Chapter Fourteen – Our First Sheep Arrive

When we started the sanctuary we made our decision and subsequent plans based on our personal finances, energies and time. We always knew that this was our responsibility and it would be down to us to fulfil all the needs and obligations that the animals would require. However, it soon became very clear that we wouldn’t be standing alone. Friends, family and many erstwhile strangers became as much a part of our project as we are ourselves. Our sanctuary ‘family’ is to us a massive, warm bear hug which gets us through our very darkest times (because there are dark and testing times both physically and emotionally).

Support comes in a wide spectrum with each hue as valuable as the other. There are those that  set up direct debits, that send us a quiet paypal gift, that send us their towels or duvets, that rake up their fallen apples or acorns and drop them off to us, that fundraise, that order things from Amazon, that give us their old garden tools, that send us used print cartridges that we can recycle for a penny or two, that volunteer their time and energies. Some people come significant distances to aid us, some pop from next door, some live on the other side of the country, some live abroad, many of them have never met us or our residents and yet they still offer to stand with us all.

Our very first volunteer Ellie continues to give up her valuable weekends and takes the most amazing photographs of the animals, one of my dearest friends Lady Croxford ceaselessly orders from our wish lists, our friend and neighbour Lisa has dropped off countless bags of fallen apples from gardens that she works on, the most dependable friend in the world Emma likes and shares every Facebook post, my amazing cousin Neil has created wonderful films of the sanctuary and Monica consistently supplies us with fruit and vegetables.

Now, with experience under our belts, we realise that without this level of support our undertaking would ultimately have failed. The sanctuary is not a two person operation by any stretch of the imagination, you need an army and we are blessed to have one build of its own accord. It’s an army that is constantly growing and is valued beyond measure.

Two of the first people to join that army we only met shortly after we moved to Herefordshire. The day that Kelly met Marianna she came home and enthused about this wonderful couple from Slovakia whom she had immediately bonded with. Marianna shared a love of all animals and had quite a menagerie of quails, rabbits, dogs, chickens and, as Kelly described, a farting cat. Some people you connect with instantly, that’s how it was with Kelly and Marianna and after I met her and her husband Peter it was the same for me. Instinctively I knew these were people that you could depend on, that would be there for you when you called. Time has duly proved me right in that judgement as we have called on them many times and they have never failed us.

One evening, shortly after Kelly had first made Marianna’s acquaintance, Marianna called her on the phone.

‘Kelly,’ Marianna started in her unmistakeable tone, ‘do you know anyone who would have a sheep?’

‘A sheep? What do you mean?’ Kelly replied. This was before we had even contemplated opening a sanctuary but had already acquired some chickens and goats.

‘I need to find a home for a sheep by this weekend.’ Marianna said.

‘I don’t understand,’ Kelly answered, ‘why on earth do you need to find a home for a sheep?’

‘Well, if I don’t find a home for it by this weekend then it will be slaughtered and I can’t let that happen.’ Marianna replied with tears in her voice.

‘Well, I think we can take a sheep, but I don’t understand why it’s your problem Marianna and why this particular sheep?’

There was a pause on the phone and a slight sniffle, then Marianna began to explain the situation.

In the spring Marianna had helped a local farmer with his lambing for which he was undoubtedly grateful but who admitted to Marianna that he was unable to pay her for her assistance, however, in lieu he would gift her one of the lambs. Marianna, not quite appreciating what the farmer meant by ‘gifting her’ one of the lambs was delighted and subsequently spent the summer visiting the lamb with its mother and forging a quite significant bond. Due to the young ovine being dark coloured Marianna duly named it Ebony or Ebby for short.

Young lambs have an inherent ability to show joy. They melt any stony heart with their carefree bouncing and frolicking and Marianna’s heart, which was in no way stony in the first place, was melted to a mush by Ebby’s spirit and nature. Which meant that when the farmer told her that her freezer would need to be ready by the following week because the lambs were going off to be slaughtered and that her ‘gift’ of a lamb was not for a live one, but rather the carcass of one, she was thrown into an emotional turmoil and panic. She begged and pleaded with the farmer not to kill Ebby but to no avail, he did however give her the option of finding it a home.

‘We’ll take it Marianna, don’t worry’, Kelly repeated.

‘No, no Kelly, I didn’t mean for you to have it, I just wanted to know if you knew anyone that would take it.’

‘I do know someone, us. It’s fine, we’ve got the space and we’ve got a CPH number, it can go in with the goats.’ Kelly was stoic and unhesitating in her commitment to rescue the doomed creature.

‘Oh Kelly, that is wonderful, thank you, thank you, I’ll tell the farmer.’ Marianna replied, her tears of relief quite evident to Kelly on the other end of the phone.

‘It’s fine, just let us know when it’s coming, I’ll tell Peter’ Kelly said.

‘Tell Peter what?’ I asked coming into the lounge and hearing my name.

Kelly looked up at me scowling and shaking her head to tell me to be quiet, then said goodbye to the phone and hung up.

‘Tell Peter what?’ I repeated.

‘That we’re having a sheep,’ Kelly said.

‘Oh right, great, that’ll be nice, when?’ I was trying to assimilate the information properly.

‘Saturday, maybe Sunday, it can go in with the goats until you can make another paddock for it.’ 

‘Right,’ I said, musing. I was new at the creating of enclosures game but the goat paddock had tested every muscle and every brain cell and had taken me an absolute age so I wasn’t immediately enamoured with the idea of making another paddock so soon.

