One barn swallow

5/15

"One barn swallow"

I like to watch

One barn swallow

And follow her flight:

A dip, a dive, a small loop, a large loop, up over the roof, down to skim the ground, 

Around and around.

A friend chases her, she chases a friend.

She flies to the entrance of the barn and balks each time.

Is she curious why I lean on a gate in her home?

Is she angry that I'm near her nest?

There are bugs to catch ,

She can't answer or rest.

As long as it's light,

She is a fluttering, chattering, swerving, chirping 

Bundle of energy

Perpetually 

On the hunt.

Wood Church

2/27/14

In the church of the woods,
the sky,
cloaked in vestements
of clouds and stars, sunsets and moonrises,
calls the congregation to worship.

The wind sings out a hymn
and the robins and the wrens, the finches and the hens,
float melody
above
the frogs and the crickets holding down the time.

The soil carries the cross
of ash,
of beech,
of birch, of cedar, of oak
and rests beside the altar on the bank of the brook
where the sacraments of the seasons are blessed by the scent
of holly blossom and honey suckle,
of fallen leaf and pine needle.

Offerings made on this altar flow through the river out to the sea,
resurrected to fall again and again and again.

"The Arctic Vortex"

1/24

The war on mice began when the Arctic air came
down from Canada
under the gap, under the door
into the basement
through the hole in the window.

The pipes froze.
The mud froze.
The ground froze.
The hot-water broke.
The dishwasher leaked.

The mice headed for the only warm place they knew:
under the woodstove.

The young, the old, they came
when the arctic air came
and made a new home,
under the woodstove
where it was warm and food was close.

They started to die.
The young, the old
eight, nine in a day.

On the counter, in the bathroom,
behind the washing machine,
twelve, fifteen in a day.

The dogs caught a mouse.
The dogs caught mice and took them to their kennels
so they could play later,
so they could smell later.

The house was cold.
The house smelled like death.
The faucets dripped all day.

The dogs snored and panted and licked by the woodstove,
the only warm place they knew,
above the new home
of what was left of family mouse
who moved when the arctic air came
down from Canada
under the gap under the door
into the basement
through the broken window.

"What I see from the steps at the end of the day"

1/22

White smoke against a grey sky
above slate tiles
above white clapboards

White snow above dead grass
Red cedar posts waiting to be planted

White sheep full of brown burs
eat faded green hay

A grey barn

Brown and white fields
fade into the black silhoutte of treeline
that fades into the grey mountains
below grey clouds
behind which the sun dies a dull orange death

1/21

1/21

Like embers in a fire
the yellow and red leaves of fall
burn early and bright.

The poplar and the maple
live short and vibrant lives.

The brown leaves of fall,
the oak and the beach,
linger and cling
to their branches
until they fall in the green rebirth of spring
to feed their roots,
to feed the future.

"First Night of Winter"

12/21

The logs break into embers and ash
Whiskey is passed
Stories told about weddings
Laughs.
The mulled wine is gone and the fire stick finds new hands
Coals break and spread
Whiskey is passed
The conversation turns serious
There is no humane killing
No animal wants to die
Ever.
Life Lives.
The last beer is poured
Rats girdled the trees
(Humans didn't cut them down)
Whiskey is passed
Quality of life slowly slipped
Whiskey is passed
Logs are no more, only embers and ash
Nothing left but
                              laugh

Whiskey is passed

"Warm Meal"

Leaves fall on the frosted field.
A gentle rain of soil food.
The herd waits to move
to the next field where the sun warms the fescue.
A hot meal on a cold November morning.

8/11

8/11

Cicadas pulse the pace of a lazy summer day.
Maple leaves dance and butterflies flutter.

In the meadow across the road a mockingbird struts atop a fenceboard.

When a car careens by the moment is jolted and I'm smacked in the face by the chores
 Left before another week.

Shirtless Sundays

7/21

I sat shirtless on Sunday in the kitchen peeling peaches.

I sliced them up for the cold future and sucked the pits.

A particularly sweet white peach clarified my thoughts with awareness
and I saw the soil and the roots,
the rain and the sun,
the pollen and the bee,
the cold and the heat,
the fuel and the oil,
the movement and the sweat,
the time,
that brought this miracle to my lips,
and I wondered at all the miracles that I take for granted
and I looked at my wife and I smiled.

