Sheep serif

Even the i is dotted. Well done, ladies.

North Devon shepherd/author/filmmaker/television personality David Kennard can add "performance artist" to his resume with this gem.

Sheepdogs are trained to obey their master's every word. So when farmer David Kennard decided one of those words would be "Spring", his dogs did not hesitate.

They rounded up the flock on the hills of Mr Kennard's north Devon farm and, with a little help from their master, created a picture that reminds us that, whatever the weather, this is officially the first weekend of Spring.

The scene did call for a careful scattering of feed to make the sheep form themselves in the shapes of the six letters.

However, it was down to the team of Collies – who everyone knows border on the brilliant – to have the last word. They circled the 200-strong flock and kept them from wandering off-message.

Thanks to Carol of Frogdog Blog for the tip — visit her most excellent blog to read more about Kennard and his border collies.

And also, oh look! A book about sheepherding, by someone who is… an actual sheepherder! Someone send a note to Jon Katz about this.

Snerk.

Kennard [below with Ernie, Swift and Greg] knows how to pen compelling accounts of farm life, and it doesn't hurt that he shepherds in breathtaking country:


A Shepherd's Watch has excellent photos to supplement Kennard's writing, and The Year of the Working Sheepdog is a classic video: read a review here.

Kennard knows a thing or two about sheepdogs. He had a respectable showing with Swift and Greg in brace competition at the 1999 International Trial. From A Shepherd's Watch:

Greg was obviously aware that this was a brace run, and on arriving at the sheep had lain down and waited for a minute or so for his partner to arrive without a command from me. When Swift appeared, he simply got to his feet and moved across to his side of the sheep. I don't know how many people noticed his reaction, but it was something that I'll never forget.

The sheep in the photo at the top of this post are Kennard's North Country Mules. To learn more about mule sheep, see Dr. Mark Lelli's excellent Muleflock website.

Verde que te quiero verde

March 7: a late [and overcast] afternoon at the farm, looking north.

I lost a sheep in that greenness a week ago. It's hip-high, for crying out loud. The grass, I mean — the sheep, not so much. She just vanished. That's a five-strand fence, and in places only the top strand is visible, oy.

The lost sheep [one of my new Cheviots] is safe and sound now, but she only narrowly avoided becoming a red spot on the asphalt. When we finally located her, she was galloping down a lane towards an open gate and certain doom on a fairly busy road. The landshark grabbed her and took a drubbing [outweighed as she was by some 150 lb] but held on like grim death until I could catch up with them and slip a makeshift halter on the ewe.

I've seen videos of shepherds — Isle of Soay, maybe? — who use their collies to grab and hold island sheep, and as I recall it seemed vastly less stressful than our experience. My sheep and dog were both bloodied. No lasting damage, but still the worst injury to the stock I've seen in twenty years of sheep-keeping. A vet says I've been very lucky.

For years an old friend and I planted barley in these fields with no more irrigation than what nature provided, and the barley grew five feet high. Last year, not even a weed grew. For purposes of comparison: the photo on the right shows a fencepost in the same pasture last winter: the winter of no rain. It was miserable.

Off to feed the prodigal and her flockmates now — with far less excitement, God willing.

Green is my absolute most favorite color ever.

Goat quadruplets [not mine] born last week. Mother and babies all doing well: one of the kids is being fostered by an obliging doe that had just one of her own.

[Post title from García Lorca's Romance sonambulo. Original here. Figures that a poem having to do with a corpse has launched everything from salad reviews to blog posts about pasture. "Green, how I love you, green..."]