The Dogs of Bedlam Farm Read online

  I hired Anthony to feed the animals for the following week. It seemed so much easier for him: he zipped by early in the morning, Arthur in tow; vaulted over the fence; finished in fifteen minutes what it took me an hour or two to accomplish. The temptation to keep him at it until about May was great, but the feed and vet bills were piling up, and I was committed to caring for the animals myself.

  Still, the frostbite was a reminder that I was navigating a strange land, still finding my way. I had learned at my cabin in past years not to take deep winter lightly. But there, bitter cold merely meant bringing in more firewood, taking shorter walks with the dogs. At the farm, my tasks were more demanding, and there was no withdrawing.

  So after a week’s respite, I resumed trudging out three or four times a day to feed and water the animals and check on the barn. And I kept giving Carol her medications, changing her hoof bandages, taking her temperature.

  Outside on winter mornings the smoke curled from every chimney in the hamlet, from the old mill houses down the hill to the white farmhouses off in the distance. There were wispy trails rising from my place, too, thanks to the woodstove I kept going all night to warm the far side of the house. The oil furnace chugged along all day and night as well. The creaky old house held up well, but there were some nights no heating system could keep up.

  In the kitchen, I could see my breath. The olive oil and peanut butter froze in the cabinet near the back wall, as did the dishwashing liquid by the sink. At night, struggling to stay awake long enough to read, I sat in the living room swathed in blankets.

  RUNNING A FARM CHANGES ONE’S VIEW OF ANIMALS AND, TO some extent, of life. Hours and days are shaped by rituals, the satisfying sense of knowing everyone is well cared for, the need to take action—and never a simple action, somehow—when they’re not.

  For most of the farmers around me, animals were not pets but commodities, and vet bills could mean the difference between survival and failure. Competing with giant farm conglomerates, these men and women fought to cope with skyrocketing feed and fuel costs, the quixotic and unpredictable nature of animals, the grueling physical work.

  In America, the story of the little guy standing up to the big corporation is so painfully familiar nobody really wants to hear it anymore. The little guy always loses, and many of the farmers around Hebron know they are doomed. Their sons and daughters don’t want to live such difficult lives, and it seems that every bureaucratic decision and economic shift stacks the deck against them even more. Which is never more on their minds than in a winter like this.

  I stopped by the variety store one afternoon when Pete Handley and Stan Bates, two weary dairy farmers from North Hebron, were commiserating there over coffee. They’d been wrestling for weeks with burst pipes, frozen oil lines in tractors and trucks, manure piles that couldn’t be shoveled, punishing oil and electric bills. “Every degree down the thermometer is a nail in the coffin,” Pete said quietly.

  The cold took its toll at Bedlam Farm, too, though the consequences were less dire. Later in January, I noticed one of my ewes wandering off alone—an alarming sign in sheep, who are not given to individual exploration.

  I came out one bone-chilling morning and saw her alone in the pasture, wandering in circles, strips of wool hanging from her side. When I went to investigate, I saw that her flesh was ripped and exposed. I’d heard that coyotes, made desperate by the cold and the unyielding ice pack, were getting more aggressive; I’d seen their tracks around the pasture. Perhaps the ewe, sick or weakened by the weather, had wandered off by herself and been attacked.

  It was hard to find a large-animal vet available; they were all out tending to distressed animals. I left messages at various offices, describing the ewe’s disorientation and her wounds, asking what to do. Her odd behavior was also affecting Rose, who was leaving the flock behind to chase her. I worried that my puppy was getting too aroused, becoming more of a hunter than a herder as she pursued the stricken ewe around the pasture. It was a bad situation for both of them.

  The vet who eventually called back in the afternoon sounded harried, even frantic. It would be a day, even two, before he or anybody else in his practice could get to the farm, he said. Horses and cows were suffering from the cold all over the county, and they, worth so much more to their owners, took priority. Meanwhile, the sheep might die from the cold or from infection.

  And to be honest, he added, vets and their hypodermics weren’t always the most humane way to euthanize a sick sheep. “We might have to stab them six or seven times before we find a vein. It isn’t always pretty. Do what you think best.”

