Man, this last week in the sheep barn has been bad.
We’ve had a really rough group lambing. Problems with births, ewes with no milk, and lambs just not making it through those first few days.
I’m sure you know that feeling when things just seem to pile up and nothing’s really going your way.
Well yeah… that’s how it’s been around here.
The other morning Anne was on early barn-check duty after I’d done the middle-of-the-night round. Somewhere around 6 a.m. my phone rang.
“Rod, I’ve got a stuck lamb. I’ve been working at it for a bit, but I can’t get it out. I could use your help.”
So I jumped out of bed, pulled on whatever clothes were handy and headed for the barn.
Anne already had the ewe penned up and we got to work. It was a tough one. We struggled away at it together, trying different things and making decisions in the moment about what to do next.
And that’s really how those situations go. There’s no time to sit down and discuss all the options. You try something, decide what to do next, and keep going.
Unfortunately, this time we didn’t get the lamb out in time.
We finished up, made sure the ewe was okay, and headed back to the house feeling pretty defeated. It was just one more loss added onto what had already been a bad week.
And I’m sure you know what happens after something like that.
You replay it.
As we went about our morning I started doing exactly that.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Anne. “I think I made the wrong decision, i shouldnt have done that, i should have done this..”
Anne wasn’t having that.
“No, I’m sorry. I should have done something different before I called you. I think I made the wrong decision too.”
So there we were, both apologizing to each other and both trying to take the blame for what had happened.
Im sure youve done it too, Once you know how something turned out, suddenly it seems so easy to look backwards and see all the things you could have done differently.
Finally I’d had enough of it.
I said, “You know, if we had done exactly what we did and that lamb was alive right now, we’d be sitting here talking about what a great job we did.”
And really, that was the truth.
We don’t have a lifetime of experience raising sheep, but we’ve been through enough lambings now to know what we’re doing. We’ve delivered a lot of lambs and worked through a lot of difficult situations. Most of the time it works out.
This time it didn’t.
So I said to Anne, “Let’s stop blaming ourselves. We can feel bad about it for a while, but then we have to move on.”
And that was pretty much that.
Our last lambing went amazingly well. This one hasn’t. Sometimes you can do your best, make the decision that seems right at the time, and still not get the outcome you wanted.
And I suppose that’s not just farming, is it?
Sometimes a bad outcome doesn’t mean you made a bad decision.
Sometimes things just don’t go your way.
Feel bad about it for a bit. Learn what you can. Then carry on.
Farmer Rod