The Facts of Life

There’s an earthy honesty in farming.

The land demands presence — a connection to life that is palpable, close, and personal. It requires confident pragmatism tempered by dreams of optimism and toughened by the battle scars of experience. Farming cycles define rural lifestyles, setting the pace of individual days by daylight hours, animals to be fed, watering to be done, crops to be picked. The calendar is in our heads and hands, a rhythm that is sacrosanct, leaving meals, sleep, and time away as discretionary events.

As a livestock producer, September feels like the beginning of our annual cycle. We joke that fall on our farm at least is “R” rated, sex (as the rams and bulls produce our next generation), and violence (as the last of the market animals are slaughtered). There are very direct conversations about sex during this time, and often a lot of questions by visitors to the farm. Our critters don’t understand discretion; no low-lit, shadowy figures, or vague innuendos, just flamboyant, functional procreation for the single purpose of reproduction.

Yet there is tenderness and companionship. A ram and a freshly serviced ewe napping alone, away from the flock in a shadowed corner of the field. The bull nuzzles a cow, not quite ready, waiting patiently until she is. The young ram, unsure of just what to do, finding interest, support from mature ewes, and eventual success. Make no mistake, we aren’t voyeurs, but as farmers and businessfolk, we are invested in each mating and the health of the mating pairs. We carefully choose these matchups without Bumble or Tinder, and choreograph the meetups. That makes us complicit, connected, aware.

It is common in the sheep industry to use colored chalk on the chest of each breeding ram. As the ram services the ewe, the chalk rubs off onto her rump. Chalk colors are changed every 17 days, so that the shepherd knows not only that the ewe was bred, but by whom and when. Our farm is on the main highway and on a school bus route. The bus driver stopped in and asked us what the colors on the sheep meant, that the kids riding his bus really wanted to know. We explained and left it up to his discretion to inform his riders. We stopped using chalk after that.

When our boys were young, their farming background always provided more context in sensitive matters than their urban peers, often to their utter confusion. Our youngest proudly presented a fresh placenta for “share” day in kindergarten (how he slipped it into his lunch bag is still a mystery), while our eldest produced an entire set of entrails for the high school biology dissection class (yes, we did rinse and clean the rumen first).

I learned that childhood playdates should not coincide with slaughter day, nor was it acceptable for the boys’ friends to witness copulation up close and personal (“Hmm, so that’s how it’s done.”). We always included the boys in our downselect decisions for ewe lambs and rams, deciding which get eaten and which get to breed, based on confirmation, performance, and personalities. Not sure that’s a testament to good dating, but it did provide a standard framework for them to consider when choosing a mate.

Death is a part of our cycles as well. Always present, lurking in depressions and pitfalls, coyotes and cougars at the fence, furtive worms and liver flukes left by the interloping deer, a birth gone wrong, ice on the pond, the rattle and bang of a slaughter truck door. As with life, the farmer has a personal relationship with death, always quietly respectful, cautious, willing to fight, but accepting when the battle is lost. There are so many kinds of death on the farm: the predator death of slow ripping, grabbing, and dismemberment; the aging death of slow decline; the health death of failing, failing, failing, fighting; and the one we pray for and hope to offer consistently and with dignity, the quick, clean coup de grace.

When we first moved to Longbranch, we were invited to a neighborhood potluck. I had both of our boys, freshly turned 4 and 6. While standing in the food line, I started chatting with the lovely lady in front of me. “How was your summer?”

“Not good at all,” she said. “I lost my mother, and I’ve spent the summer going through her things, making decisions, and just missing her horribly.”

As I tried to digest her pain, our youngest, who had been quietly playing with stones at my feet, suddenly stood up, looked her in the eye and asked the farmer question: “Did she go naturally, or did you have to put her down?”

The gracious woman, after a very long pause, laughed, hugged him, and whispered, “She went naturally, thank you.”

Janice Bryant is a repurposed Navy program manager, livestock rancher, and voting member of the Pierce County Agriculture Advisory Commission. She lives in Longbranch.