  The forecast was calling for temperatures of minus fifteen or below that night. I gave the ewe a penicillin shot to try to ward off infection and brought her into a stall in the barn, but she refused to eat. This was so unusual that I called a friend, a sheep farmer in nearby Argyle, who was even more blunt than the vet. “If you’re asking me what the humane thing is, I would definitely say shoot her. To have a vet do it with a needle is no less stressful and sometimes takes a lot longer. If you do it right, it will be quick and painless.”

  Doing it right was the issue. I’d gone thirty years since basic training without firing or even holding a gun; now I was contemplating my second execution in a couple of months. I could call Anthony, who would handle it if I asked, yet that bothered me. Did I really want somebody else doing the dirty work? If anybody was going to shoot one of my farm animals, shouldn’t it be me? Was it more humane to use a syringe than a bullet? Was it even right to drag a vet out here at the expense of some other animal that needed help and pile further bills on top of what I’d already spent, and was still spending, on Carol?

  The cold was horrendous, and the ewe was still refusing food and water. In spring, even in a milder winter, there might be other options. But it was clear that she was suffering. She might even have something contagious that could endanger the rest of the flock, or she could attract predators who would attack the others. I had to respond.

  Anthony was matter-of-fact. “I’ll be over first thing in the morning,” he said when I called with the news. “You have to do what you have to do, what’s right for the farm.”

  Because I did, in fact, know what I had to do, I took Rose and Orson out into the pasture early the next morning to herd the healthy sheep into the training pen. I locked the flock in, along with a bale of hay I’d dragged from the barn on a children’s sled. The cold was stinging, and my damaged fingers ached dully. I took the dogs into the house, and came back outside with my rifle.

  I went through Anthony’s safety checklist, making sure the chamber was empty and the safety was on, pointing the rifle up and away from buildings, property, other animals.

  I shooed Fanny into the barn, where she ran behind Carol, still lying listlessly on the straw. Then I put a crook on the ewe’s neck and guided her outside, far enough behind the barn for safety. She looked rheumy and weak and her wounds were still oozing. She barely protested when I straddled her back and placed the rifle barrel at the base of her skull. I loaded the clip, slid a round into the chamber, clicked the safety off.

  I fired five or six shots in rapid succession. Blood spurted all over my gun, boots, and jeans. The ewe dropped to the snowy ground, twitched for a second, and then lay still. I stood numbly and watched.

  Darrow Hanks drove into the driveway a few minutes later; probably Anthony had dispatched him. “What’s up?” he said quietly, as if he didn’t know.

  He took in the scene and, saying nothing else, hopped over the fence. He’d brought a strand of baling wire, with which he tied the ewe’s front and rear legs together and lifted her off the ground, where her blood was already beginning to freeze in the snow. He carried the carcass to his pickup and hoisted it into the truck bed.

  “I had to shoot her,” I mumbled, following slowly. “She was sick and cold, all chewed up, and the donkey is sick, too . . .”

  “I know,” Darrow said. “I’ve done it fifty times. It�
�s part of it all.” Before he climbed into the truck cab, he turned back to me. “This is what running a farm is like,” he said. “It happens. All the time.”

  I got the message. This wasn’t a drama or crisis, but the very nature of raising animals. No tears were going to be shed hereabouts for sick livestock. The farm fantasy was revealing its painful underside. I didn’t have the money, or the desire, to hire people to do all the jobs—the happy or the miserable ones—that had to be done. I had to make decisions. I was going to stand or fall on my own two increasingly sore feet.

  Not long after Darrow drove off, Anthony himself came roaring up. He seemed surprised that I had done the shooting myself. “I would have helped you,” he said, prepared to spare me something he figured I couldn’t handle. But because of him, I could.

  “I know it’s tough, but I’m proud of you,” he said.

  “It was my sheep,” I said.

  But I was a bit of a wreck. I didn’t bring sheep to the farm to kill them. I had grazed with that sheep a couple of dozen times. I understood death was part of life on a farm, but it still felt lousy. Anthony said nothing, just grabbed a shovel and spread fresh snow over the blood.

