Month: May 2024

Not Rocket Science

by Deb Biechler

I had an introduction to the intensity of lambing season firsthand one evening in the spring of 2004. At that time,  I lived a mile, as the crow flies, from the Bear Creek Sheep Station.  

Bob called around 4:30 p.m. to ask if I could spend the night at the farm and help Penny.  There were some ewes having complications. He was on his way to Merrill, because his mom needed him and couldn’t be back until the next afternoon.

Of course I would help.  I quickly packed an overnight bag with working attire, figuring that I’d be setting up new pens, feeding, watering or fetching whatever Penny might need as she worked with the mothers in distress.

When I entered the barn she was, as I imagined, at the birthing end of a very large ewe.  With a nod of her head she indicated another ewe.  With a serious and directive voice Penny said, “You need to put on an OB-sleeve and pull out the dead lamb that’s stuck so the second one doesn’t die too.”

Surely not!  I protested, “Penny I’ve never done anything like that.  I don’t even know what to do!”

Literally elbow deep in her own situation, Penny replied, “It’s not rocket science! You can do it.  Insert your hand slowly and feel for the legs.  Make sure that the front two are facing forward and pull.  Then go back in to make sure that the second lamb is positioned correctly with forelegs and head first.”

I looked at the mother in distress and imagined the second lamb needing to be born soon.  Yes!  I can do this!  I donned the long sleeve, gingerly moving my right hand inside the ewe. I remembered the birth of my own daughter, when every check for dilation and position added to my discomfort.  I profusely whispered apologies to the ewe.  

Even though I couldn’t see inside, I closed my eyes to add to my ability to concentrate and get an “inwardly visual” feel for the legs and head that my gloved hand was searching for.

I was shocked when the ewe’s next contraction came, rendering my wrist and hand unmovable.  It was a painful minute or so for me and an excruciating one for her.  When it passed, I grabbed the front legs, pulling the deceased lamb to the straw below.  

Another reach in and a few more apologies later, I pulled the second lamb forward and then out into the dimly lit barn.  Tears of relief fell onto the already wet, and very much alive lamb.  

The need for my newly forged midwifery skill was over.  I removed the dead lamb and began to help in the ways that I imagined in the first place.  In between tasks I looked back, with gratitude,  at the lamb and mother I had assisted, understanding that turning my attitude from I can’t, to I can, helped to bring a beautiful life into this world.

Deb Biechler has been a friend now for almost twenty years and always gets our attention because she is ‘like’ real. No tricks and gimmicks, just a inquisitive soul wandering about the landscape stumbling into life’s surprises. She dragged us into five years of being temporary docents on the Rock Island lighthouse where we watched violent storms and tried to speak to the mighty ore boats. Just saying.

Seeking the Simple Life

      Having found myself getting a new lens for my right eye, and possibly not seeing the light of day, I have decided to submit another brief episode from the book I am trying to write called The Red Queen and the Feral Child Within.

     I’ve always attempted to explore the idea of pursuing a simple, almost feral, life away from the constantly striving of Lewis Carroll’s “Red Queen”. It seemed a better life to avoid accumulating more and more stuff of modern society. This is one of those struggles experienced in upstate New York.

Here I am working on my feral look—when I was much younger.

—————

     Still enamored by the quietness, and the intrigue of living close to the land that we had enjoyed in the Trinity Alps of California, we selected a farm house south and east of town. Here, we intended to make a stand for the winter and maybe our years while teaching in the local high school. The old farm house was still intact by our standards and did, without a doubt, offer the isolation and ambience of the rural setting of this northern area. It was a farm that had failed some years ago and like many, was being lightly used by neighbors or was doing the slow crawl back to the wild lands of the Iroquois. 

       I and the owners talked back then. Went over the situation as well as they knew it, about the availability of the property to our wandering, about hunting and the cutting of timber for fire wood. They turned it over to us, I suspect, assuming we had enough backwoods savvy to sort the place out—but sure as hell they didn’t. I mean, they were opera singers from New York City and this place was disheveled pile of antiquated farm life.

     The savvy part was probably over estimated in that we were now in an environment we had never embraced before, at least as independent individuals. Yes, Wisconsin was our home state but I was always in the caretake of my family, not a naïve privileged family, but still, I was cared for. Ann was more privileged and citified but the last couple of years had expanded her vision—maybe deluded it. She had cried on the entry of our first very meager home in Hyampom California. Here she thought we had the “savvy” to pull it off or maybe blind faith in my skills which had been honed back in California or rural Wisconsin.

     With axe in hand and rifle on the wall, we settled in as the fall turned the country side into a lush pallet of colors and a cool damp land of vibrant life. Each day we went off to my job teaching and Ann’s classes at Potsdam University. In the evening we would arrive home to the welcome of our dogs and the quiet life of the farmstead. We would start up a fire in the wood burning cook stove and then, as the fall moved in, the cumbersome furnace in the basement was stoked.

