When Ma Nature Gives You Snow...

Lambs are to be born into sunshine and the promise of green grass, not freezing winds and snow.

But this has not been a normal winter.

With lambing season days away and a weather forecast calling for high winds and below freezing temperatures, I find myself in the barn, figuring out how to find space for 10 pregnant ewes.

The sheep and horses spend most of their time in the pastures or under lean-tos that provide protection from rain and west winds. They seem happier having space to move around--and I am not spending hours mucking manure from stalls.

In normal springs, I don't worry about ewes delivering lambs outside. Only once have I had a lamb chill in the spring winds--and a hair dryer dried it and warmed it.

Freezing winds will chill a lamb quickly. So, I've tucked the ewes in groups of three and four in horse stalls for a few days, just in case lambs don't want to wait for sunshine.

A Clean Barn in January

During the winter months, only the necessary barn chores get done. Daylight is in short supply, and cold weather is not.

Chore time is spent breaking ice from buckets, carrying hay, thawing latches, taking off and putting on my gloves.

Manure piles up.

Cobwebs grow and multiply.

Baling twine hangs like tinsel from stall doors, hay bales, hooks.

Loose hay covers the ground.

The barn counter becomes littered with my trusty hair dryer, pens and notes, gloves, dust, ear tags, chicken leg bands, dog leashes, broken latches, fences handles and other things the soil has heaved up during its freeze and thaw cycles.

But this weekend, temperatures climbed into the 60's, and I headed to the barn to clean.

I knocked down cobwebs, put away buckets, cleaned off the counter, raked up loose hay and hauled away wheelbarrows full of manure.

The barn looks orderly. It looks presentable.

Maybe, just maybe, it can stay this way for lambing season, I think.

And then I glance at the calendar.

Lambing season is six weeks away.

I study the weather forecast.

The cold weather returns this week.

So I settle for sitting on the mounting block, listening to the horses munch hay, and admiring a moment of barn orderliness.

How the Barn Cat becomes a House Cat

Step 1:
Arrive in the summertime, origin unknown, when you are 6 weeks old and oh, so very cute. When picked up, make sure you purr, purr, purr.

Step 2:
Always be underfoot, begging for attention when the people try to clean the stalls, work in the garden and split wood. When picked up, purr, purr, purr.

Step 3:
As the weather gets colder, hang out with the other barn cats at the back door. When the door opens, dart inside. When picked up and carried outside, make sure to purr, purr, purr.

Step 4:
Become a nuisance. Follow the people to the garage and run under the cars. When they retrieve you, purr, purr, purr--and then dart under the cars again. Eventually, they will throw you in the house, so that they can leave.

Step 5: 
When the weather is freezing, adopt the frozen-paw walk and pitiful cry. Stand at the back door and dart inside whenever the humans go outside to get firewood, walk the dogs or feed the livestock. Once inside, make sure to purr, purr, purr whenever they are near.

Eventually, you will wear them down.

Winter Barn Games

When the temperatures dip, the animals' world gets smaller.

The sheep and horses spend more time at the barn eating hay rather than grazing. Without their smorgasbord of bugs and weeds, the chickens retreat to the hen house. I, too, spend more time in the house rather than around the barn and yard.

That leads to one bored barn cat. Luckily, he has the lambs.

The lambs, now nine months old, like to stick their nose between the slats when I'm in the barn.

For Trick the Cat, this means a game of Cat and Lamb Nose. Standing at the base of the wall, he crouches and waits for a lamb nose. When one pokes through the slats, he jumps up and grabs it with his front paws. Sometimes, he'll gnaw on it for good measure. After a few seconds the lamb retreats.

A minute later, the lamb sticks her nose through the slats again, and again is pounced by the cat. The lambs and cat play this game for several minutes before Trick goes hunting for another game.

Where's Trick?

When I pull the wheelbarrow out from under the tarp and find him sleeping there, I wish Trick the Cat was black or white or yellow -- any color other than the browns, tans and blacks of a raccoon or groundhog.

After all these years, you'd think I'd become accustomed to the barn cat showing up almost anywhere. But he still startles me when I find him curled among the feed bags I'm about to move or among the tomato plants I'm about to pick.

By now, I should always assume he'll be in the middle of farm life, wherever that may be.

He often spends the night on the hay and straw bales.

Not only are they soft, warm and dry, but they provide a prime view of the horses and sheep in the barn.

In the dawn's light, he surveys his kingdom.

Telling the chickens and sheep to look at him. And they do because they've been ambushed by him on numerous occasions.

He likes to groom himself atop the fence -- and usually plays a game of chase-my-tail where he wraps himself around the top board.

If I'm working the dogs on sheep, he waits in the tall grass and pounces the Border collie (something I have yet to get on film).

Lunging the horses? No problem, he'll roll near their path. They'll move for him.

Then, he's on to torment the chickens.

A few cockerels notice the intruder, but when Trick doesn't react to them, they go back to eating tomatoes -- which don't challenge them.

 I never know if he likes to torment the chickens or if he is hoping a sparrow will land nearby.

When the sun heats the day, he retreats to the garden where he sleeps among the parsnips....

awaiting a human to torment and rub against.