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.

We are being swamped with new lambs. The boys found two new sets of twins yesterday at feeding time and now the pens are overflowing with five sets of twins and one single. Tomorrow we will have to kick out the older ones into the field with the rest of the new lambs. It may be time to rearrange the barn, as the number of expecting ewes is dropping below the number of ewes with lambs.

Another backdated post. Thursday afternoon I had an appointment down in Northern Virginia to do a home visit on a custody case where I have been appointed as guardian ad litem. As it happened, one of my favorite musicians, Bill Mallonee, was playing at Jammin Java in Vienna, Virginia, not too far from where I would be. Susan had already planned to spend the night in town to get a head start on some early morning appointments, so we decided to make an evening of it. Of course, an evening away from the farm usually results in a series of phone calls back home to make sure all the chores are covered. "Did you get water to the ewes in the pens? Any new lambs? Did your grandmother get the possum out of the cat feeder?" You know, just the usual exercise in rural crisis management. It was a nice to break out of the routine for a little bit, and the music was great.

Siblings

I was happy to see a comment below from Daniel Ballard, who is pioneering a project in urban agriculture as part of his ministry teaching in an inner-city New Orleans private school. Great work, and worthy of more attention. Now if we could only get him blogging again. . .

Here at home we have added five more lambs in the last two days. Two sets of twins and a single. (The first set is pictured below.)

Ansel Adams I'm not, but here is a digital black and white rendition of the view from home before evening chores. As always, you can click on the picture for a larger version.

Another set of twins this evening, Valentine's lambs just in time for Susan's birthday.

I quoted some lines by Joseph Brodsky in Thursday's post. I was first introduced to his work by some Russian friends, Mark and Elena Khaisman, who lived in Front Royal for a few years. As fellow expatriates, they resonated to his exploration of a life lived in exile. At the time, I was busily settling down and making a home on the farm, so Brodsky didn't speak much to me. A decade and a half further down the road, I find myself returning to his work as I discover that time works as well as distance to make exiles of us all. Here is a link to resources on Brodsky at Nobelprize.org.

Thanks to Erich for his comment on the Brodsky post below. It makes one think of the old canard about there being no more than "six degrees of separation" between any two otherwise unrelated people.

We took advantage of an unseasonably warm afternoon to catch up on a few chores. A new truckload of alfalfa hay stacked in the barn, a sizeable stack of old feed bags off to the dump, several months accumulation of debris around the barnyard straightened up. As usual, I forgot to bring gloves to handle to the stalky alfalfa bales and grimaced in the shower when the hot water hit the dozen or so tiny puncture wounds left from tossing bales on and off the truck. Looking down, I would have to say that I have halfway hands. They are not farmer's hands; not rough or hard enough. Nonetheless very few other lawyers have the array of cuts, scrapes and calluses that you find at the end of my coat sleeves. I am afraid I would never make it as a metrosexual. Something about working with livestock permanently alters your sense of what constitutes high fashion. After a while, you get to thinking that Carhart coveralls and insulated rubber boots look pretty darn snappy on a fine Winter's day.

We didn't get to feeding tonight until sunset. Walking up the hill afterward, there was a sliver of a moon over Buck Mountain. For some reason, it brought to mind a few lines from a song written by Susanna Clark and Carlene Routh I first heard on an EmmyLou Harris album some twenty-seven years ago:

It's a quarter moon in a ten cent town
Time for me to lay my heartaches down
Saturday night gonna make myself a name
Take a month of Sundays to try and explain

If you want love, loss and small town craziness all packed into four rhyming lines, you just can't beat country music.


Update: Blogger was acting up yesterday, so my apologies to anyone on an RSS feed who got multiple copies of this post. What was three is now one. (No theological point intended.)

I never tire of the changing patterns of sky and cloud that our spot between the mountains gives us. Here is a picture from last month and a few lines from the poet Joseph Brodsky that explain as well as any why I am a cloud watcher:

It's you who let
me with your nimbus
trust not in numbers
but in the complete

spurning of weights
and measures in favor
--once and forever--
of phantoms and grace.

From "Clouds" Collected Poems in English

Sunset on February 9 (Ash Wednesday on the Western Calendar)

Our friends the Hansons recently traveled to Colonial Williamsburg and came back with a gift for us; a pamphlet by written by Mr. John Wiley of Caroline County and originally published at the time of the Stamp Act. It is a lovely little thing, printed on a replica of an eighteenth century letterpress and bound in authentic style. Here is the opening line:

Though Sheep are the moft beneficial Creatures we can raife, they affording us both Food and Raiment, yet there is no dumb Creature taken fo little Notice of in Virginia as they . . .

Can't say things have changed much in the last two centuries. Here's to John Wiley, entrepreneur, agrarian and fellow struggler in the pasture of life.

This following was posted as a comment to one of my llama pictures. Since there is so little literature out there celebrating that noble creature, I thought I would move it up here as a post for all to share. Thanks to Jeff Beranek, who by the way, is also responsible for the concluding pun.

The Lama, by Ogden Nash

The one-l lama,
He's a priest.
The two-l llama,
He's a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
There isn't any
Three-l lllama.*

*The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer.

Update: Jeff informs me that Nash himself is the responsible punster, but I think we can still hold him liable for "re-gifting" it to the rest of us.

Hogback Mountain on Sunday afternoon. It was a pleasantly warm day, with the last of the snow around the barn melting away. Just a few hundred feet higher, proof that winter is still with us.

Waiting . . .

Older son with llamas. Seems like only yesterday they towered over him.

Suppertime!