Letters from the Country: From High Heels to Wellington Books. A Memoir and Survival Guide

Letters from the Country

from High Heels to Wellington Boots, a Memoir and Survival Guide

Marsha Boulton

Winner of the Stephen Leacock Award for Humor

Copyright © 1996, Marsha Boulton

This edition published 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

LETTERS FROM THE COUNTRY: From High Heels to Wellington Boots, A Memoir and Survival Guide

eISBN 978-0-9880152-3-4

Published by S.D.S. Communications Corporation

Web: http://www.marshaboulton.com

Email: marshaboulton@sympatico.ca

Contents

Foreword

Spring

Away in a Manger

Mailbox Murders

Murphy’s Lobsters

A Midwife’s Tale

Fly Wars

The Richest Dog in Canada

Just Say No to Porcupines

The Mother Goose Wars

Hold the Kitty Litter — The Cat Came Back

Rabies and Relationships

Tigger, Tigger, Burning Bright

Shear Delight

Let’s Get Ready to Gambol

Summer

The Pickle Summer

Roy Rogers and Me

The Early Bird Catches the Worm-Picker

The Orange Dump Truck And Other Auction Nightmares

The Rite to the Silence of the Lambs

The Humps of Holstein

Rub-A-Dub Dub, Two Sheep and No Tub

Manure Spreading Day

Fear And Loathing From the Garden of Eden

Of Bulls and Variables

The Farmer Gets a Tan

God Gave Us a Horse

The Soaking Baby-Doll defense

Owls in the Chicken Coop

Fall

Getting the Lingo and the Lay of the Land

A Labour of Love

Three Strikes and Summer Is Out

Apple Annie In Eden

Glasnost Can Be Ducky

Pumpkin Mountain

Winners, Losers and Hermaphrodites

A Hunting She Will Go

Talking Turkey

Kiss A Pig For a Cause

Hedgehog Futures

The Great Minto Cow Hunt

Elwood’s UFOs

Casket Lids and Other Found Treasurers

The Unpredictability of a Farm Weekend

Winter

The Hair Dryer — My Indispensable Farm Tool

Just a Passing Wind Storm

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town

Tree Thieves Beware — Palomino on Patrol

What My True Love Hatched for Me

Christmas Angels

All Skunk’s Eve

Maximum Blue Jay

Always Over-Estimate the Intelligence Of Sheep

Wainscotting of Many colors

The Pump House Wars

Training Taffy Lovely

Everybody Gets the Fever

In Praise of Long Underwear

Maple Memories

Foreword

CONFESSION: WHEN I TRADED my high heels for Wellington boots and moved to the country some 30 years ago, I had no idea what I was doing. The closest I had ever been to a sheep was the Pure Wool tag on a sweater. In fact, I only decided to raise sheep because they looked small enough for me to handle and they only have front teeth on their lower jaw, so they couldn’t bite me.

I had been working at a national newsmagazine, where I edited the People section and wrote what might best be described as informed gossip. In my heyday I would have scoffed at the notion of trading the chance to have cocktails with Sophia Loren for a barn full of sheep. The closest I got to anything country was joining Willie Nelson on stage to sing Mama’s Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Cowboys. Decisions I made never had life or death consequences. Instead I dealt with questions like: Should I attend the platinum record presentation to Aerosmith or would I be better trying to get an interview with Leonard Cohen after his daily dip in the YMCA pool?

I never stood in line at film festivals. If I saw a sign in a nightclub that said VIPs only, I scooted right in. Plus, the magazine gave me a clothing allowance.

Most mortals would be happy with that, but I felt that I was missing something. It was like a mystical void that refused to reveal itself under fluorescent lights.

I knew how to order a limousine, but I had never seen anything be born. My eggs came in cartons and my chicken was vacuum-sealed. Appearances meant more to me than the weather. Half the time I didn’t even know what the weather was like because I was sitting in an office cubicle talking on the telephone. When I watched Green Acres on television, I identified with Eva Gabor. And counting sheep never occurred to me when I wanted to go to sleep.

