Winter's Wait

After grazing the meadow and marshlands all summer, the woolly animals are brought into the winter fold late each fall. Snow begins accumulating by November and doesn't fully melt away until April or even into May, slowly disappearing into the black taiga soil, running down off into the little rivulets and creeks that will soon meet up with the White River five miles below us. There is no level ground, not a bit, on this homestead. All water moves down to the river valley.

The animals exist on ice all winter. The snowpack can be five feet or more in the depth of it and so the fl/erd (sheep flock and goat herd) remains in their sheltered pens and we wait it out. They seem content with this arrangement, though toward spring lambing time the smell of warming earth and the coming green of grass and herbs timidly creeping up make the waiters ancy with anticipation.

The first leg of the "winter confinement" is their breeding season. Each of the rams and bucks are assigned their appropriate mates for six weeks. And then the ewes and does (hopefully pregnant!) are gathered back to their girly existence in a large and mostly amiable female clan to patiently gestate. Their shepherd notices, over 5 months time, that they grow rounder and slower every day and, eventually, they are uncomfortable and heavy on their contrastingly small, frail-looking legs. The boys, on the other hand, are relegated to a separate life as bachelors until the ewes' lambing and the does' kidding have taken place.

Some years spring comes warm and early. The tender grasses and wildflowers begin to stir and poke up beyond the fences and out of the reach of the flock by the time coming babies are outgrowing their intimate womb-fold, and so the woolly waiters are allowed beyond the pens so that birthing happens in the aspen-edged fields. But more often, April continues its snowy ways a while longer. Frosty nights keep the grass from braving the chilly air, so the babies are born within the safety of the fold and we give the meadows a little more time to wake up. 

Whiling away the winter is a calm, restful time for the farm animals. Even the mares stick to a few little trails they make in the white fields. But it is a creative and industrious time for me. I begin work in my loft studio, with plans and designs and yarns that I'd left hanging as though in mid-thought months ago, when the snow falls and I am indoors for the most part of several months seclusion. My Glimåkra loom has been sitting half-warped ever since the grace of spring drew me outside last April, and the sight of it coaxes me now to sley up the reeds.

The fall fleeces must be skirted. The wood cookstove is stoked constantly as the cold weather comes on and so I heat the water from our spring in kettles on it to scour the heavy, raw wool with gentle soap. And then I climb the wooden ladder and place the wet fleece above the woodstove, up in the rafters for a few days, occasionally turning it gently as it dries. 

All this time, my thoughts are racing. What shall I weave with Escher's ram fleece? Such a beautiful toggy swirl of grey and black and white. A floor rug perhaps? And Eirik's 14" long black locks from a year's growth? A saddle blanket for the new mare, I think.  I'm giddy with the color wealth of ewe fleeces this year. The natural hues are luminous. Soft glory right off their backs, a peaceable beauty to my eyes! And the lingering musky smells they give of lanolin and salt and earth and herbs. 

Oh, and those lamb fleeces will be luscious to spin. I can hardly bear to part with even one and I could so easily justify keeping them all for myself. But maybe this year I'll offer some to the hand-spinners who find them as precious as I do, loving to work with rawness, to get their hands into all that natural luxury. The animals need to help pay their way on this little farm. 

And thus it begins, my winter work. The fleeces prepared, some still drying above the stove, I begin design studies for the large rug/wall pieces that will be offered for gallery exhibition. And I begin spinning yarn for that horse blanket. 

My pretty, hardy and happy sheep give so much back to me in return for the lively life they enjoy here in our mountain valley.