I was glad she was home.
I'd taken for granted how much she does.


7/28

I lean on the hood, shirtless on Sunday, and slowly drink my Pabst.

The warmth of the engine feels strangely good in this July dusk.

Milk crates and buckets and trash from the week liter the yard,
but beyond the barn,
out where Nemo barks,
there is Majesty.

The mountains are blue and the amber is dead grass,
but the skies are spacious and pink and gray and purple
and full of wispy and streaked, and thick and deep clouds,
and the plains are fruitful with cattle and sheep and pigs and chickens.

America, oh Virginia, God shed his grace on you.

Silo Piglets and Houndsheep

     The piglets poured in over the past two weeks like the rains this spring.  I wasn't surprised when Tigger farrowed first.  I'd seen Rorsarch gracefully mounting her in February and wrote in my trusty notebook to expect piglets on May 20th.

      I was wrong on both accounts.  First, pig sex is not graceful.  Pigs are tubes of muscle and fat, so the boar faces a challenge in mounting the sow.  His conquests aren't pretty.  Second, I was a month off with my guess at farrowing dates.  I suppose Rorsarch is a firm believer in "if at first you don't succeed..."

      Annie was second to farrow and had a large litter of 10 piglets.  Both sows gave birth in a shed inside the farrowing paddock and their piglets quickly took to frolicking and nursing together.  Last fall, we saw the same behavior when Tigger and Annie's piglets freely nursed each mom. Strength in numbers?  Each sow seemed grateful when the piglet hordes descended on the other mother and gave her a chance to rest.

    The piglet horde played and nursed happily for days.  Swayzie (not Patrick, but an apple variety, because Old Spots were orchard pigs in England) gave birth to a litter of eight piglets and all seemed well in the baby paddock.

    When the unnamed gilt farrowed things took a turn for the bizzare.  Said unnamed gilt got knocked up in her teenage years (pig years that is), so I wanted to keep a close eye on her.  Sometime the middle of this past week--which all blurred into a furious stream of chores, hauling feed, chores, catching animals, chores, unloading feed, chores, hauling animals... you get the point--I noticed that the unnamed gilt was missing, not to mention that 3 of Tigger's 7 piglets.

     I discovered the whereabouts of the teen pig mother's brood quickly.  After walking the baby paddock and checking each barn, I put on my pig thinking cap.  That silo looks like a safe place.  Nice and secluded, maybe not the ideal farrowing spot as it's open to the rains and there's no way an unassisted piglet could exit this nest until a couple months of age, but my pig mind lead me to the silo and the piglets. I fretted over the sow and how she'd get water and feed, and how the piglets looked cold (in June), so I first made a set of stone stairs, which the sow toppled, and then made a wooden ramp and nailed it to the silo's entrance.  When the sow demolished my second means of egress and I observed her greedily guzzling feed, I decided she had things under control and to leave her and her babies alone.

    The wherabouts of Tigger's missing piglets remained a mystery to me until yesterday evening.  I was pouring the pig's feed into their troughs and smelled either a skunk or a fox.  The hair on Annie and Tigger's backs shot up and they barked and ran around looking for the intruder. I guess Fantastic Mr. Fox is less afraid of a sow then me, because when I snatch a piglet, when the sow barks at me with back hair erect, I drop the piglet and proceed to wash my soiled pants (that second part might not be true).

    That's the new news from around the farm. But, before I retire to my nightly sheep check, I have some ewe news.  I've started shearing other people's flocks this spring and it's taken me from Pulaski to Gloucester.  I stopped by a "farm" in Earlysville on my way to pick up whole lambs from the butcher.  I drove west through Charlottesville through suburbs mixed into hayfields to get to my client's home. I pulled into the driveway of a beautiful suburban home chock full of gardens.  I met my client and she walked me through the gate into her backyard.  The yard looked like a standard suburban backyard until I noticed the hoop house full of chickens and ducks and all the vegetable beds. All cool and slightly surprising, but nothing compared to what happened next.

     I looked around the yard to find a good level spot where I could set my shears and run a drop cord.  I put my equipment down under the shade of a black walnut and a ewe and a wether ran up to me. Friendly sheep I thought. Pets, should be used to handling. Easy in and out job.  I decided that the spot I'd picked wasn't ideal, so I took my shearing equipment to the entrance of the yard and set up on the walkway by the fence.  The wether and his girl followed me over. Cake. A second ewe walked out from under the deck to check out the action. "That's her favorite spot," said my client.  I stifled a laugh.  I've heard of houndogs that sleep under porches but never sheep.

