsky considered himself a disciple of W. H. Auden. While I cannot match Brodsky's devotion, nonetheless I am also an admirer of Auden's. Here are the opening lines of an early poem of his which have always moved me.

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

For the rest of the poem, go here.

The white line just below the ridge is the snowpack on Skyline Drive. The view from home, looking east a little before sundown.

Waiting for dinner.

Tuesday afternoon, just before sunset.

Snowfall at sunset.

We have had a few false alarms this season. Today appears to be the real thing. A scene from a snowy afternoon, looking toward Buck Mountain.

Another snowfall predicted for tonight. The track of the storm is still uncertain, but it looks to be a big one. I had the boys carry the bags for tomorrow's feedings down tonight and have the barn open for the sheep to take shelter. It looks like Monday will be a good day to stay close to home. Unfortunately, I have trials in traffic court up in Winchester at 9:00 a.m and 2:00 p.m.. If you are travelling between Front Royal and Winchester tomorrow, I'll be the guy in the dark suit with the white knuckles gripping the wheel of a gray farm truck.

Another shot from yesterday, before the snow melted away. More winter weather predicted for Sunday night. The lambing pens are empty for the first time in weeks. Perhaps the next wave will come with the snow.

Sheep barn, pasture, Skyline Drive and the last of the snow.

But it didn't stay long.

Snow last night.

Our internet connection has been having problems, so here is last night's post, backdated appropriately.

If you have been following this blog for a while, you know that we use llamas to guard our sheep from roaming dogs and coyotes. Most llamas are pleasant sorts, but there are exceptions to every rule. We have one of those exceptions, aptly named "Spitfire." He and I had an encounter during feeding time tonight, which resulted in the following conversation:

Susan: He spit in your face?
Me: Look at my glasses. Do you see the green flecks and slime?
Susan: Really, he spit right in your face?
Me: Yes, right in the face and trust me, the smell is simply enchanting.
Susan: You should take a bath.
Me: I don't want a bath. If I take a bath I will be sitting there in floating llama spit. I'm taking a shower.

Most photo software these days comes with a red-eye reduction feature. I'm still looking for the special edition for sheep with the "blue-eye" correction button.

Settling down in the shed for the night.

Blogger appears to have eaten yesterday evening's post, so I give to you again today, re-created and backdated. More lamb pictures this evening, if I can get anyone to stand still long enough!

Orthodox liturgy is both fixed and variable, rather like the stars. They are always in their appointed place, but that place moves according to time and season. Likewise, each season of the Church year has its special additions and variations to the fixed services of morning and evening prayer and Sunday liturgy. Beginning this past Sunday we turn to a volume called the Lenten Triodian for services until Holy Week at the end of the Fast. Archimandrite Ephrem has made available his translations of the services at his web page, Anastasis.

The nuns at Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery also offer translations from the Triodian at their site. I have always had a particular fondness for the sisters at Holy Myrrhbearers because they are fellow shepherds. If you go to their site, check out the page for Zoar farm and visit with Maude, their photogenic sheep. The sisters have an on-line store where they sell their own products plus a few other items. If you are so inclined, I'm sure they would be grateful if you stopped by and browsed. (By the way, they sell spun wool from their flock for you knitters out there.)

Western Lent began on February 9 (Ash Wednesday) this year. We Orthodox are just beginning our preparations for Lent, which does not properly begin until March 13. Until then, we gradually begin readying ourselves for a 40 day fast when the observant will abstain from all meat and dairy products and, on most days, wine and oil as well. The purpose of this is not an annual orgy of masochism but rather, part of our preparation for the great feast of Pascha (Easter, as we Americans would say it.) Lent is a season of preparation and repentance. Not bad things generally for their own sake, but now we examine ourselves and struggle with our sins in preparation for the great shout of triumph and deliverance that is the Paschal service.

Years ago, while still a protestant, I heard a Greek Orthodox priest on the radio speaking about Pascha. I don't remember his name, or even what the show was. What I do remember is the joy in his voice when he spoke. It was the kind of joy that shakes the soul. Not the enthusiasm of crowds, or even the religious emotion of charismatic worship (what the Brits so cruelly, but accurately refer to as "happy-clappy") that I had known. It was the kind of joy you get when the doctor says the tumor is gone, or the child will live. That is the real goal of Lent; to learn more deeply the truth about ourselves, to know that it is in many ways a painful truth, so that when the great news of the resurrection comes to us again, we hear it as salvation and deliverance, life out of death, light out of darkness.

Despite all appearances, these lambs are twins, one a little ram, the other a ewe. For a picture of what the gentleman on the left with the white face and black nose looked like as a newborn, click here.

Sundown Saturday evening.