Well, the sheep died. Poor thing. The knacker man came and took her away. We were never quite sure what happened to her. The rest of the pregnant ewes are doing well, though…

On Rich’s day off we put down lime in the lambing shed, spread fresh straw and put the ewes into the shed. They’re due to start lambing on Wednesday, and I’m very excited - it’s my first year here on the farm for lambing proper, and I have no idea what I’m getting myself into!

They lamb at night, that’s all I know….I had a business trip scheduled, which we cancelled, so that I could stay home for the lambing. Rich will need to be out in the lambing sheds during the night, so someone will need to be inside with the kids.

Pregnant ewes brought into the shed, ready for lambing

We had a funny weekend last weekend - a weekend of extremes! During the day on Saturday, Rich went out shooting with some of his mates, looking very dashing…

Rich, off for a day's shooting

He was meant to stay out all day, but I collared him and induced him to cut his shooting short, so that he could come with me to Cardiff. There we listened to Catrin Finch playing my beloved Goldberg Variations, by Bach. I came to this country with one CD in my suitcase, and it was the Goldbergs…I listen to it whenever I need reassurance that there actually is some order in the universe!

Catrin Finch is the astonishingly talented, amazingly brilliant, cheeeky young harpist that has set the world of classical music on its ear. After spending a year as the Royal Harpist, she decided to set the venerated Goldberg Variations for harp, a task that took her a full year. She then recorded the variations in the converted chapel in Cardiff where she has built a performing space/recording studio, and the resulting recording shot immediately to number one on the classical charts, where it’s been ever since. 

We were lucky enough to be sitting in the chapel when she performed the variations for the first time since the recording, and it was fantastic. Her version has replaced my old Glenn Gould CD, and we listen to it every night at dinner. Notes of music like motes of light…lucid and bell-like and coherent as the stars… 

We stayed in Cardiff that night, at an elegant country manor with blazing fireplaces…ate dinner in the posh restaurant - seemed a world away from dead sheep! We spent the next day roaming around St. Fagan’s.

Me, in a reconstructed store from the 50s...all original packages and boxes...amazing

St. Fagan’s is an open-air museum, a unique place that has re-homed many beautiful and historical old buildings taken apart and re-assembled, stone by numbered stone, on its grounds. To wander there for a day is like stepping into a time machine that takes you from the round houses of the early Celts up through the cottages of the Welsh miners.

Wonderful, fantasy weekend away from the farm. But good, too, to get back home…where the lambs are waiting to be born…

Reconstructed Iron-age Celtic round houses at St. Fagan's

Rich came in from work today with a worried frown. 

“I have to go and get this sheep out of the field,” he said. 

“Is it dead?” I asked, dreading the answer. There have been no (unintentional) deaths on the farm since I’ve arrived. 

The sheep are getting very close to lambing now, and Rich is watching them carefully. They’re in the field close to the house, and every day they get pelleted food and haylage. It’s a delicate balance, to keep them fed so that they have enough goodness to give the unborn lambs, but not overfeed them - if you do that, the lambs grow so big inside them that it creates problems with the birth.

Pregnant sheep getting their extra rations

“It was looking pretty still when I drove by,” he said.

“Shall I help you?”

“Yes, if you can.”

Could I handle a dead sheep? Probably, I reasoned to myself. Having wellies on my feet and my rubber gardening gloves on my hands has made me able to handle a whole lot of things that I never thought I’d be able to manage. I stuffed my feet into the wellies and checked to make sure the gloves were in my pocket. 

We went up to the top shed and Rich asked me to drive the quad bike while he carried the bucket of pellets out to the sheep. I’ve just recently gotten confident enough on the bike to drive it myself. I figured I needed to learn, during the snow, when the sheep needed feeding and I had to ask Ceris to do it, because I was too scared to manage the bike on my own.  

Now I hopped on fairly confidently, started it up and backed it out of the shed. As its name implies, the quad bike is like a motorcycle with four wheels. Four-wheel drive, very sturdy and stable, runs up, over and through anything you care to name. Farmers in Wales use it to get around their fields, and it can survive the muddiest, stickiest, wettest conditions.

We pootled along to the sheep field, and Rich poured the pelleted food into the feeders, getting mashed by the hungry sheep as he did. Then we headed up to the top of the field, where we could see a still, white shape lying on the ground. I gritted my teeth.

But it was still moving! The sheep lay flat - very unhappy, clearly - but not quite dead. Her legs were moving convulsively, as if she was trying to run. 

“What do we do with her?” 

“Let’s try to get her onto the quad, and into the shed,” Rich said. He thought she had milk fever - a calcium deficiency that strikes pregnant sheep. But she had already had an injection of calcium that morning, with no result. 

On a good day, an injection of calcium will produce a truly magical effect. The sheep that is lying on the ground, panting hard and looking nearly-dead, will simply get up and walk away. 