     When the flock came over to inspect my shearing tools, I found out that this was a pack of hound sheep.  Something they smelled in my shearing kit caused them all to bolt under the deck.  Apparently, they'd had a traumatic experience being sheared last year.  Nothing was traumatic about this year's shearing, only comedy.  I spent more time trying to keep the hound sheep from their "favorite spot" then I did shearing them.  When I finished, I left the flock  grazing happily, only steps away from their beloved deck.

"A stolen moment"

"A stolen moment"

I walked into the grass sea,
into the cool breeze.

Above me, the clouds painted a story.
The grey and blue to the east are violent colors
(an American knows).
White and pink streaked peace above.
The west looked unsettled.
Maybe a new tale will rumble tonight?

Below me, a symphony of life.
Under the sea
of grass,
frogs rejoiced
and crickets lent their voice
in praise of the cooling rain.

Above the pokeweed trees,
barn swallows chased dinner.

Thunder shot across my ears
and the horses flashed across my eyes
away,
from the collie
who loved to work
which I slipped back to
when my wife called me back to life.

"Rainy afternoon in the barn"

                                                         "Milking 2/26"

Bailyn greets me with a moo.

She is angry about her overnight separation from Boaz

(her steer calf growing bigger by the minute)

even though this has been the pattern for weeks.

.

A little alfalfa hay and she quiets down into our routine.

I wash her teats

and work ointment onto them

and for a moment the barn smells of a pine forest.

Faint cherry smoke passes my awareness 

as milk begins to pulse into the pail.

Across the barn aisle, 

the chickens practice their innate archaelogy

Unearthing bugs, grubs, seeds

and the occasional piece of slate

(a clue into the barn's past, a tale I've heard from neighbors of a third story, a bell tower and a hurricane.)

Out in the yard, 

Sheep chew their cud.

Chew, chew, chew, chew, pause...

Wide eyed, their cheeks fill with regurgitated grass

as if they're pleasantly surprised.

After a while of zoning off into my thoughts and the rhythm of my hands,

the pail is full.

Inside the woodstove is warm,

the air is dry

and the dogs snore.

Red Sky

Out the door too early for a Sunday morning.
The ground is a crusty concoction of frozen wet snow.
The sun rays peek above the trees beyond the pasture

      (Beyond that misplaced home
      An island isolated in its suburbaness.)

And spread in a  red band across the horizon.

Red sky in the morning, shepherd take warning.

But the rain and snow have passed
Harmlessly westward to the sea. 
The wind blows cold, but the sun shines?
Would nature cry wolf falsely?

Safely indoors now illuminated in the night,
I know the sky does not lie.

One lamb is dead and one wide eyed by the wood stove.

Red sky in the morning, shepherd take warning.

The crosier and the mitre

2/12/2013

The pope said he's going to retire.
I guess he feels old or not up to the job.
Somedays I feel like the pope.

Like the mitre weighs heavy on my neck
and my shoulders ache from lugging around the crosier.

And somedays I don't think I know enough to decide what to do
to take care of those who depend on me.

But I'm not old (yet)
and I couldn't, won't, can't
do anything other than what I do.

So I look around me
and see the sunset sitting in my side-view mirror
and the sheep in the hollow grazing below the cows
up on the hill
where the altostratus clouds soak in the last of the sun's rays,
and I'm energized
and ready for the storms or sunshine that tomorrow might bring.

"Wathcing the Grass Grow"

      Disclaimer: If you're anywhere affected by "Nemo," you might not believe the following story.

      When I stepped out of the truck in my pair of non work, shoe-sandal hybrids the ground squished under my feet and the peeper chorus hit my ears. I could've skipped (with a bluebird on my shoulder--who in reality was sitting on the fence post watching things that bluebirds actually care about) through the old paddock into the new one where the cows currently chewed the cud, grazed, lazed and did cow things.
    
     Yesterday I'd strung the fence up hurriedly (admittedly as quickly as you can walking the perimeter of a 10 acre field three or four times wearing hip waders in the mud with a hand full of step in posts or weed-eating sleeping brambles or dead joe-pye and broomstraw) because I was rushing to meet Emily at the VABF (Virginia Association for Biological Farming) Conference. 

