The Tragic Tale of Pooki and Patti

We made it through another Fair. Everyone made weight and prices were pretty decent. Will showed his Black Giant rooster to much amusement at the Poultry Show on Wednesday. It's quite hilarious to see a small 7 year old boy wrestling with a chicken half his size. Emma's steer did not bring a great price, but price support brought it up to the profitable range. (Thank you Shasta Valley Billionaire, whoever you are.) Overall, despite the exhaustion, stress, blood, sweat and tears (and I mean that quite literally) the showing of animals at the County Fair appears to be a wortwhile endeavor. Sorry if that isn't quite a ringing endorsement. Ask me in a few months when the memory has faded a bit.

In an earlier post,I mentioned Pooki and Patti, the home-schooled lambs. Theirs is such a tragic and potentially cautionary tale, I thought it should be elaborated on. For never was there a story of more woe than this of...Pooki and Patti. Okay maybe not, but it is pretty sad. Enter Chorus: Two households both alike in dignity, in fair Etna, where we lay our scene.. Our dear "citified" friends, the Fleeners have whole-heartedly jumped on the farm life bandwagon and chosen to raise animals through 4-H and FFA. Being chefs from Seattle, their experience with livestock was limited to how to cook them. (And I might add I have never had better beef than that prepared by Bob Fleener.. it's like buttah!) When their daughter, Allyson, decided to start a sheep breeding project through FFA, they naturally turned to us as mentors. We happily delivered two bummer ewe lambs to be raised at their home and then returned for breeding. Four months with Halli and Allyson left our ewes a little, how shall I say, socially challenged. I should have known something was amiss when they would come storming onto my front porch, follow me into the house and bleat incessantly to be hand fed. Pooki and Patti were never able to adjust to the rigorous social hierarchy of the flock, and instead spent their time with each other or following me around, giving me a new appreciation for the childhood nursery rhyme, "Mary Had a Little Lamb." This would have been relatively amusing (except for the constant cleaning of sheep manure off the front porch and carpet), had it not ended in tragedy.

The realities of ranch work don't leave as much time for fence maintenance as we would like. Hence, our sheep were able to break out of their pasture into the alfalfa field. Alfalfa is a highly rich plant that can cause bloating in ruminent animals. The other sheep seemed to be aware that alfalfa was an appetizer, not the main meal, and would only stay out for short periods of time. Pooki and Patti, having been ostracized from the group, apparently did not get the memo. Maybe they weren't on "Sheepbook." Anyway, they stayed out grazing in the alfalfa for too long before we spotted them. Despite our best efforts, Pooki (or maybe it was Patti) succumbed to the effects of bloat. Patti (or was it Pooki) went into a state of depression at the loss of her best and only friend. The good news is, we repaired our yard fence and she was forced to assimilate with the flock.

The end of the story is even better. We attach a device to our bucks that has a crayon-like marker on the belly. This allows us to know which buck has bred which ewes. Imagine my surprise when I noticed Patti (or Pooki) had a suspicious red mark on her back. Which just goes to show you...well, I'll let you draw your own conclusion.

Poop Happens

I have to confess something: I'm kind of a slacker mom. I'm not talking about truly shocking maternal behavior. I'm not a meth addict, I don't strip on the internet or gamble away the grocery budget. Nor am I one of those drunk mommies who downs a bottle of wine before breakfast, carts her kids off to school three sheets to the wind and then passes out in her bed for the rest of the day. But when it comes to certain aspects of mothering, I just tend to fall short. It's not that I don't want to do well, it just sort of escapes me as to how to get it done, especially when it comes to the area of health. I'd like to think of myself as a health-conscious person, but realistically I'm not.

Maybe it's my heritage. I come from a line of people who live extremely long, healthy lives, despite their atrocious habits. I grew up hearing the four basic food groups were Beer, Beef, Bacon and Bourbon. My great-grandfather was one of a relatively few centenarians when he died in 1967. His second born son followed his lead and died just a couple months after his 100th birthday. My grandfather died "young" at 86, having lived on a diet of well- marbled beef, eggs and potatoes fried in bacon grease, buttermilk and a fifth of whiskey pretty much every day of his adult life. That doesn't include the pack- a- day smoking habit he maintained for close to 50 years. My aunt and grandmother were well into their nineties when they passed as well, although both had quit smoking in their eighties. It's not like they were overweight, confined to wheelchairs, carting around oxygen tanks or bed-ridden either. These were people who maintained their mental and physical capacities well into old age. My great uncle rode a horse in the Rodeo Parade at the age of 98. My grandmother played bridge, cleaned her own house and kept up her yard until shortly before her death. My grandfather worked on the ranch, cut firewood and helped us with our animals until he was hospitialized with cancer. My 74 year old father seems embarrassed that a 16 hour day of packing and fighting fire is just a bit too much for him lately.

So when it comes to my kids health, I've taken a, shall we say, "laid-back" approach. Once, when my kids were little, we went to a lake with Jim's sister. She has children that are a few years older than ours, so she viewed herself as the parenting expert. There she sat, laughing hysterically at my lack of concern when my one year old baby was eating sand. I remember thinking, "that's a problem?" Well, who is laughing now? Now that her children have grown into extraordinarily good-looking, hardworking, intelligent, polite, gifted young adults and my sand-eating baby is...well, nevermind.

Oh, I try to pretend that I maintain a rigorous standard for nutritional intake. For example, the other day I found myself loudly proclaiming "We do not eat chips for breakfast!" at the sight of my 7 year old with his hands and face covered in an orange goo reminiscent of fire retardant. He looked up at me with one brow cocked as if to say, "Well, clearly that is not true as it is not even 8:00 a.m. and I've already consumed 1/2 a bag of cheetos." I know, I know I shouldn't even have cheetos in the house, but they are just so ...yummy!!

So it was with a sense of pride and relief that I read of a health-related practice I have unwittingly followed. It seems that the great increase in food allergies and asthma that is sweeping our nation's children is directly related to the extreme sanitary conditions we pracitice in the United States. Our lack of exposure to germs and bacteria is actually causing poorly developed immune systems. Here is where my slacker house-keeping skills turn out to be a benefit. Specifically the article mentioned exposure to animal, uhm, excrement to be helpful in building a healthy immune system. Score! We have no less than 7 forms of poop within a 100 foot radius of our house on any given day. Between our vain peacocks who love to see themselves in the front windows, Will's "free-range" chickens, our home-schooled lambs, Pooki and Patti, the dogs and our neurotic cat, we've had all types of droppings on our front porch, which inevitably get tracked into the house. That doesn't even include my daughter's show steer, my Dad's mules, our herd of well-fed deer and the random raccoon/fox/possum/skunk that shows up in our front yard from time to time.

So there you have it. I can see myself on the lecture circuit, touting my book on the health benefits of being a slacker mom and a daily dose of poop , sand and cheetos as the key to longevity. Someone call Oprah.