So, my move from the city to the country was not a festering dream waiting to be fulfilled. It was a spur of the moment thing — a case of extreme impulse buying. One morning, I was visiting friends in the country. By that afternoon, I was in the real estate agent’s clutches, ready to sign a mortgage on a yellow-brick farmhouse and 100 acres of unfenced land, surrounded by forest and centered by a pond full of frogs. Had I thought too long about the commitment I was making and the huge lifestyle changes it entailed, I might never have embarked on the great adventure.

I have learned a few things in the decades I have spent on the farm. For instance, I have learned that dinner is what is served at lunchtime and supper is what you eat at dinnertime. Lunch is a sort of snack that the ladies serve when the euchre game ends or the dance is over.

And one thing I know for certain is that my farm will never be mine. I could write BOULTON FARM on the barn in 10-foot high letters, but nobody will ever call it the Boulton place. No, my farm will always be the Noonan Place. This despite that fact that no Noonan has trod the land for three generations and those who first settled the land are all ecologically integrated in the pioneer cemetery two farms away from mine. But I don’t mind that anymore. It teaches respect for the past. Ultimately, it is what we, as farmers, do with the land that makes our imprint on the future.

You can learn a lot from books, but nothing can really prepare you for farming. I was filled with visions of flowers and trees, newborn foals on wobbly legs, lambs gamboling in the fields and the smell of freshly mown hay. Reality is red ink and rabies and that one little lamb that just doesn’t make it. Sort of the difference between Stephen King and Garrison Keillor or Straw Dogs and Lassie. Somewhere in between, there is an opportunity to find balance and sanity.

For many years, I did not write about my life on the farm. I was too busy making mistakes and learning from them. My neighbors, who populate this book, remain my greatest teachers and becoming part of their community was the first hurdle I faced. The weaving of a newcomer into the existing warp is not something that is achieved simply by buying the farm. Acceptance comes through hardships shared and endured, bowling leagues joined, livestock exhibited, dances attended and Crazy Hearts hands expertly played.

On every concession road, information is as much a commodity as soybean futures. It must be gathered in person, not garnered from the Internet. Word got around fairly quickly that I was a writer trying to farm. I think I was something of a disappointment, because I kept asking basic questions about how to stack hay and what seed to plant in a sheep pasture. I did not speak in iambic pentameter distinguished by 50-cent words. I had no credibility until someone saw my name on a magazine article at the dentist’s office.

When I lived in the city, the only neighbor I knew was my landlord. Nobody else spoke, either to each other or about one another. Nobody cared if unread newspapers stacked up outside an apartment door. In the country, if I do not pick up my mail after two days, Len the mailman drives up the lane to make sure I’m still alive.

I take some comfort in that sort of interest.

It took me some time to get used to the fact that when I drive along my stretch of gravel road, my travel will be duly noted by someone along the route. The plain fact is that after all these years, I know all of my neighbors’ vehicles by the sound of their tires on the roadway. When they drive past the end of my lane, I know the direction they are headed and, probably, where they are going.

Shepherds taught me about sheep, although I did pick up some basic notions from my Sheep 101 instructors at university. I spent seven years as the secretary of the local sheep producers association. I learned a lot at those meetings, but even more over the doughnuts and coffee afterward. Whatever wisdom you find in this book comes from practicality and reality. Animal husbandry is an applied science, and you can learn more about it by spending time in a barn with a knowledgeable farmer than you can from charts and graphs.

It has been a pleasure writing stories about people, animals and events that touched my life. Super technologies and the information highway have expanded my knowledge base and allowed me to choose a path that seeks respect for farmers, the food we grow and how we choose to grow it. Like a valued friendship, agriculture can only be sustained through care and attention to detail. Observing livestock, watching the way they chew and what they chew and how they move or don’t, is key to appreciating everything from health to happiness. Likewise, there is always a good reason for a farmer to be out standing in her field.

