A MOTHER’S WORK

WEANING OUR SECOND drop of lambs is one of the last tasks we undertake on our property before summer well and truly kicks in.

I often compare my two-year-old son Jimmy to an almost-weaned lamb. The similarities are uncanny.

The lambs are at that stage now where they feel much bolder and more courageous. They’re keen to kick up their hooves and do zoomies in the paddock. I regularly find Jimmy outside doing zoomies as he plays with the dogs. He’s running as fast as he can, giggling with glee and yelling out to them. Eventually his feet can no longer keep up with the momentum of the joy erupting from within and he trips. With a thud he hits the ground. He takes a moment there to catch his breath, before he’s up and doing it all over again.

When it comes time to move the ewes and lambs down the laneway towards the yards, the ewes will anxiously search for their lambs. We try to move ewes and lambs as slowly as possible to give them a chance to find one another, but when you’re dealing with an almost-weaned lamb, they’re torn between finding their mum and doing side kicks off the laneway culvert drains. Sometimes the ewe will locate her lamb quickly and they’ll carry on together, while others will be searching the entire time. I can relate to their angst. Once, I lost Jimmy in our local supermarket. One moment he was with me in the cereal aisle, the next he was gone. Those 30 seconds felt like an hour. Heart racing, I retraced my steps, only to find him mere metres away playing with the PVC strip curtains in the freezer section.

The sheer confusion of the white puddle of sheep starkly contrasted against the red dirt of the laneway is a direct reflection of the puddle of confusion I find myself in with Jimmy.

When I’m trying to get him out the door to do jobs in town, the time it takes for me to get him from the front door to the car seems the same, if not more, than the time it takes for my husband to move the ewes and lambs down the laneway. I’ll get his shoes on, but by the time I grab the shopping bags, Jimmy will have chucked one of the shoes in the garden bed and be off, limping, after the guinea fowls. When I eventually find said shoe and call him back to return it to his foot, he’ll be thirsty from his run and demanding water. As I head back into the house to fill up a water bottle he’ll be off again. This time to chase the poddy lambs that we’ve been raising over the spring months. (I am eager to see the back of these poddies. I’m sick of them chewing our olive and citrus trees. )

I’ll eventually call Jimmy for the second time, pick him up and plonk him in his seat in the car. I’ll hurl our bags, to-do list, food and water into the front seat for what will only be a 10-minute drive into town. Breathless, I’ll head off, having forgotten to pack that spare part my husband had asked me drop off. We’ll have to repeat the process all over again this afternoon just to take that spare part in. At least we won’t have to repeat the process with the ewes and lambs… until next year.

Alexandra MacAlpine lives on Parkwood, a sheep and grazing property in the Central West of New South Wales. Follow Graziher on Instagram to see her ‘Thoughts on a Laneway’ reels.