the island

a couple weeks ago we went to help Lee on the island. it is a remote, mile and a half long island off the coast of Maine whose name i will not disclose, because of the utmost secrecy! The sheep that inhabit the island are a specific herd of north country cheviots that have been inhabiting that space for hundreds of years. Lee takes a crew up in the spring to castrate and dock (de-tail) the lambs and to shear the full grown sheep. He also seperates the rams which have been freely breeding for the winter and puts them on a nearby island.

In the fall, the same journey puts the rams back on the island as well as selecting lambs to bring back for slaughter. It is a beautiful island, with huge rocks and a few select species i had never seen before, like red sorrel and sea lettuce, growing in ocean puddles on the beach. It tasted like salty sugary and green, like salt water taffy, but chlorophylly.


red sorrel


sea lettuce


There were also buttloads of seagull eggs all over the place.




The sheep look much like the sheep that we have here, north country cheviots are prized because of their long legs and stout figure, which offers up the best loins and chops. Though Lee is planning on breeding in some old school scottish breeds that are shorter, stockier and can better maintain themselves on a diet of almost pure pasture in the grain-grass ratio.



Though, the island sheep maintain themselves amazingly well, only needing the slightest of care. Shearing isn't even necessary, as the sheep (i'm told) are insulated the same in the summer as in the winter by their big wool coats. Not to mention the assorted conifers that grow on the island, the big spruce and pines offer a decent shade.

In the winter they eat kelp and bladderwrack which washes up on shore. The seaweed bladderwrack (which is supposed to be good for thyroid problems in humans!) is heaped abundantly on the rocks of the beach. Because the island is coastal, it has a more temperate climate. The sheep munch on this grindage all winter, it probably makes their coats that much shinier.

Bladderwrack?


Yes, Bladderwrack!

Rich, rich as a fiend!

Our job was to herd the sheep when we got there. We started in the middle of the island and sort of staggered ourselves into a line. The casual saunter of our walking, coupled with the sheep' worried retreat made me think of the last scene in Full Metal Jacket, where all the soldiers are singing the Mickey Mouse theme song. (i can't help comparing everything to some pop culture reference. Farm people have found this to be really annoying.) We essentially built a wall, then like a clock hand turning towards the twelve; we flanked the sheep up then made a wall in line with the length of the island until they went into the pen we had set up for them.



My part in this was pretty great. When the sheep on the southern part of the island were being moved, i volunteered to run as fast as i could in order to get ahead of them. My mission was to open the gate and then lie in wait so they couldn't see me:

Where's Jason?


I felt like a comanche, running as fast as i could through marshes and blueberry patches that were two feet of muck. But i had to run my heart out, and in an absurd light i was just thinking, faster, faster, faster

He's gotta be here somewhere.


Finally when i got there, i lay in wait behind a small rise. The sheep didn't notice me. Can you?


There I am!!!

Man, what a crazy thing how stupid sheep are. I mean, every year we do the same ganging up on them. The crowding and like a good herd they follow suit, just running away right into the trapping of the pen. Then, they start bleating like madness, asking what the hell happened! There was a point made by one of the farmers who helps Lee. A couple men who are hardcore Mainers, own (or owned) sheep farms and now come out once a year to eat junk food, drink hi-life, talk and herd and shear and castrate sheep. Someone said sheep are stupid.

"Stupid!" he says, "Well let me think about this...we feed them, we clean them, we protect them from wild animals...now who's stupid?" And he's got a point. I recently read the Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan's book about certain plants whose genes choose humans as their carriers. The apple is a mere sweet fruit that gets eaten up, but its seed--spat out to grow new apple trees--spreads its sowing as easily as trash. Just as sheep, who are so easy to trap and who can sustain themselves so permanently on an island are worthwhile for a mainland shepherd to come out and make the trip.

Stupid animals, smart genes.

The actual process of what we do to the animals was pretty disturbing for me. I mean, we basically corner the sheep, they move into a different pen. Then we isolate a few to be sheared if they're yearlings or older or castrated and docked if they're lambs.