  THIS WAS THE ESSENCE OF LIFE ON THE FARM—UPROAR AND confusion, continuously, unpredictably. Surprises and setbacks, assaults and challenges weren’t the exceptions but the rule. The quicker you accepted that, the sooner you got to steady ground.

  Still, the ferocity of winter made daily life a struggle. I was exhausted from tending to Carol, checking on her every few hours. She was hanging in there, but despite the medicines I administered, the wrapped and rewrapped hooves, she still wasn’t herself.

  I had also fallen several times on the snow and ice, twisting my bad ankle painfully, twice briefly losing consciousness. By now I was hobbling like an ancient man and my chronic bronchitis had erupted with a fury. Paula insisted that I call her every night before going to sleep, so she could be sure I wasn’t lying outside, slowly freezing to death beyond anyone’s earshot.

  If you don’t want to deal with it, go live somewhere else, Anthony pointed out in his usual blunt style one night while I was whining on the phone about the cold. Nobody forced you to buy a farm in upstate New York, so take it seriously.

  I went to the Salem Agway and bought ski masks to protect my face, insulated nerdy hats with earflaps. I ordered thermal socks online, and liners for my gloves, so that when I took off the outer gloves I’d still have some protection. I put pots of water on the woodstove for moisture. Paula, up for a week’s visit in February, brought a tub of heavy-duty moisturizer and I slathered all my extremities with gels and ointments.

  I changed my animal-feeding times, so that I ventured outside an hour or two later in the morning, when the cold was slightly less brutal. And I broke up the chores—tote hay at eight, fill the water tub at ten, put out feed at two. If it was ten below—and it often was—I didn’t stay out for more than ten minutes at a stretch. I drank pots of tea and gallons of water. I kept the woodstove roaring day and night.

  I refused to yield on the herding lessons, though: each dog, twenty minutes each, one in late morning, the other in the afternoon, every day, no matter what.

  Rose seemed unaffected by the cold. She scampered around the pasture as if it were April. But Orson was hobbling as the ice stung his paws and caked up between his toes. Standing out by the training pen, swathed and frozen, was a test of faith for me.

  We walked the sheep to the training pen every morning, then worked on directionals—“come bye,” and “away to me.” Sometimes the wind roared so loudly the dogs couldn’t hear me. Sometimes I couldn’t see them even on the other side of the pen, as sleet blurred my glasses. But Rose never wavered in her interest and enthusiasm, and I was determined not to waver in mine.

  Keeping faith, like conquering impatience and soothing anger, had become an important goal. To see what the dogs and I could accomplish together, that wasn’t negotiable.

  THE OTHER ANIMALS HAD THEIR OWN COPING MECHANISMS. Even though the artesian well kept flowing behind the barn, it was quickly surrounded by vast globs of impenetrable ice, so I kept a big tub of water by the barn, stuck an electric de-icer in it, and changed the water daily. Carol and Fanny rarely left the barn these days, so I dumped some hay there for them and closed off one side to protect them from the wind. Carol was hanging on, not worse, not better; at least I could try to spare her the most frigid gales. The sheep climbed to the top of the pasture and huddled together for warmth. They moved less, it seemed, perhaps to conserve energy. I put out extra hay, corn, and feed.

  I worried about the sheep. Why wouldn’t they seek shelter in the barn? To my farmer neighbors, like Carr, this was more misplaced Flatlander sentimentality. “They don’t know it’s cold,” he said, “and they don’t care. They’ve been living without shelter for thousands of years.” They would come into the barn if they needed to, Dr. Alderink agreed. They never did, not once.

  Carr could afford to be philosophical. He was about to escape to Florida for a couple of months to share a trailer his daughter had rented for the winter. He’d be playing with his grandkids, sitting out on a lawn chair in the sun, perhaps mulling the knee replacements made necessary by years of milking at all hours. He seemed more resigned to the trip than eager to leave. He confided to me once that he’d never planned to retire—“Farming is a way of life,” he said. But, as he put it, his knees and bank account were giving out at about the same time.