I am always pleased when farmers tell me that my stories put them to sleep at night. Knowing how hard farm families work and the stresses they are under, it is a great compliment to be granted any moment of their time.

In Canada, this little book received a literary award much like the American Mark Twain Prize — the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humor. I guess it says something about Canadians that they give a person a medal for writing something that can make them smile. My neighbors told me it didn’t come as a surprise to them, after all Americans gave an Academy Award to a film about a talking pig named Babe.

These assembled missives are not a road map to rural life. They are just signposts. I meet people all the time who say they want to do just what I have done but they cannot figure out how. All I can say is, if you long to live in the country do it. Plan for it, but don’t plan too long. Life is too short and country roads take too many turns. You may not find paradise, but you’ll never know unless you throw your heart ahead and leap after it. Trust me, high heels are much harder on the feet than a pair of Wellington boots.

SPRING

Away in a Manger

PREGNANT SHEEP SEEM TO think that they have a lot to complain about. All I hear are grunts and groans from the time I arrive at the barn in the morning to the last barn rounds before bed. Sheep are not mean by nature, but they sure get cranky in the homestretch to lambing.

I can appreciate that they might have mood swings. After all, I’m sure I’d be less than perky if I were carrying twins or triplets and looked like an inflated marshmallow ready to burst. The gestation period for sheep averages out to between 148 and 152 days. The first 100 days are a breeze, but in the last trimester, the lambs start growing — and growing. My library of how to be a shepherd books yields the useful advice that as much as seventy percent of the growth of unborn lambs takes place in the last six weeks. Now that’s a growing spurt.

The ewes seem to expand on a daily basis. Sides bulge and udders that were barely visible two months ago swell in preparation for milk production. The sheep do not kick up their heels any more. They sort of shuffle around. If they are in a hurry, they just shuffle faster.

Ewes that used to listen for my footsteps in the barnyard and line up smartly for their grain, are now slow to even bother getting up when they see me. They have not lost their appetites, however. With all of that growing going on, they need extra grain — whole grains only, if you please. I add soya meal for a protein boost and a lick of molasses to make it tasty. This is washed down with so much fresh water that sometimes I swear they should be floating. Ewes with a due date drink four times as much water as usual.

Their hay is only the finest. It should smell as sweet as a summer day and look green enough to take into the house and dress with vinaigrette. Only then is it good enough for my ladies. Since they do not have a lot of room in their four-stage ruminant stomach with all those lambs taking up space, the issue of quality is critical. An old shepherd once told me that he could share his secret of a lifetime with sheep in six words.

Feed them and feed them well, was all he said.

For all the tender loving care I give, all I get are long lazy sighs. When I scatter their bedding, they lounge uncomfortably looking for all the world as though they expect fluffed pillows instead of simple straw. When they choose to lie down it can take several minutes. First there is the drop to the front knees, followed by a grunt. Then somewhere between gravity and willpower, the hind legs fold and the ewe adjusts the configuration of legs, udder and lambs until she is satisfied.

The demands just never stop. One wants her head scratched; another casts me a baleful glance when I laugh aloud at the antics of a chicken. Some of them enjoy a sliver of apple; others spit it out. There is plenty of attitude. Dominant ewes stake out their territory. They will accept certain of the flock as their neighbors, but nudge away those they do not like. Some ewes do snore a bit more loudly than others. Some of them are subject to explosive flatulence.

The older ones know what is going on. They know that this is their time to be pampered. They know that I will forgive every last woolly one of them for being so demanding. Someday soon, I’ll be holding a newborn lamb, and that makes all the grunts and groans worthwhile.

Mailbox Murders

HERE IN THE COUNTRY we still have mail boxes, and on my rural route the mailman, Len, is an expert at deciphering illegible handwriting on envelopes addressed to me. If I put insufficient postage on a letter or parcel, I will often find a note from Len advising me that he paid the extra few cents and the next day I leave the change in the mailbox for him to pick up. With thanks. Now that is service.

You get attached to your mailbox. It becomes a sort of signpost