The Rural Voice, 1987-05, Page 24L
RECOLLECTING
boyhood, loyalties,
adventure, and the sheep
flock on a mixed farm
by Andrew Dixon
In pioneer days, every farm had
a flock of sheep. They were the
suppliers of the wool from which
the mittens, socks, blankets, and
homespun clothing were made. The
processing of wool from the sheep's
back to the final products was all done
by the women, and a time-consuming
job it must have been.
By the time I was born the spin-
ning wheel and the loom had been
relegated to the attic. But many far-
mers still had flocks of sheep. My
father had only a few for short periods
of time — he claimed that there was
a weed growing on our farm that
poisoned them.
The sheep in our district were
mostly of the long -wooled breeds.
The Lincolns, Cotswolds, and
Leicesters were in the majority, but
a few Oxfords turned up from time to
time. These are all heavy breeds, the
Lincolns being the largest. They bore
the heaviest fleece and also produced
the heaviest Iambs. While I was too
young to appreciate the economics of
the situation, I was prepared to stand
loyally behind the judgement of my
elders and loudly proclaim the merits
of this breed to my peers.
As a farm animal, sheep are good
in that they control weeds, need little
winter protection, and provide a dual
crop of wool and meat. They are dif-
ficult to fence, however, and I think it
is this fact that has caused most of the
flocks to disappear from Ontario
farms. The custom of slaughtering
a barren ewe for threshing meat also
tended to make mutton unpopular, and
the mention of sheep meat made many
men who had eaten too much greasy,
tallowy ewe mutton recoil.
Sheep also tend to be stupid. Any
man who has tried to persuade a stub-
born ewe to accept an unwanted Iamb
quickly loses any liking that he may
have had for the species.
I don't know whether or not it
was my association with the Good
Shepherd teachings in our Sunday
school or because of their leggy,
woolly helplessness, but I always
anticipated the arrival of the lambs.
Twins were preferred because a ewe
has two teats — if three were born
one had to be bottle fed.
It was always my desire to have a
lamb of my own, and I was delighted
one day when my father came home
with a Iamb he had bought from
Oliver Amos. The lamb thrived well
on the skim milk which 1 fed him
twice a day. On the 12th of Novem-
ber, 1916, I sold him for $18.
A second Iamb that I owned was
born on the 14th of February to a ewe
owned by my uncle. The ewe had re-
fused to mother it. We had a cow that
was just about dry and so I let the
Iamb suck her, standing with his front
legs on an upturned pot and just reach-
ing the teats. The milk was rich and
abundant and he grew rapidly, but
every so often had a severe attack of
colic. We decided that he might pass
away on us, so we sold him as an
Easter lamb for $12.
Because my two experiences with
sheep were financial successes, I view
sheep farming with approval.
One custom that was still com-
mon when I was small was washing
the sheep prior to shearing. On a
Saturday in May when it was bright
and warm, all the Dixon men, old and
young, rounded up the four flocks of
sheep and drove them to the river
where they were penned in a tempor-
ary closure made with gates. This
was located on the bank of the river.
The sheep were dragged one by one
into the stream. As they floated, the
man handling them fluffed water
through the wool, removing the straw
chaff and weeds that were mixed with
the fibre. The sheep were crutched at
this time and a day or two later would
be shorn.
It was interesting to watch the
ewes emerge from their bath. As
they tried to stand they would be so
waterlogged that they would not be
able to straighten their legs until some
of the water had drained off. The boys
took part in the herding of the sheep
and to keep busy washed the Iambs,
which of course was totally unneces-
sary. The washing of sheep ended
suddenly, however, with the discovery
22 THE RURAL VOICE