Tag: sheep

The howl of coyotes

I wish I could say that I’ve been hearing the cute and funny Wiley coyote from the infamous Bugs Bunny cartoon, but instead I’ve been woken up by the eery howls of a pack of coyotes nearby for the past few nights. I’ve never heard them so close, they seem like they are staring my sheep in the eyes on the other side of the fence.

When something wakes me from my beauty sleep, like my dog barking at a bunch of coyotes, and the coyotes howling back, I take it personally. This is war, coyotes! Don’t even think of laying one paw on my sheep!

I need that sheep dog from the Bugs Bunny cartoon, who looked so calm and dopey with his hair all in his eyes, but in reality he was a vicious sheep keeper who could muscle down any coyote! What was his name?

Oh boy, the sheep got out

My dad and I were just discussing on Sunday evening the art of caring for livestock and one of the things he mentioned was that they always seem to get out when your gone. I remember that I kind of just chuckled at that and thought that that only happens to him, because that’s just his luck. And it is very, very rare that all the employees of Center View Farms would be gone on the same day. That matched with how the sheep would ever know we were gone, made me not really consider it a possibility.

Yesterday, was one of those rare days when all 4 employees of Center View Farms were gone away from the farm. And not just a few miles away, but out of state. My mom is in LA, my dad is in Chicago, I was in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Johnny was on a plane flying over the Rockies. And guess what?

I got a phone call at 7:30 p.m from my awesome neighbor, Wayne, informing me that there were several white faced sheep in a field 2 miles away from our farm. I left my house at 3 p.m that day and they were up near the barn taking a rest at that time. Little did I know they were conjuring up a game plan at a sheep meeting. So they must had been watching my every move, saw when I left, figured out the place of their escape, got out, walked 2 miles down a gravel road, crossed a busy 2-lane highway, passed several fields of delicious corn plants and ended up in a neighbor’s replanted bean field. And us farmers say sheep are dumb! Nonsense!

The next morning when I woke up, I went outside to see that the 28 sheep that had escaped were sitting around in one of the barn lots, looking at me sweetly and innocently. You may be wondering, how did they get returned? Well, all I can say is that we have super, awesome, caring, good neighbors with hearts of gold! Two miles down the road, on their excursion, the ewes hit a crossroads. Half of them went left and the other half went right. Why? Dunno. The farms on both the left and right are owned by former sheep farmers and my neighbor Wayne who lives between us and them was a sheep farmer too. These 28 must have just instinctively known to hit former sheepmen’s homes, smelling their scents from miles away. Right? Sheep are not big business much any more, so very few farmers raise them. White faced ewes are even more rare, so these former shepherds knew exactly where they came from.

With a bing, a bang, and some wicked help from their families, the wandering 28 were herded into a yard, coerced with corn in a bucket to get into a livestock trailer, and driven back to their home, all with ease and professionalism. I have to give a humungo shout out to my neighbors and former shepherds, Wayne Koehler and family, Galen Greenzweig and family, Gary and Sandy Marth with their lovely granddaughter Kate, 6, who I heard helped herd them up, and their son and our neighbor Josh. This experience made me really appreciate the community I live where good deeds, trust, hard work, honesty and just simply put, GOODNESS still exists.