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Guiseppi Patrick Nunzio McGuire The donkey did it. Oh, I know the butler, in times past, and occasionally in times present has done it. And I've often thought careless guests have done it or perhaps even the rare tenant who may take to wandering the hills was the culprit, but, yesterday, to my amazement, with a certainty bordering on the absolute, I realized the donkey did it. And has been doing it, all along. To my amazement. I spent some time yesterday wandering the pastures, knitting in hand, (my friends Cecily and Erick Bowser are about to welcome a little person to their lives, and I am determined to present said little person with whatever I can to show my delight in its arrival), looking at the condition of the grass and testing out my reluctant waterlines. Water pressure to the troughs is not good of late. I've been assured that nothing could possibly have died in the cistern up on the side hill and subsequently blocked the two thousand feet of line to the seven troughs that dot the landscape. One hydrant has broken. The one, of course, that I most need. Watering the sheep when I pasture them in Wuthering Heights and the twin pasture, the one cut out of a third of the larger one. The sheep are reluctant to graze in the lower one. The June grass seeds delicate and fine on fairy tale stems brush their faces and get in their noses and in all ways annoy them. But the new growth underneath is thick and green and full of protein and all other good things. I want them to graze there. However, watering them means getting the water somehow into a bucket as it pours out of the break, blows some in the wind, and gets me exceedingly wet. I then pour the contents of the bucket into the trough all the while continuing to get wet as the wind whips the water still gushing from the break all over my corduroys. I did think to put the baby's sweater out of reach. Somehow there was enough water in that line to nearly fill the fifty gallon waterer. Thank goodness for some things. Knitting in hand, I continued up the hill checking one hydrant and trough after another. The next one was dry. Absolutely dry. Not a drop of water to be seen nor a gurgle to be heard. Dismay filled my heart. Not one little gurgle. I followed the path that my neighbor's cows made and continue to maintain through the unused upper pasture. There is a lovely little coppice up there with stone cairns and old apple trees and a bit of a spring on the side hill that I am determined to leave wild. Oh, I did once try to clean it up a bit and with the thought to help the apple trees some, but eventually came to the conclusion that even though my heart and soul love an orderly wood, this unexpected place on my farm holds an enchantment like none other. It shall remain untouched. Except. And that is a grand exception, for the fenced in area that was created around the great cistern holding spring water to, in theory at least, water my sheep and goats and donkey throughout the farm. That was drained and dug and seeded (with all the wrong stuff, I might add) and fenced, with charming wooden gates, supposedly to keep the sheep out but with certainty creating a marvelous place in which the deer can bed down, and in all ways in an attempt to keep the water clean. Admirable. But, perhaps not as effective as one would think. I've begun to bring flower seeds up there. Sweet Cicely and the perennial Bachelor Buttons that I love and are so nicely invasive. They may, in time, force out the unwanted grasses that were erroneously planted there. And so, knitting in hand, I went up to the enclosure following the wide path made by the neighbor's cows and nicely maintained by my clever sheep as they proceed on their way to raid the neighbor's pasture. Water came from the overflow in a nice steady stream. That in itself assured me that the system had suffered naught in the drought. A relief. However, it added a further complication to the complicated life that farming always is. What caused the water to stop flowing? There are always side benefits to all chores on my farm. On the way up the hill I found a stand of the perennial Michaelmas daisies in the deep purple I so love. They could legitimately be moved closer to the house, if I ever had the time to dig them. Or, were I to mark them somehow, I could harvest their seeds when they are ready. And plant them. I also had the opportunity to see how well the new gate enclosing Wuthering Heights and its adjacent and yet to be named sister was to work. It has been tied onto the post until it can be attached, but works in form if not in function. I managed to open and shut it with no undue hardship, knitting in pocket rather than in hand, and saw that most of the sheep were in Sheep Meadow where I most wanted them to be. However, about twenty were on the barn-house-roadside of the brook and prevented from entering Sheep Meadow by the gate near the brook. They were heading towards the apple trees by the road. And I knew with certainty born of experience, that they would somehow get over the fence by the apple trees and the stone wall and race to the neighbor's pasture across the road. I watched with increasing dismay as they did the expected. I hurried off the hill, knitting needles in motion, through two gates and looked for the sheep. They had disappeared suddenly, then reappeared. A passing motorist may have frightened them off the road. I abandoned the knitting and tried the foolish way out. I put some pebbles into a bucket, rattled it and called. Slowly, uncertain, in a single file, they came. I opened the gate by the brook. They, suspecting a trick, slowly walked through. I tossed the bucket across the brook, scattering the pebbles, and ran back through the gate, shutting it carefully behind me. All of the sheep, for the very first time this summer were in the pasture where I most wanted them to be. No mean feat! The gates on this farm have presented a mysterious problem of late. I've gone to town, all gates closed, and returned home to find some gates open. The most essential gates open. This presents a major problem. To say the least. There are places where they are absolutely not allowed. Other places where I'd prefer them not to be. The problem of open gates has confounded me. I walked up the hill to the house and glared back at the sheep, safely locked into the pasture. The right pasture. All hundred of them. My donkey, Giuseppe Patrick Nunzio McGuire stared longingly at them chin resting on the gate. I turned once again to admire my accomplishment. There, on the near side of the brook were eight sheep. And there across the brook in Sheep Meadow accompanying 92 sheep was Nunzio. And, to my astonishment, the gate was swinging wildly, merrily open. Nunzio did it. |
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