I went to help my dad feed a group of cows the a couple of weeks ago. As we traveled to the farm, he told me he had something for me in the barn.
“Is it a cat?” I asked, thinking about the time I went to help him gather a litter of feral bob-tailed kittens that had lost their mother. That was an adventure, and there may or may not have been blood drawn, my blood.
“It’s your weathervane,” he said.
The high winds days before blew it off the top of a barn.
There’s a little backstory to that old weathervane and the farm where it came from.
The farm was once a sheep operation. I started working there when I was a teen and continued through college. The weathervane was on top of the lambing barn, where I spent a lot of time in January and February. I spent a lot of time in that barn year-round, actually. We did everything in that barn, be it trimming feet, shearing, vaccinating or deworming. The show lambs would go into freshly strawed pens after their baths in that barn.
My family bought the farm years later from the heirs of the lady I helped.
The sheep lot became a cattle working area, and the lambing barn hasn’t seen lambs in many years, but the ornate, silver weathervane with a sheep on top remained on the old red barn.
Every time we worked cattle or I went through the lot, I looked at the weathervane to make sure it was still there. I mentioned it once in a while to Dad, just to remind him that if he didn’t want it, I did. I always thought it was neat. My nephew offered to scale up to the top of the barn to get it for me a time or two, but I told him we would do it another day.
The lady who previously owned the farm treated me like a daughter, and I learned what I know about sheep from her. She called me one day, very upset because one of her ewes was lambing and having trouble. I got there, and she had been trying to pull a lamb without success.
“It’s just like a cow, only smaller,” she told me as I started working to get the lamb out.
It was a hard pull, but I got the lamb out: one very large ewe lamb. Momma and baby were OK, and the owner was ecstatic. She and her daughter, who lived in another town, named the lamb after me.
My brother made fun of the lamb being named Julie, but that big, beautiful ewe became a champion.
There was an old, crossbred ewe named Hopie on the farm. Hopie brought up the rear when I would call the ewes up, and once she was at the gate, I knew everyone else was there. I may or may not have given her a little extra feed from time to time.
As time went on, I stopped working at the farm, and the owner’s declining health forced the sale of the flock. All of the sheep knickknacks, photos, awards and yard ornaments were soon gone as well. The weathervane eventually became the only sign of sheep left on the place, perhaps forgotten by the family as they cleared the property.
When I got the weathervane home, Bill looked it over and asked me what I planned to do with it.
I told him I didn’t want it on top of something where I couldn’t see it because I had been looking up at it for decades.
About a week later, I came home from work, and Bill had found the perfect spot. We have a big square post along the yard fence. With a sawzall, he leveled the top of the post, and the weathervane is firmly attached. I was worried the cows would think it was a new toy, but they have left it alone.
Walking past it, I spin the sheep to see where she ends up. If there’s a breeze, she will spin to show the direction. If it’s a still day, it’s just fun to give her a twirl.
When I look at the weathervane, I think of my late friend, the other friends I met working with her, a ewe named Julie and old Hopie Girl bringing up the rear. They make me smile, and memories that make you smile are the best memories to have.
Julie Turner-Crawford is a native of Dallas County, Mo., where she grew up on her family’s farm. She is a graduate of Missouri State University. To contact Julie, call 1-866-532-1960 or by email at [email protected].
