October 3, 2023 is the 107th anniversary of the birth of James Alfred Wight, better known to the world as James Herriot, the author of upwards of a dozen beloved books about his Yorkshire veterinary practice from the 1930s onwards, and one of the three most influential authors of my book-filled youth. (The others were Beatrix Potter and Gerald Durrell. Go figure.)
The words below are almost a decade old, and were first published on Ricochet in early 2014. In the intervening years, my little farm went from small strength to small strength, but now I’m downsizing to only about a dozen sheep and I’m pretty much out of the lambing business. I no longer shear the remaining wool sheep myself, but rely on a young and enthusiastic country neighbor who takes care of them for me. In return, I babysit his sheep when he goes on vacation, and I’m toying with the idea of renting a field out to another neighbor who might need a place to stash a cow or two next year. I’ve branched out into a few chickens, and am enjoying their antics and the regular supply of eggs which results. And, of course, there’s the usual surfeit of dogs and cats.
Another thing I’ve been enjoying is the reboot, on Masterpiece Theatre, of All Creatures Great and Small. I was very trepidatious when I heard about it, as both Herriot’s books and the 1970s series starring Christopher Timothy and Robert Hardy are touchstones of my adolescence, but it’s very good. I think the new season starts in the US in January (it’s kicking off this Thursday in the UK), and the previous seasons are available for streaming and purchase in all the usual places.
So, without further ado, it’s back to February of 2014, and a situation I don’t think I’d ever have been in if hadn’t been for one of the very few men of whom I can say with a straight face and even though I never met him–“he changed my life”:
Pace, James Herriot, but there are times, especially in Winter, that All Things on the farm do not seem particularly Bright, or especially Beautiful. Anyone who’s ever tried to get water out of a ‘frost-free’ outdoor faucet, and has ended up carrying about thirty gallons to the barn in five-gallon pails when the temperature outside is minus twelve degrees Fahrenheit, knows exactly what I mean.
Another of those moments occurred earlier this week, as I watched, with my usual sense of growing alarm, the tiny nose and muzzle of a lamb, patiently waiting to be born, but clearly making no progress towards successfully exiting its mother’s birth canal. It wasn’t long before the usual internal dialog started:
Time to interfere? — No, not yet. Give it a little while. Best if it’s born naturally. She’s more likely to take to it, and feed it, and you’re less likely to have a lamb in a Pack-n-Play in the living room for the next several weeks.
What could be the problem? Breech birth? — No. I can see the nose. — Big head, stuck? — Maybe. — Legs back, and shoulders jammed, trying to get through the pelvic opening? — Possible. That would be the simplest thing to fix.
Breathe. You, not the mom. She doesn’t seem to be worried at all.
Is it alive? — I think so. It’s blowing bubbles. And it’s not blue. And it doesn’t look swollen. And it’s tongue isn’t sticking out. Those are always good signs.
–Ten minutes pass to indicate the passing of ten minutes–
OK. I’ve waited ten minutes. Nothing’s happened. — Interfere? — Oh, wait! There’s a little foot.
That’s good. You want to see that. There should be one on either side of its nose. — Oh, maybe that’s not good. What if it’s twins and the foot and the nose belong to two different lambs? Oh, Lord, don’t let it be twins. I don’t want to have to push the whole lot back inside and try to disentangle them and get them out one at a time. Last time I did that, I was black and blue to the elbow for weeks. Let’s wait just a few more minutes.
–A few more minutes pass–
It’s cold out here. — Yes, it certainly is.
Now? — Well, things are starting to look a bit dry. And nothing’s really progressed, so yes, Now.
At this point, you go up the house and retrieve a bucket of warm soapy water, a pair of rubber gloves, a bottle of vegetable oil, some washcloths and old towels, and you trudge back to the barn with your basic kit.
You glove up, douse your hand in vegetable oil, have a feel, and the voice starts again:
OK, head feels normal. Where’s the leg? — Oh, here, good, leg goes up to shoulder, goes to neck, goes to head, same lamb. Pull entire leg through pelvic opening. Here it comes. — Stop! You don’t want to pull too hard, you’ll jam things up even more. Where’s the other leg? — Oh, on the other side of the bony pelvic opening. Ouch! — Where’s the hoof? Turned back the wrong way? — Yes, here it is, and the shoulder is stuck. — Sure the leg belongs to the same lamb? — Yes. — Ok, hold it between two fingers and bring it outside.
Nose and head still look good. — What about the shoulders? Push back a bit and then pull gently on both legs — OK, here they come. Shoulders through.
Oh . . . ah . . . it’s slithering. Out. Still in the sac. Wipe its nose clean, smack it a bit, Oh, it’s coughing. And breathing. Hooray! And it’s mother is talking to . . . um. . .her . . . she’s a little girl!
And you take her, and you place her by her mother’s nose, and you stand back and watch them nuzzle, and you realize, for the thousandth time, although as always, as if for the first, that James Herriot and Cecil Frances Alexander had it exactly right after all:
He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell,
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.
Amen
*Another veterinarian of my acquaintance (I know a startling number of veterinarians, almost as many as I do United States Marines) met James Herriot at a conference at which Herriot was the keynote speaker. He reported a delightful experience and confirmed that the man was exactly as one might expect from reading the books–entirely genuine, modest, very bright, and entirely unaffected by his celebrity.
