Yesterday started early with me taking a load of finished lambs for processing. While I was gone, Anne was already at the barn doing morning chores and helping a ewe deliver lambs.
After breakfast, we settled into a bit of a routine for the day. I was working on the computer from my usual office — my recliner, laptop on my lap — while we kept an eye on the lambing barn cameras.
When a ewe looked like she might be getting close, the computer went on the side table and whoever’s turn it was headed to the barn.
Back and forth we went all day.
Although I will say, for some reason Anne seemed to keep getting all the hard jobs.
Around 4 p.m., she headed up once again to check on another ewe that looked like she was in labour. I stayed home, buried in my website work.
Then my phone went off.
Tornado warning.
I looked outside. Didn’t seem too bad, so I kept working.
A few minutes later, another warning went off. About the same time, the storm started whipping up and knocked out my connection to the barn cameras.
Hmm.
Now I’m sitting there in the house with a perfectly good basement for shelter, while Anne is up at our nearly 100-year-old tin barn.
Was she coming home? Was she shoulder-deep in a ewe delivering lambs? Were the big barn curtains still open and she was experiencing sideways rain, as Forrest would say?
I had no idea.
I thought about it for a minute and decided that if something bad was going to happen, it was more important that I was with Anne than safe.
Then another thought crossed my mind.
Rod... could you imagine what everyone would say if a tornado hit the barn with Anne in it while you were hiding in the basement?
Yeah.
I jumped up, dodged the now torrential rain, hopped in the truck and headed for the barn.
When I got there, Anne was calmly finishing up helping another ewe deliver a couple more lambs — her second assisted delivery of the day.
Everything was fine.
We had a little heart-to-heart moment there in the old barn. I looked into her eyes and said, “I figured I’d better come. If something bad happened, I’d rather be here with you and unsafe than sitting safely at the house.”
It was actually a pretty nice moment.
Then I elaborated.
“And I realized how terrible everyone would think I was if the tornado hit you and I was hiding in the basement.”
We laughed.
Farmer Rod