     We were excited to see Karl Hammer speak. He founded the Vermont Compost Company that produces compost for organic growers and raises a large flock of egg laying hens without any grain using food, tree and agricultural wastes from their community. Karl, the self appointed compost czar in the nation in the universe that he occasionally and fictionally inhabits, was as funny as he was inspiring. Fifteen or so years ago, he had around 60? hens and was making compost when he realized that the little bit of grain he still fed his chickens was a crutch for himself and not his hens, so he stopped feeding his hens grain.

    Inspiring. The potential... So if you've got hens, go find some five gallon buckets and food scraps, old hay, wood chips, leaves, manure and kick the grain. Exciting!  Like watching grass grow. One of my favorite compulsive past times.

    Every time I drive into Tuckahoe to move the cow herd, I stare at the old hay meadows (now pastures!) and ignore the road, which is fine on the lane at Tuckahoe where if you drive over 10 miles an hour your truck box or suspension will protest by giving out after repeated trips, but not on any type of highway or country road which I am very guilty of as Emily often shouts at me when we're driving somewhere, "Daniel! Are you okay?" She knows that I'm either ogling cows, ogling grass or falling asleep.

       In the past two or three weeks, I've really noticed that the fescue, clover and orchard grass seem to be growing. Even the first spot on the bottom ground (granted the James helps to heat that micro-climate) which the cattle were grazing less than two weeks ago is starting to regrow.

      There's hope in them blades! Soon the grasses, clovers, forbs, shrubs, veggies and saplings will be growing loudly. So next time you're bored, go watch the grass grow.

Another day of misadventures in hard-headedness

       I didn't see the gate swing open, but I felt it. On the ground, i gathered my thoughts. Then got up to make sure Bailyn went in the milk pen instead of the thirty ewes who exploded after her food. Once she was in the pen, I walked her around so that her udders were easy to get at. You'd think that after a year of this milking ritual, we'd understand each other. I guess we're both hardheaded.
     
      Bailyn is hardheaded because she can be. If she flat out doesn't want to let down milk or move, I can only wait her out. Not like she's got a busy schedule. Not like she outweights me by 600 lbs. Myself on the other hand, I'll blame genetics. My dad's hardheaded. Our discussions generally result in dad shouting at me so I walk out and then, the next time I talk to mom, she says that she hopes we can work it out, but the next time I talk to Dad, we laugh about something. A hard head like a glacier is slow to change (although maybe that's changing?).

      When I crossed the James headed north on 45 late on Friday morning, all I could think was, "no bleepity bleepin' way." Two days ago before Emily and I headed home from St. Stephen's market, we'd been talking to Robert about floods we'd remembered and big storms. We didn't expect much that night.

     Earlier that day, my Dad called to catch up and congratulated me on moving the cows to the bottom ground. Said he couldn't figure out a way to do it. Not really true. Before he moved to Tuckahoe full time, the caretaker, a man who I only know second hand through stories, used to graze his cattle on the lowgrounds. This was back in the day (you know, uphill both ways, barefoot in the snow walking to school) before weather.com and weather.gov. Apparently, his herd was on the bottom ground when a flood came up and washed them downstream. Some of the cattle ended up at the Country Club of VA. Tuckahoe tenderloin was on the menu that week.

      So Friday morning, I felt like I'd been caught with my pants down in front of class. I'd completely forgotten about Wednesday night's January thunderstorms. I raced to Tuckahoe fueled by fear. I crossed the tracks onto the lowgrounds and stepped over the electric fence into the herd. I walked south towards Tuckahoe creek and discovered that a 200 yard stretch of my temporarily permanent two strand electric fence was underwater. Not going to conduct much electricity underwater and caught up in flotsam and jetsam. I knew I had move the cows but I wasn't sure how far.

      I called up my brother in law. Even though he lives in North Carolina now, he's a voracious kayaker and learner. I asked him about the river level. He told me it was predicted to crest at 15.6, but looking at the graph, he thought it would peter out and not reach that peak. At that moment, the river was at 14.8. I could see that Tuckahoe creek was up over it's bank and headed into the field with my herd. Down by the railroad tracks, there was standing water, but nothing flowing yet. All good information, but I wasn't settled in a decision yet, so I called my dad.

