A Year of Farming, A Year of Death

Reader Contribution by Jennifer Nyberg
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It started out hopefully enough, the slow days of January leading into a busy February lambing. Although I’m sure there must have been fair, beautiful days, in my memory now, it is mostly raining. The lambs, born into the tail end of winter storms, were protected by our sturdy shelter, but by the first of March, the lion-winds had ripped out every last grommet of the tarp and the ground beyond their pen was saturated into mire. Still, Rupert Dane didn’t mind standing in it to stare in unabashed amazement at the new woolly lives, bouncing in the deep, clean straw, little tails waggling madly as they sought nourishment underneath their mothers.

The day-old chicks arrived the weekend of the first lambs, peeping in bright springtime voices through their temporary cardboard home. With the goats near kidding, it seemed the farm was a bastion of life and newness — but it was the last I’d see of life for a while. The death of the young black lamb was the first hit, I wrote about her earlier in the year.

Days later, it was Rupert. Magnificent Rupert, Prince of Dogs, it was he who brought the farming life right inside the house, his enormous paws tracking our improved soil all around the living room, his coat spraying the coastal rain over the walls and chairs and door as he shook off after evening chores. His death ripped a hole in our lives; his omnipresence, his cheerful goofiness, his stoicism in his last hours on this earth; I cannot forget his watchfulness that last night, his look that seemed to say, “It’s OK, my friends, you’ll be all right, you’ll be all right without me.”

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