The castration didn't seem like too big of a deal. These big ol' clamps that looked like salad tongs were clamped on to the immature vas deferens for about ten to twelve seconds, just enough to cut off circulation for ever. Lee described it as your leg falling asleep and never waking up. But in this case, your leg is your balls.

The docking was a little bit crazier. We use a tool called a hot dock, which is a bit like a hair crimper that gets up to a zillion degrees. We close it around the lamb's tail and it cauterizes the wound as it cuts to stave off infection. Some pink goop is also applied to keep flies out of the open wound. The lambs twist for a moment and fight, probably the same jolt of white hot pain that comes in getting an immunization as a child. But then they are fine, nuzzling against your chin as you hold their legs up. In a matter of moments, their anatomy is completely changed.

I thought the tail thing was pretty brutal until one of the farmers on the island explained it. His name was Link and his family has ties to Maine since the 1730's. They lived in southern Maine and each generation made its way steadily climbing up the coast until they got near Canada. Now he owns an insurance company and lives along the coast again, serves as historian for his district and has insane stories about rich people accidentally blowing up their houses and old obstinate women who refuse to ask for help.

He explained that as the sheep grow up, their wool gets burlier and the tail, in particular, is a space where a build up of crud occurs. They just have heaps of shit fall on this area and it attracts flies, and in turn, maggots and then all sorts of potential infections. Not to mention the shearers, having to navigate vibrating blades around a triangular tail is like slicing the petals of a dirty flower as it violently jerks in the wind. So they cut the tail off, cauterize it. the end.

Link also had another story that went like this: "So it was about 6 one night and i had to go to bible study, but as i was going out the door Elizabeth tells me, 'hey dad, we have a sheep with a prolapse.' I didn't want to be late, but i went out there and it was sticking out, so i was pushing it back in. Elizabeth says, 'Dad, the kids at school don't believe what we do for a living.' So i stick my arm in more and say, 'Want to take a picture now!?'"

He ends up having to replug the prolapse a few times, and eventually the story moves on, "So i'm late for bible study and i'm sitting in the back. A few of the old timers there come up and i'm talking to them. It was only later that i realized my legs were covered in shit and blood!"

It's a strange sense of humor up here. But that's the reality, animals have to be taken care of and they as crazy as naked fools who don't speak your language.

The next day on the island, we were part of either one of two crews. Either we wrangled the sheep, grabbed them by their hind leg and guided their kicking mania towards the shearer. Then we would grab their head, turn it backwards and plummet their bodies onto their behinds, so all their legs were sticking up and they sort of looked like Frankenstein. Then we would stand by in idle agitation waiting for something to go wrong or for the shearer to finish, so we could take the sheep away and get another one.

Or there was the woolpickers. The wools, caked in shit, grass, burrs, and salt from the sea would have to be rooted through at lightning speed to get them to a quality where they could be used to be spun. Then they were stuffed into a big ol bag and someone had to climb the wool tower...

There's Davis, one of the apprentices i work with, stomping down the wool tower:


like the french stomp grapes into wine...



What a dork!

The art of shearing is fascinating. It requires a certain dance, a dalliance with the handling of the sheep. They are cutting every part of the sheep, but doing it without the sheep's legs touching the ground. Sheep are immobilized when their legs are off the ground. But as soon as the legs feel the ground, they impulsively try to leap up. It's the cold water that brings them out of shock and back into a reality where they are capable of moving. So it's up to the shearer to keep them locked in a dream for just the couple minutes it takes to give a haircut.

And there are a few ways in which sheep shearers have an attitude. Beth told me that sheep shearers in New Zealand say, "once you do ten thousand sheep, you will know how to shear a sheep." Lee has been shearing sheep for over thirty years. It used to be his job. He would run across tons of sheep. One time he thought he was scraping the skin off their backs, it was so bloody, and worried, before he realized they were infested with ticks and he was shaving their heads off. Another time he came and set up a generator and lights to shear sheep for the Amish. When the lights went out, he saw at least eighty silent Amish people: children, men, women, all very silent. He said it was creepy.



