Lupa
It is a chilly late January morning. The sun is a pale glow behind a haze of soft gray clouds and a hint of mist, just hovering over the tops of the shore pines. Bundled in sweats, barn coat, and rubber boots, I crunch my way down the damp gravel driveway toward the barn. I can already hear the chickens muttering in the coop, the younger ones laying eggs in spite of the season, and further off, the sheep call out for their breakfast.
As I walk to the back of the barn to where the flock impatiently bleats, in the corner I see one of the ewes standing over a trio of freshly born lambs. Two are already struggling to stand and nurse; she nuzzles them encouragingly and makes low, gentle sounds that they answer with their own insistent calls. The third lamb lies motionless in the straw. Upon closer inspection I find no heartbeat; unsurprising since the poor little thing hadn’t even been able to struggle out of its caul.
No time to mourn, though. The wind is picking up a bit as the sun starts to warm the air. Mama Ewe doesn’t want to head into the nice, cozy stall I have set up for her, but I pick up her lambs and place them in the deep, dry layer of straw and coax her in with them while keeping the rest of the flock from piling in on top of us. (No easy feat, that.) Once set up with a heat lamp in the corner and plenty of food and water, I leave them to settle in, then go to attend to the last triplet.
It’s not uncommon for one of a set of triplets or quadruplets to not make it. Even though St. Croix sheep are a hardy breed and generally need little help with lambing, sheep in general have a whole host of things that can go wrong with them during pregnancy and labor. Some of these are caused by infectious diseases, but even in an otherwise healthy flock, a stillborn lamb, or one that dies shortly after birth, may result from the ewe having a lack of a particular nutrient during pregnancy, a difficult birth process, a congenital defect, or even being an inexperienced mother who doesn’t know how to care for her new young. Previous testing ruled out disease in the flock, and we’ve bulked up their feed, so it’s anyone’s guess what happened.
I bundle up the lamb in an empty feed sack and carry it out to the woods beyond the last pasture. There’s a little clearing among the pines where I lay the remains out upon dead wet grass and dried blackberry brambles. There are plenty of hungry scavengers who will appreciate this meal: crows and ravens, coyotes, maybe even a black bear taking a quick break from hibernation in our relatively mild winter. Nothing goes to waste here, and now my attention needs to be on the surviving twins, making sure that they’re getting their first good meal of colostrum.
No fear there. This is an experienced ewe, and by the time I’ve gotten back to the barn to clean the lambs’ umbilical stumps and make sure they’re all dried off, Mama Ewe has already gotten them both to nurse heartily. They’ll spend the next few days in here to bond and let the lambs grow stronger, and then go back out with the herd so I can clean the stall for the next new arrivals (who will only show up when they’re darned good and ready.)
This is how I have spent my past few Imbolcs. I moved to a farm owned by a couple of friends of mine to be the on-site caretaker for the various and sundry animals, since they still work back in the city. The sheep are theirs, while I have my own flock of chickens, and we recently added a nice collection of geese and ducks to keep the grass mowed down in the orchard. One of my friends maintains an ever-growing nursery full of native plants, many of which have been dispersed throughout the farm’s more open areas to encourage overall biodiversity.
I grew up in a rural area but spent over a decade living in cities before landing here on the farm. It’s the first time that, as a Pagan, I’ve been living a truly agricultural life. And it’s brought the Wheel of the Year into sharper focus. Most Pagans these days live in cities, and the crop-and-livestock-related imagery of the sabbats is theoretical at best for a lot of us. It doesn’t make our rites any less valid, but I know I’m not the only Pagan who’s sometimes found it a little harder to connect with Imbolc than, say, Samhain.
No one should be surprised, then, that it took caring for actual, living sheep for me to find a real, personal anchor for this holiday. Previously, Imbolc was just the time after Yule’s festivities when the Pacific Northwest’s winters got even wetter and grayer, and I might light a candle now and then to remind myself that it wouldn’t be too terribly long before spring started pushing the crocuses up. But remember that Imbolc (or Oimelc) means “belly of the mother” or “ewe’s milk,” referring to the lamb-heavy ewes whose udders are swollen with life-giving milk. Now, I looked forward to when they would bring forth the lambs they’d been carrying for almost half a year.