Today was not that day. 

Together, heaving and struggling, we managed to shift the pregnant sheep up onto the back of the quad. I drove slowly while Rich walked beside me, holding onto the sheep so that she wouldn’t slip off. 

I looked down at the lolling head and the filmed eyes, and thought that we would be lucky if she survived the trip. 

Once we got to the shed we unloaded her and laid her, as gently as possible, on the ground. Rich warmed up another syringe of the calcium and injected her for the second time.

Rich injecting the sheep with calcium

 We shifted her into the shed, made her comfortable on a load of straw and tried to get her to eat something. 

No luck. 

“We’ll just have to wait now,” said Rich. “She’s one of the good new ones that we bought in the spring, too. Thirty pounds, she cost. She’s had ten pounds worth of feed. It’ll cost ten pounds to pay the man to come and dispose of her. And she’s carrying a lamb. Maybe two.”

We went back inside and scoured the livestock books, and the internet, for something else we could do, something we might have missed. Nothing.

I thought of the old farm saying, “Where there’s livestock, there’s dead stock.” A stolid, unemotional pragmatism that allows farmers to shrug and absorb the losses that inevitably come.

They’re not pets, these animals.  They represent food, and cash, and the livelihood of the farm. Although…

Rich's pet sheep, Pet

 Rich does have one old ewe, whom he actually calls Pet, who comes up to him confidingly for a scratch behind the ears. She’s allowed to rear up and put her front legs on his chest, and give Benjamin a kiss. She was a bottle-reared lamb from long ago. And though Pet is getting old now, and doesn’t seem to be carrying a lamb this year, I know that Rich is fonder of her than he would ever admit.

Will the sick sheep live through the night? We’ll just have to wait and see what the morning brings…

We’ve just had some really exciting news - Elly has won the Bardic Chair! 

Our Elly wins Y Gadair, the Bardic Chair!

The original bards were from Iron Age poets-mystics who kept the lore and history of their tribes, held high status and fulfilled an important cultural role. They were closely akin to the Druids; it’s believed that when occupying Romans destroyed or drove the Druids underground, their knowledge and rites were passed on to the Bardic Order.

The bardic tradition today is kept alive through the Eisteddfod,  the Welsh festival of literature, music and performance that dates back at least to the 12th century.  The first Eisteddfod can be traced back to 1176, when Lord Rhy held a grand gathering, and invited poets and musicians from all over the country to his castle at Cardigan (not too far from where we live). A chair at the Lord’s table was awarded to the best poet and musician, which is why they “chair” the bard today.  

The Welsh love their music and poetry the way that Americans love football, and as soon as they’re old enough to walk and sing, children start training for the competitions. They compete first at the local level, and the winners go on to compete at higher and higher levels, culminating at the National Eisteddfod. 

The National Eisteddfod is like the American Superbowl - they erect the equivalent of a small town each year especially for the purpose of housing the massive competition, and contestants come from all over the country to sing, recite and play instruments. It’s televised, and everyone follows it closely…hotel rooms are sold out for miles around, and hordes of people descend on the site.

The competition that Elly won with her original poem is one step before the National, so she’ll go now to compete against other poets from all over the country! And it’s not the first time for her, either - she won one in primary school as well…

The ceremony of chairing the Bard is very old, and very beautiful. First, judges read the comments on the winning poem and the poem itself, although no one yet knows who the the author was. All the poems were submitted under bardic names - Elly’s was “Batman.” 

Then the judges said, “Will Batman, and Batman alone, stand up.”

There was a long moment of silence as everyone wondered who Batman was. Then Elly stood up, and everyone screamed! (Ceris smuggled in a camera, and took these photos - outsiders weren’t allowed.)

"Batman" stands up

Then the Bard is met and dressed in a ceremonial, floor-length cloak by chosen friends, who led her up to the stage, where the great wooden chair was waiting…

She was seated on the chair, and they did a traditional dance in her honor, sang songs for her, and recited poems in her honor! Imagine, we’ve got to try to get her to do dishes after all that…

Elly's friends put on her floor-length ceremonial cloak

A sword was held over her head, and pulled out of its sheath. Three times they pulled out the sword, and each time asked the question, “A oes heddwch?” (Is there peace?)

And when the crowd shouted back, “Heddwch!” (Peace!) they re-sheathed the sword. 

This comes, as closely as I can figure, from a gathering of druids in 1772 when the chief Druid, Iolo Morgannwg, called on the goddess of liberty to bring an end to slavery. (The Welsh were, of course, horribly oppressed by the English throughout their history.) Morgannwg laid a bare sword on the altar stones and the bards sheathed it.

The sword is sheathed over Elly's head

Then they gave her a trophy, shaped like the bardic chair, with the date engraved on it. She gets to keep the trophy forever, although she only retains her position as Bard for a year and a day, when the next Bard will be chosen. National Eistedfodd, here we come…