      From the ski lodge in Utah he told me that 20 feet seemed to be the level when the all of the bottom ground flooded. He also said that if I moved the herd and got worried about the water level that I could just open their fence and let them wander over to Martin Neck which was the highest point on the low ground. Finally, he told me to see how much rain they got in the James River Basin. If they got 10 inches or more west of us, I needed to worry.

      Out in the field with an un-smart phone, I called Emily. After court and between the doctor's office and the post office, she looked on her phone (not while driving of course) and told me that I didn't need to worry. 

      My hard head has ignored Emily's advice before, to the tune of sheep trampling through fences, ewes prolapsing, resulting in grabbing them like a wheelbarrow and tipping them on their heads so that gravity would draw their insides back inside, wasting hours rigging an electric turkey scalder only to use it with a propane tank and many more incidents than I care to type at the moment or you'd care to read about, so I grabbed my step in posts and polywire and moved the cows out of their paddock into one where an eighth of the line wasn't under water and drove home.

      I got home, got some feed for Bailyn and headed out to get her up so I could milk her in the morning because if she stayed out with her calf, Boaz would gulp down all the milk. A few minutes later, that sheep powered gate swung into my head and I found out that maybe a hard head isn't all bad.

     

Recipe: Orange Braised Lamb Shanks

Oranges are always a big part of Christmas around here. Daniel's aunt and uncle live in Florida so fresh Florida citrus is always an expected and greatly appreciated Christmas gift.

Before Daniel wolfed down all of the oranges, I stole one for this recipe.  It was a big hit around here with scarcely a drop of sauce left for the house's mouses. 

I served the lamb shanks with freshly baked buttermilk biscuits with blackberry jam.

Orange Braised Lamb Shanks

• 4 lamb shanks (you can get away with 2 of you're feeding less)
• 2 tbs butter
• 1 large or 2 small onions-coarsely chopped
• 1/2 bottle of white wine (I always pick the bottle with the most amusing label)
• 1 1/2 cup water or lamb broth
• Juice and zest of one Orange
• 3 small cinnamon sticks
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• a dash each of nutmeg, cloves and allspice or a generous dash of your fav. pumpkin pie seasoning

   Pre-heat oven to 325. Sprinkle lamb shanks with salt and pepper. Heat butter in a large dutch oven on the stovetop.  Add chopped onion.  Just before onion is browned add the lamb shanks and brown on all sides.  Once the lamb is browned, add wine. Scrape any bits from the pan.  Add water, half of the orange juice and most of the zest.  Add cinnamon sticks and other spices.  Bring to a boil and stir.

 Transfer to the oven and cook, covered, for 2 hours.  The lamb should be tender and falling off the bone.  Remove the pot from the oven and put the lamb in a warm place.  Boil the sauce to reduce by half.  Add the remaining orange juice and zest.  Serve by pouring the sauce over the lamb shanks.  

That's the way that the world goes round

           Time is strange.  Lately it has moved so fast that I can't remember when I last posted on the farm blog.  Since then, we've butchered turkeys, set fence posts, hauled cattle and sheep to the butcher, held a sheep dog trial, witnessed the birth of another litter of piglets and a new bull calf by our milk cow Bailyn (my milking muscles are slowly getting back and shape).  My milking muscles are out of shape because one day in early October, I went out to milk Bailyn and the milk was bright yellow.  Colostrum.  I had a suspicion Bailyn was pregnant because of how she looked and I hadn't seen her in heat, but I didn't know for sure. Any rate, she was pregnant. I stopped milking her when I saw that colostrum so that she could save it all for her calf.  My hands feel like it was a year ago that I last milked Bailyn, but it's only been 2 months.
       On the opposite end of the time spectrum, butchering turkeys took an eternity.  We don't have processing equipment, so I made a scalder (seemed like a good idea, but the water heater element and thermostat in a barrel cut in half didn't work out as I planned, so we had to use propane) and we hand plucked the turkeys. 77 of them. Bad idea. I had some help from Emily, her brother and a friend, but there came a point on Monday evening when I still had about 35 turkeys left to butcher and my help had left or gone to bed.  So I didn't get to sleep.  I hadn't pulled an all-nighter in a while.  Forgot how that goes.  Time slows and slows.  Especially a task as monotonous as butchering turkeys. Cut, bleed-out, scald, pluck, cool down, gut, ice bath, repeat until our orders are met. Time crawled.  If there had been a clock, I would have fallen asleep watching the hands crawl by or the feathers pile up.  But that all seems like a year ago now.
      I guess it's like Navin said to Marie in the Jerk (especially the part about one day spilling into the next), "I know we've only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week and the second day seemed like five days and the third day seemed like a week again and the fourth day seemed like eight days and the fifth day you went to see your mother and that seemed just like a day and then you came back and later on the sixth day, in the evening, when we saw each other, that started seeming like two days, so in the evening it seemed like two days spilling over into the next day and that started seeming like four days, so at the end of the sixth day on into the seventh day, it seemed like a total of five days. And the sixth day seemed like a week and a half."
     Wise words from a wise man.  Any rate, all we can do is enjoy the unusual ride that is time, that is life.  Like tonight when we were frying chicken.  Somebody thought we could use our small cast iron pan.  When we put the chicken in, the oil spilled over.  Emily asked if she should worry if I thought the burner might catch on fire.  I said, "don't worry."  Ate those words.
      Fire leapt up around that cast iron pan.  I went to the cupboard looking for baking soda and Emily shouted, "flour!"  We doused the burner in flour, opened the kitchen door, cranked a fan on high, and laughed.  Then we ate a delicious fried chicken dinner.  Stove was old anyway.