       In parting with the landlords in early September they requested I not blast the prodigious amounts of chipmunks they claimed were in the immediate area of the house. Shooting in general was ok but no chipmunks. It seemed the little buggers lived in the walls of the house and were on occasions very noisy as they scampered around in what was obviously empty walls, meaning walls without insulations. I understood the desire to lay off the “cute” rodents, but missed the implications that there was indeed, no insulation. Never got my attention. Just one of those things that at the age of twenty four went unnoticed. Obviously, there had been folks living here for well over a hundred years and they survived so what is the deal with insulation?

      We progressed with our new lives in the land of beautiful autumns, winding country roads damp with fall rain and covered with colored maple leaves. It was a time of country comfort, a simple way of young lovers left alone with few struggles, no bills, two loving dogs who traveled by the name of Brown and Blue. You betcha, we were almost visibly feral and away from that Red Queen?

      As the first frosts nicked the morning grass, Ann took the dogs along to school to have them sit out the day in the car rather than in a now-cooling house. On return in the evening, we noticed the dog’s bowl of food, the one that had been left full on leaving, was void of all its contents. Now we were having a financial issue by inadvertently feeding wildlife. Giving up good food for chipmunks was clearly not to my liking, and what the hell were they doing ‘in’ the house?

      It was time to go to war with the little bastards. They were not just in the empty walls but were sharing our living space and most likely comfortable in some nest right behind the kitchen stove. The next night three new hefty traps were placed out in the kitchen even though we knew chippers were diurnal and not nocturnal. Interestingly, we did hear them at night as well so they were obviously well fed and sporting the entire time content in their set up. In the morning, there by the stove was a sprung trap with a very diseased rodent, not a chipmunk but a very large Norwegian rat. The other traps were sprung, empty, tipped off by the untimely death of their cousin. Needless to say, the rural experience was taking a new turn.  After a brief ratty funeral, and the continued failure of the trap line, not to mention the creeping frost entering the old house, we were forced to reconsider being feral at that moment.

By Fred Forseth

The Red Schwinn

       I received it for my seventh birthday. This was before all the high handlebars banana seats. It was a one-speed, and it was beautiful. My only disappointment was my father, knowing my lack of origination even at the age of seven, put the option of the big ugly basket in front of my beautiful red Schwinn. My best friend Steve had the same bike but in black and with cool rear side baskets. It was way more cool, plus you could still slip your baseball glove over the handlebars where the front basket braces made that nearly impossible. Even at seven, I was in touch with cool and uncool. I was almost cool, but what to do about the front basket?

       My father negotiated for a living but never allowed us that option, so it would take a bit of seven-year-old ingenuity to get from un to cool. I knew complaining about it was going to get me nowhere. I knew that just taking it off was going to awaken the part of my father that was the exact part that took his belt off and made threats of soap over lousy language.

       I devised the perfect and foolproof way of getting the basket off the front of my beautiful red Schwinn.  I heard other kids and parents talk about the Gypsies that came through communities and reined chaos. One of the things they had said was that Gypsies stole bikes. That was it. I was going to have a Gypsy incident—foolproof plus a bit dangerous.

       I went into my father’s tool drawer and grabbed the wrenches. I removed the basket and bent it into a heap. I placed it next to the bike in direct vision of where my father parked when he came home from lunch. I had prepared my mother with the foolproof story of Gypsies trying to steal my beautiful and valuable bike basket.  I sat at the kitchen table, spinning the most colorful story of my encounter with Gypsies and my valuable front bike basket. Both my parents listened very intently. This subtle hope that they had given me was beginning to feel comfortable, and I believed that my tale had taken hold. Damn, I was feeling my cool beginning to happen, and I had even pontificated about how I thought the rear basket would be a great replacement. I could see the look on my parent’s faces, and so I believed it was one of relief knowing I was ok and the Gypsies had not kidnapped me.

     The following day, I woke up and went out to my new Red Schwinn, and to my astonishment, the bent basket was back on with its glaring uncoolness, but bent and mutilated. In the basket were the wrenches and a note that said, “The Gypsies forgot to put my wrenches away.”

Fred Forseth: I’ve known Fred for close to 50 years and while I might say he is all over the map, he is also a individual who always seemed to have a few knacks that got my attention. Yes, he was a violent basketball player who had sorta his own rules, not that I was an angel, but he also had what might be called an artistic side. We could all see it in his photographs—some shown here. Recently, his written words have popped up and I could not resist posting them on the Journal site.

In a fit of ambition, I’m intending on bringing in some of our writers to offer an occasional ditty for consumption of the general public so do keep your eyes open and do share our efforts.