Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2021/06/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Philippe, ahhh sheep! Those photos make the memories just flood back. Like Yorick, I knew them well. When I was ten years of age, my Dad bought a small farm (8 hectares) with its own beach down in West Cork as a holiday home. Sounds idyllic doesn't it, but the only problem was it was over 370 kilometres away from Dublin over winding, bumpy, dangerous, pre-EU subsidised roads and, with a restoration job needed on the 1850 farmhouse, we were up and down like a jockey's bollocks. When the house was restored, he got the bright idea that it might as well wash its own face, decided to rent it out when we weren't there, and to make any trip more efficient, also decided to put six caravans (mobile homes) in the field beside the house, and rent them out as holiday lets as well. He, like you and your mates, discovered pretty rapidly that grass and other vegetation grows very quickly, and needs constant maintenance, so decided that animals were the solution. He bought a small herd of bullocks, and after the first year discovered that many of our tenants (mainly from UK cities) were cowering and whimpering in fear in the caravans from the size of the huge udderless bovines that roamed outside their fragile quarters, freely defecating and decorating the adjoining landscape with their runny ordures. Most of the holidaymakers, used to only animals the size of a large dog at best, thought that they were bulls and were terrified. After an end of season rethink, the bullocks were trailered away to market tout suite. We got 20 sheep instead as they cropped the grass significantly lower, had way smaller and more solidly formed ordures, and certainly wouldn't scare the punters away. They were hardy looking Blackface and my Dad thought that would be that. Well it wasn't. I could write a small book on the various diseases that the things got. It didn't help that the local small farmer (LSF) that we got to move them from one rotated pasture to the other, hadn't a clue about sheep and their diseases. Boy, do they have a lot of diseases. I became an expert in the damn things, foot rot, fly strike, liver fluke, etc., not to mention the additional joys of dipping them, neutering them, docking their tails, and shearing them. Of course, the sheep had the annoying habit of dying at very inconvenient times and their bodies being discovered in strange places.? I remember at one stage when I was fifteen or sixteen, a woman holidaymaker rushing up from the beach to my father and me, crying out, "Mr. Barry, Mr. Barry, one of your sheep is caught in the quicksand - and it's now dead!!"? Having calmed the distressed woman down, but bewildered by the description of quicksand, we went down to the beach and found a dead decaying sheep with its head buried in the all too solid sand. It was one of ours. My Dad sent me back up for a shovel, and standing back when I returned, told me to dig its head out. I did so and discovered a large rock placed on top of the head. Apparently the sheep had died a week or so before, and our LSF had buried it in the beach sand. He must have though that sheep flesh was incorruptible, but hadn't reckoned with the tide, and buried it below high water mark. The tide did as it does, coming in and out twice a day, the body putrefied, bloated with gas, and pushed its way to the surface. Realising what had happened, my father turned to me and said "Douglas, drag it up to the foreshore well above high tide and bury it in a hole with at least a metre of earth on top of it, and do it this evening, so that no one knows it's there." Well you don't argue with a former boxing champion, so that evening, I had to do it. The grave digging wasn't the problem, but dragging a disintegrating rotting heavy sheep the 40 metres up to higher ground was nauseating, especially as the head separated from the body close to the grave and the stench got even worse. It may have been the worse job I ever had, but certainly cured me of the urge to murder anyone as I couldn't go through with the disposal of another body...:-) Here's a photo of me with my brothers and father down there in 1965 http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/DouglasBray/Videos/a/b/c/Old+Voigtlander+pics/Family+and+JLB+at+gate+Summer+1965.jpg.html Douglas On 06/06/2021 10:32, Philippe via LUG wrote: > Background of the photos : I live in a village built around a medieval > castle and its fortifications. Regularly clearing up its glacis from trees > and bramble to preserve the site and sights is time, sweat, and money > consuming to say the least. > So some friends and I have had the project of using sheep as cheap > cleaners but this required an initial clean up, and electric fences in the > downhill parts.That?s what we?ve been kept busy doing over the last months. > > It all started in the late fall > http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Phileica/Playground/2021-+Moutons+du+Glacis-6341.jpg.html > > The mighty team at the end of the first day. > http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Phileica/Playground/2021-+Moutons+du+Glacis-6350.jpg.html > > > Finally, yesterday was ? Inauguration Day ?, and the first four sheep > were released. I might now find more time for photography as a result :-) > > > http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Phileica/Playground/2021-+Moutons+du+Glacis-6.jpg.html > > http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Phileica/Playground/2021-+Moutons+du+Glacis-7.jpg.html > > > The masterminds of Operation Sheep and, in his shorts, the shepherd who > selected the sheep for their ability to live in these conditions. > > http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Phileica/Playground/2021-+Moutons+du+Glacis-22.jpg.html > > > Amities > > Philippe, still on jab one only ... > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information