 

Bird Herding

        

         I've learned a lot over the past few years about how to work livestock from Emily. She instinctually knows where to be and where the animals want to go. "Watch their heads!" "Step into them!" She shouts out commands a mile a minute and I try to keep up.

        Last week I put my herding skills to use in two unusual situations, both involving birds.

             

       Herding birds? Is that like herding cats? 

      

     Wednesday on my way to feed the pigs, I crested the hill above pig village and saw a group of 20 wild turkeys intermingling with our gang of 20 extreme free ranging turkeys who had recently decided that life was better down in the woods by the pigs. This was free ranging gone too far. Action was needed before this gang went feral.

     

     I strode back to the barn and grabbed our lunge whip. I knew the turkeys respected this whip. When they were but young poults, I'd let them out of their safe home in the barn into the yard for grazing during the day (back when the days were long, remember?) and herd them back home at dusk. 

    
The whip worked again last Wednesday. I walked back down the hill to the nearly wild gang of 20 and started lightly smacking the ground behind them. After 10 minutes of walking and whipping the pasture, I had the birds back in the barnyard with their domestic, unadventurous friends (the rest of our turkey flock).

      


My bird herding adventures weren't finished for the week...

      Emily and I were finishing up our coffee on Sunday morning when we heard the call of a Carolina Wren.  Her call sounded crisp and beautiful, so clear that I thought she might be in the house.  Turns out she was.

          We went upstairs, a dusty place where we rarely go, and our friend was frantically trying to find a way out. We opened a window and stood back.  Our friend flew around the room, even into the window above the opening, but not out. Desperate, she flew right at me and squeezed between  the door frame and me. At that point, Emily kicked into livestock working mode.

        
         We followed the bird through two rooms, into a hallway and herded her back into the room with the open window.  Once there, we gave her no way to go but out the window. 

      
     Emily always preaches that when working animals you have to make every way but the way you want an animal to go very difficult. I couldn't imagine that you could herd something as small as a wren, but as usual Emily was right and the wren found her freedom. We returned to breakfast and our Sunday.

Sunday afternoon

         Our new group of Cheviots was due for a health check and hoof trimming (standard sheep spa treatment) yesterday afternoon.  Normally, catching, checking eye color and hoof trimming is a sweaty, exhausting task, but Sunday was the dictionary definition of a fall day. I couldn't se a cloud from Cumberland to Amherst and the air was crisp and cool enough that we hardly broke a sweat. 

        

         

We also had lots of help from Case, our working Border Collie, and Sadie, our new barn kitten.                                                                                                                      

Case makes working sheep possible. Or at least sane. He gathers the flock and holds them in place so we can examine them.  

        

Sadie kept appearing from around the corner of the barn.  Fearless kitten that she is, she'd walk right up to the suspicious Cheviots who did not know what to make of this tiny black, furry thing. One of the ewes' eyes got wide and her ears perked up when Sadie approached her. I thought she was going to stomp at Sadie (a sheep's way of saying, "back off!").  Maybe Sadie has a future in herding?