by Megan Wildhood
Toward the end of the summer of 2022, I got the opportunity to spend a few weeks on a sheep farm in Kansas. I grew up in flyover-country suburban sprawl and have lived in or near cities my entire adult life, so Nowhere, Kansas was going to be a stretch. But, after the pandemic-induced strangeness of the last three years, that’s what I was looking for. And that’s exactly what I got, along with some powerful life lessons that remain relevant whatever my terrain.
1. The gym has nothing on herding sheep.
Until my trip to Kansas, the extent of my contact with sheep was the imaginary ones my parents taught me to count to help my fall asleep and the cotton balls with googly eyes Velcroed to Sunday-school flannelgraphs. I learned quick that real-life sheep aren’t quite that cute: they’re not the smartest animals, which I had heard. What I didn’t know is that they’re strong, and that combination can make them dangerous. It’s not just about maneuvering them through the various gates to pasture and back every day—which is a human’s job if you don’t have a herding dog. It’s also about being strong enough to hold the gate closed while sheep ram up against it trying to get to their feed before you’ve poured it into their food bowls. Or withstand the alpha male head butting your thigh demanding pets while the rest of the herd stampedes toward the fresh grain bowls you just laid down. I’m pretty sure I developed entirely new muscle groups in both my body and my brain herding these sheep. There’s nothing quite like moving 35 sheep across several acres every morning and every night to sharpen your situational and spatial awareness.
2. Never turn your back on a cow.
Cows don’t have a reputation for being all that smart; one of the farm owner’s first warnings to me was that this was quite inaccurate. I learned what he meant on my first attempt to put the Mini-Jersey away for the night. This cow followed me peaceably enough from her grazing field to the pen outside the barn. But the moment I stepped in front of her to unhinge the gate to let her into her pen for bed, I felt a shove the length of my spine and my feet left the ground. She was using her face as a shovel to scoop me out of reach of the gate in protest of bedtime! Always keep an eye on things, physical or otherwise, that are bigger than you, no matter how sweet and cooperative they may seem at first.
3. It’s all about who shows you acceptance: even a barn cat can think she’s a duck.
Three barn cats patrolled this farm, mostly for moles and gophers. Two of them definitely knew they were cats. They unapologetically meowed for attention, swatted at threats, and strutted around the property like the royalty all cats seem to believe themselves to be. One cat, however, did not display such behavior. Even when she was around her fellow cats, she waddled and skittered and even pecked around in the grass like a duck. She usually hung out with the farm’s small flock of ducks, who accepted her as one of their own, grooming her and allowing her to groom them, sharing their food with her, and alerting her when it was bath time every day. This cat would flop into either the kiddie pool if the rain had filled it or the pond if not and splash around until the ducks had decided they were clean. She even flipped upside down, her head underwater, like a duck! The best part is that the other cats didn’t reject her for behaving like a duck. Even as the ducks didn’t welcome any other cat, the cats accepted what to them probably seemed like Duck Kitty’s idiosyncrasies. Whether you’re weird by the standards of those who surround you or not, it’s all about your confidence in owning your quirks!
4. Nature’s rhythms can solve a lot.
By my seventh night at the farm, I was so sore and stressed that I wasn’t doing all the chores “right” that I could barely sleep. The farm owner gave me a knowing look and, without saying a word, went out to start building a fire. Though it was still early in the evening—thus hot, humid, and bright—the farmer knew that the kind of fire he was aiming for—one that would last as long as we needed it to—would take a while to construct. Once it was time to bring out the marshmallow roasting sticks and lawn chairs, we encircled the fire and settled in for a muggy night under the stars. I asked the farm owner and his wife how they managed to get everything done every day on the farm before they were ready to support guests and apprentices. He didn’t have to think long about his answer: “when we switched from working with the sun rather than with clocks, we got more done and had more fun.” After a pause, his wife added, “There are probably a lot of reasons that worked, but one of them is that it helped us stop swimming upstream against the natural rhythms of our animals.” Despite my misgivings about time management by sun, my second week flew by, the animals all seemed happier and more willing to cooperate, and I finally began to understand why someone might choose a life in the country over one in the city. The sun is a gentler, wiser ruler than the unforgiving digits of a humanmade time device.
5. No one wants to die alone, and that includes Blondie the Chicken.
Being on a farm brings you closer to the natural ways of life than anything you can find in a city, and that includes the life cycle itself. A fellow guest had noticed upon her arrival a few months earlier than one that one of the chickens, the brightest yellow one in the flock, was stumbling periodically as if confused. Over the next few months, her episodes of disorientation worsened and, by the time I arrived, it was clear that Blondie would not be would not be with us much longer. As her time neared its end, she took to following me or the guest who’d arrived at summer’s start around as much as she could. When she couldn’t keep up, she’d cluck and flap until we waited for her to catch up or went back for her. By her last day, the other guest and I were trading off either checking on her or carrying her around with us on all our farmhand jobs. She died in the evening the day before I left, and we buried her in the woods at the edge of the farm just beyond the cattails (they only raised some of their chickens to eat). The moments of silence we held to honor Blondie’s life were for the other guest and I rather than Blondie: the time we spent with her during her last days was to let her know she wouldn’t be alone at the end. A funeral, no matter how elaborate or simple, is too late to show loved ones what they mean to you.
I’d never done anything so challenging than spend any amount of time on a sheep farm, including completing a triathlon at altitude and traveling overseas alone for an entire summer. And I would do it again in a heartbeat: I’m certain if I did that I would learn even more life lessons I can take with me anywhere.
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photo credit: Sam Carter, Unsplash
Megan Wildhood is a writer, editor and writing coach who helps her readers feel seen in her monthly newsletter, poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017), her full-length poetry collection Bowed As If Laden With Snow (Cornerstone Press, May 2023) as well as Mad in America, The Sun and elsewhere. You can learn more about her writing, working with her and her mental-health and research newsletter at meganwildhood.com.