His style is very quick and precise. I think what he looks more forward to then anything is the job being done, so his ambition is for concision and speed. And this is the way we would bring him sheep, chop chop chop. No dilly dallying. The whole atmosphere that day was one of perpetual readiness, a new sheep, to take the wool, to pick the wool. We were all in flux and wide awake.

The other shearer was a woman named Emily with cool blue eyes and rope for hair. She looked like a goddess. Her handling of the sheep, it was a music. Somehow when Lee or Aran (his son) were shearing sheep, they were restless. That white eyed, open stark fear kind of look that penetrates with the infinitesimal look of confusion. Emily was very soft spoken, and she didn't seem to tire while working.



aran working




I particulary liked her. She seemed to have an appreciation for the sheep that i got when she described the top fleeces. These are the thick, "lustrous," she called it, coats which are hand spun and thus a little more expensive. It looks like wrestling with sheep, but it could just as easily be holding--maybe comforting. I wonder if the force applied during sheep shearing could be more of a gentle coercion rather than manhandling and demobilizing. I figure i'll read some Temple Grandin later and try to figure that out.


Emily

We spent the rest of the day exploring the island. Just a few miles off the coast, there are thousands upon thousands of buoys that wash up throughout the year. They appear as random ornaments, island trash. The people that live there just sort of stack them in mountains.



Or if you don't have glasses:


this ship washed up on shore a few years ago during a violent squawl.


Isn't it ironic!



the guy with this sweatshirt randomly showed up mid-day. he is an ornithologist who spends the summer surveying birds on the island. He seemed really really amped that people were on the island. Considering there are a total of six people, i can't imagine what it's like. He spends 10 hours a day on a house on stilts watching birds fly. He came up to us, drinking a beer, and exclaimed, "Sorry I'm late! You guys need some help." And he became our most excited woolpicker!



Here's a picture of me and him picking wool. This gives a nice overview of the pens we worked in. The shearers, powered off a generator, were hoisted on a pole. the sheep were bunched in the pen, then dragged in for their turn.



The island lacks trees mostly, with low lying ferns, sorrel, blackberry and raspberry bushes. Plus marshes that are covered in cattails



But the trees are especially nice, completely covering the last 1/2 mile of the island. we climbed them at sunset and watched one of the most beautiful sunsets i've ever seen:


on top of a tree!


and again!


Another good one!

One of the girls we working with was this farmer from Chewonkee summer camp, where Beth--the farmer i work for--and Emily, the shearer, worked.


Abi

We all climbed trees together



Can you find Davis in the tree?:


Man, this is better than Highlights magazine!

Abi was a kind of funny girl. The sort of pockets-out, everything goes, hair in the wind kind of adventurist who knew a lot about plants.


Here she is sleeping on some rocks. I think the best story to accentuate her character is one time we were all going to a MOFGA potluck and she decided ice cream sandwiches would be a good idea. She took the last of the cream from their dairy cow, made the cookies from scratch and then packed her bag. But, deciding that they would not hold up, she filled the rest of her bag with ice. So when we picked her up on the side of the road, she was napping, but then said, "Hey, i figured i'd make ice cream sandwiches. So my backpacks full of ice" Needless to say they didn't hold up, but the farmers whom got to eat their mash said they were terrific! And that's Abi.

While we were docking the sheep too, a bunch of blood splattered on her face. It was kind of lightly speckled there all day, like freckles. A key remembrance is Abi's big smile with all that blood sort of dried on her skin. Unreal.

We navigated this fern maze that the sheep had made throughout the years, colonizing trails for themselves.


It was like the shining. It was Davis, Abi and me. She compared it to Mycelium Running, a book by some guy about teaching fungi to grow cognitively.


We were as smart as mushrooms together!

Then we stayed on a rock talking about the day as the sunset on the island. And i commented very astutely that this was by far one of the most beauitul places i had ever seen.