Here’s the thing, though. Just as Imbolc isn’t yet spring, but the middle of winter, so lambing season isn’t just a time for bouncy new babies. It’s also a reminder that the death we normally focus on during Samhain is still very much a part of the life cycle, and the cruel chill of this time can cut short the newest lives. And while I may mourn the loss of a lamb or two each season, I can’t stop to do my grieving. Instead, I work through those emotions as I lay out the lifeless remains in the scavengers’ feasting forest and make sure the rest of the flock is well-fed and cared for.
There’s something comforting about the press of warm, living sheep against me as I bring their daily hay and grain out to them. Like a lot of people, I used to think of sheep as dumb domestic animals that had all the smarts bred out of them to make them more pliable. And sure, selective breeding has enhanced a sheep’s herding instinct and made them more docile around humans. Perhaps I’m a little biased because St. Croix are a particularly “goaty” sort of hair sheep breed, but I no longer see sheep as unintelligent. This little flock of less than ten adults and assorted lambs has a ton of personality. They’re bold when it comes to demanding food (no matter how much they get to eat each day), and even willful when I try to move them from one pasture to another and they find something tasty along the way. They’re not especially interested in being petted, but they’ll happily take treats. For this flock, at least, food is a love language.
The (thankfully hornless) ram is a bit of a jerk who will try to sneak up and butt you from behind if you aren’t careful, but we’ve reached an understanding that if he doesn’t come after me, I won’t then proceed to chase him all over the field to let him know just how displeased I am about the matter. A quick stomp in his direction and he backs down with little fuss. For a while he had an accomplice; one of our old-lady ewes decided she was going to get in on the butting fun, and they became quite the tag team. Sadly, we lost her to various old age ailments a while back, and I think he and I both miss her.
You’re more likely to find Pagans who work with the archetypal animal spirits of wildlife rather than those of domestic species. (These are what are often referred to as “totems.” I’ve chosen a more culturally generic term as a way of moving away from appropriation.) Those who do ask domestic spirits for help usually gravitate toward the more charismatic ones like Dog and Horse. The spirits of “food” species like Sheep, Chicken and Cow are less considered. Oh, sure, sometimes we might use the imagery of cattle at harvest time, like driving the herd between two fires to help them get through the winter. But how many Pagans have ever interacted with cattle in a more personal manner than a cheeseburger?
I’ve spent over a decade working with the archetypal animal spirits of those species that most of us only ever meet on a dinner plate, from Chicken to Dungeness Crab. Overwhelmingly I’ve found that they feel overlooked compared to their more venerated wild counterparts, with none of the romance and glory we give to Wolf, Stag, Eagle, and so forth. This isn’t surprising given how divorced many of us are from the sources of our food, and how we often split wild animals and domestic animals into a “good wilderness” and “bad agriculture” dichotomy. I’m of the firm belief that we really need to dismantle factory farming and go back to more sustainable ways of raising animals for meat (as well as eat less meat, but that’s a whole different article). But the current state of things is not the fault of the animals, nor their overarching spirits.
So my connection to a more meaningful Imbolc has also tied into that need to raise up our relationships to the domestic animals we all too often take for granted. If Samhain is all about the bats, cats and, yes, sacred cattle, then Imbolc’s animals should include sheep of all sorts. Not only is it shifting the focus more firmly to the agricultural roots of this festival, but it’s also giving us a chance to appreciate an animal that we often only think of as fluffy scenery on country drives.
I’m also more inclined to see Imbolc as a celebration of survival and savvy. You don’t go and have your young out in the middle of a winter storm unless you have a decent chance of keeping them safe and warm until spring. And while many sheep may get to give birth, or at least bond with their lambs, in a nice indoor setting, most of them are perfectly capable of doing so outside. After all, shepherds have spent millennia tending to large flocks who never spent a day in any more substantial shelter than a copse of trees.
Finally, it is a time to appreciate everything in the world on its own terms. The cold gray days of mid-winter may not be my favorite, but they are blessedly quiet. And they’re necessary for many beings in this temperate region to have a chance to rest, whether it’s the trees readying themselves for spring’s flowers or the bears a-snooze in their dens. It’s a quiet time for work as well, for the nursery doesn’t need watering and I don’t have much in the way of out-of-town obligations, so I have many long stretches of days where I barely leave the comfort of the farm. This is a gift, and I need to remember that.
In the same way, I am better able to appreciate the spirit Sheep as a guide, whose first lesson to me was to cast aside my biases and let the beings, places, and things I encounter tell me who they are themselves. So it is that now Imbolc is not just a time for me to look forward to a new crop of lambs to welcome into the world, but also to reflect on how I may make myself more open to the world as the year unfolds.