  Everybody else was still wrestling with the winter. Road crews kept salting and sanding, their trucks grinding and roaring constantly. Plumbers were in high demand. Schools closed. Only Anthony seemed unaffected, shuffling over ice and snow with Ida in one arm, puppy Arthur chugging behind. He hiked, tracked, puttered, snowmobiled. Like a border collie, he hated to be still, and always preferred to be outside, looking for work. Only once or twice did he mutter about the “wicked cold.”

  The weather affected me differently. Before winter came, writing was my full-time job. Now it seemed on some days a struggle to get any writing done at all; farming had taken over. Sheep needed hay; dogs needed walking and herding practice; donkeys needed medicine. It was relentless. I could only imagine what Carr’s much-longer days had been like.

  The original snow from early December had hardened like concrete on the ground, buried under several more feet from more recent storms. The National Weather Service announced that December and January had brought the most snow and the longest period of below-freezing temperatures in nearly thirty years.

  The outdoors had gone still, songbirds and hawks—even crows—vanishing. The deer and coyotes were growing desperate; I saw tracks everywhere around the barns. When the dogs and I went out at night, they tensed and barked at things I couldn’t see or hear. We saw foxes and a few squirrels; otherwise it seemed as if all life had simply disappeared, gone south with Carr.

  Everything became progressively harder. Yet I loved the solitude of the farm, the ritual of the chores, the herding with the dogs, the point in the day when we were all spent and the dogs had been out for their final walk, and I could pull off my boots and hole up with a good book until I fell asleep, which never took long. Exhausted by the grueling routine, the dogs were sometimes so tired they didn’t notice that I’d gone upstairs to bed. But whenever I woke up—at five or six or seven A.M.—the two of them were in bed alongside me, dozing peacefully on a heavy quilt in a farmhouse at the top of Cold Mountain.

  I WAS GRATEFUL FOR THE LOVE AND COMPANIONSHIP OF DOGS. But I never better understood how much I needed humans. Fortunately for me, there were some excellent ones around.

  Ray and Joanne Smith met me every Tuesday at the Central House in Salem for steak and a slice of caramel apple pie. We chatted about the cold, their sheep and mine, our working dogs, and the whole strange experience of being refugees from the New York suburbs with new lives we’d come to love.

  Even before winter hit, Ray and Joanne later conceded, they’d had d
oubts about whether I would last here. But they were one of the reasons I had, so far. One or the other of them checked in almost daily. Joanne provided a stream of advice on sheep care, along with names and numbers of everyone from farriers and vets to M.D.s for humans.

  In fact, she was the reason I was no longer dodging Nesbitt. Online, she located a 4-H family in Massachusetts who kept Tunis sheep and had a high tolerance for rams—“It’s just their nature to get touchy,” the father told me sweetly—and who’d come to collect Nesbitt in the family pickup in November. “You better be grateful to Joanne,” I hissed as Nesbitt was led out of my pasture and my life. “Otherwise you’d be stew.” I resisted the impulse to slug him one last time.

  Joanne and Ray had that subtle gift of good friends—they knew when I needed a call, steered me in the right direction when I was doing something dumb, encouraged me when I was struggling. Their calls and our dinners anchored me.

  I was beginning to see that some of the real power of dogs, perhaps unappreciated, isn’t just in their comforting us when we’re alone, but in helping us to be less alone. Friends like Ray and Joanne are not common, and I wouldn’t have had them in my life if not for our dogs.

  Neither would I have had Anthony. Our friendship had solidified during our battles about what kind of ride-along dog to get, and deep winter had brought new reasons to feel grateful for it.

  Nevertheless, by mid-January, I was a mess. My fingers ached with frostbite, my knees rebelled at all the trudging and toting, my ankle was in perpetual turmoil from slipping on ice. My back throbbed from hours of dragging firewood into the house and hauling bales of hay and bandaging hooves. My skin was so dry it was flaking off, and bronchitis had me coughing and rasping.