‘But ….’ I started.

‘Shhhhhhh’ Kelly shut me up with a hiss and a raised palm, she had her phone to her ear and was clearly waiting for someone to answer. I shrugged and went back to the kitchen to make a tea. Five minutes or so later I came back into the lounge with a steaming brew in my hand. Kelly was looking smug and contented.

‘All ok?’ I asked.

‘Yep, all sorted’ she replied.

‘Good, so it’s arriving at the weekend then.’

‘Well yes, Marianna’s sheep is,’ she started.

‘Marianna’s?’ I quizzed.

 Kelly sighed at my lack of being up to speed and then duly explained why we were having Mariana’s sheep.

‘Right, that’s fine, great.’ I replied, quite excited about the new arrival.

‘But we’ve got another two arriving on Friday.’ Kelly then splurted out quite matter of factly.

Tea spurted from my mouth.

‘You what?’ I stuttered.

‘Well, you can’t just have one sheep on its own, it needs a flock, so I found two more for her.’

‘You found two more?’

‘Yes, from that farmer we bought those feed troughs from, I gave him a call to see if his lambs had gone off yet and he said they hadn’t so I asked him if we could buy one from him at slaughter price.’

‘Slaughter price?’ I questioned, ‘what’s that at the moment then?’

‘A hundred pounds’ she answered.

‘Right, so we’re taking in one sheep and then are buying another at a hundred pounds?’

‘No, we’re taking in one sheep and then buying another for a hundred pounds, and then because the farmer wasn’t happy to transport just one on its own to us as that would be too stressful for the sheep he said he’d sell us another at fifty pounds.’ Kelly explained patiently.

‘A hundred and fifty quid!’

‘Yes.’

‘Friday’

‘Yes, Friday for the first two and then Ebby is arriving at the weekend.’

‘Ebby being Marianna’s sheep?’ I tried to clarify.

‘Yes.’

‘Right,’ my head was whirring. ‘Better to get to work then!’

Friday afternoon duly arrived along with the first two young ewes that we had saved from someone’s dinner plate. I’m not sure which one of us named them, but most likely it was Kelly as subsequently I have discovered she names every single resident whilst I just tend to number them (in the mornings I’ll go into the lovebird aviary, will inevitably find two of them quickly and will call out ‘where’s number three then?’ who will then pop its head out from somewhere. I continue this sort of accounting for the rest of the morning rounds not thinking of names, but just that we have the right number of individuals. That’s not to say that I don’t think of all our residents as individuals but I don’t have the need or memory capacity to name every single one of them. Kelly on the other hand does). The two ewes were named Candy and Flossie.

The following afternoon the buzzer on our gates rang and Marianna and Peter’s car sat idling waiting for us to open up. I called Kelly to the front and we stood by the garage somewhat confused, bemused and amused as their small red car drove down the drive towards us.

‘They can’t have a sheep in the back of that car can they?’ I asked Kelly.

‘They can’t,’ she answered, ‘but I think they have.’

Peter waved enthusiastically from the driver’s seat, pulled the car up and climbed out. He’s a big, stocky man who managed to make the car seem smaller than it was. He waved and greeted us and came to chat to us but was halted mid-stride by a banging on the rear passenger window. There, almost imperceptibly was our wonderful friend Marianna whose hand rapping on the window was the only visible part of her.

‘Oops!’, Peter exclaimed with a cheeky smile and turned back immediately to the car. He put his hand on the door handle and carefully opened the door. A dark woollen shape began to ooze out. Peter grabbed it and gently wrestled a young ewe from the back seat, revealing with each movement a little more of his wife who was pinned beneath the ovine and holding committedly to its neck.

In shock Kelly and I stood uselessly by watching the scene unfold not sure whether to jump in and help, offer words of advice or just smile and try not to laugh. We chose the latter.

Eventually man, wife and sheep were all out of the car with Marianna and Peter smiling broadly in welcome.

‘You made it.’ I opened up with, not really sure of how to start a conversation when I was still reeling from what I had just seen. ‘Wasn’t exactly expecting you to bring the sheep on your lap Marianna.’

‘It was the best way,’ Marianna started, wheezing a little from her exertions, ‘only a short distance and she’s just left her mumma so I needed to cuddle her.’

Marianna, is another of those massive hearted people we meet so many of who think of their animals first and themselves second. Her compassionate and selfless spirit is a constant inspiration.

It was at this point however that we were all able to relax and a simultaneous bout of laughter erupted as the ludicrosity of bringing a sheep to us in a car, on the backseat, on a lap, registered.  

I wiped the tears of laughter from my eyes  and looked over at Peter, he was clearly showing the strains of still holding fast to Ebby, so I suggested we introduced her to her new friends.

The three sheep settled in quickly with their temporary shared paddock with the goats and with each other. There were some initial testy introductions, but like infants at a new school they soon found that they had more in common than not.

Kelly’s childhood life on a farm has given her a familiarity with a lot of domestic animals but keeping sheep was new to me, so I wanted to get a grip on my new situation as quickly as possible just as we had both done when we brought goats into our lives. So I bought the requisite books, read avidly and enrolled on a couple of courses. I was soon feeling confident, educated and in control.

It wouldn’t be long before my lack of experience and my naivety would endanger our wards and act as a firm kick up the backside.