Marking Lambs
Marking lambs at Texas Spring after rain. CKD photo
They leave before the crack of dawn. I drive up later, just at sunrise, with the breakfast fixings: big folding table, seven dozen eggs, bacon, sausage, chorizo that Linda has cooked already at the house; red wine, salami, yellow cheeses, French bread. There are fifteen pounds of parboiled potatoes to be sauteed in the giant paella pan with the sweet red peppers in the shelter of the sheepwagon. There are at least twenty-five of them this year, Linda says, and quite a crop of trainees--shall we say sheep-handler interns??--Basque guys from town who are brining their sons to see how it was done years ago, how it's still done today, twice a year in the chilly mornings of spring time.
Julia does her part. CKD photo
It rained steadily last night, but there's a breeze and the sunshine loosens everyone up. They devour the mountains of food we prepare, and more that they have brought, cookies and doughnuts and coffee. The sun warms their stiff arms and hands as they relax after this day's hard work, over by noon.
Ryan Dufurrena and Don Jones enjoy a break in the action. CKD photo.
I see the first antelope twins of the summer on the way back.