The Back End

I have a bum fascination. I catch myself checking-out the rears of the wooly beasts in the community. It’s indicative of age, health, and happiness.

The dead sheep in the neonatal room was Baby Stephen’s mother. Her back end was disgusting: matted, crimson brown, and rotting. It is obvious she was sick and laying on her hind quarters during the last part of her life.

On the other end, Baby Stephen could use baby-wipes. Infant lambs produce mustered colored waste that runs down their tail and back legs as their digestive systems are not yet fully developed.

Teenagers have the most appealing tushes. Full of energy, these youth keep a clean bottom by prancing around, rarely taking a seat to soil their fuzzy fanny.

As sheep mature, they display various stages of dingle-berries. The more senior the sheep, the more the berries grow into pinecones.

In the nursery, I watch lambs nurse. This is certainly my favorite rear view. There are few things cuter than the blur of a small white tail as it flutters in happiness from underneath its mother’s coat.

It is evening. I’m feeling as filthy as a middle-aged sheep (mercifully minus the dingle berries). I walk back to the house to clean up.

The shower is less than two feet in diameter and enclosed by a curtain that characteristically does not keep the water off the floor. In a novice small-shower move, I drop the soap; the shower curtain attaches itself to my wet body and run-off spills everywhere.

I’m still ginning. After a month of sitting on my bum on the shower floor with my leg propped up on the bidet, hand washing with a hand towel, THIS now is glorious! I’m standing; I’m showering; and if I had a tail, it would be fluttering.

In Neonatal

Placing a fresh batch of hay on top of a soiled hay bale, I make myself a “clean” seat in the neonatal room. With me are three preemies, four milking mothers, and one dead sheep. I wonder how long the sheep has been dead. The two stronger infants climb over the corpse; drool still runs from her nose.

Since my arrival, I regularly check on the progress of the littlest preemie, Baby Stephen. Sheep are not named at Ca’Mazzetto but as it was uncertain if the abandoned lamb would survive his early birth, I thought to give him more of a fighting chance and thus named him after someone who’s passionate about life.

The largest lamb with a brown freckled face chews on the shoelaces of my Sorrels; I offer an index finger. The second lamb follows suit; he gets my pinkie. The two infants suck my fingers while Baby Stephen remains in the corner with his head cocked back. At least he’s not shivering like he was when I first met him.

Not surprisingly, with no milk the finger-sucking is appealing for only so long. The lambs look for a real teat but get head butted when entering mom from the front and kicked when entering mom from the back. I pin the unwilling mother between my legs, grab Baby Stephen and place him in the milk vicinity like I’ve seen Pasqual do.

“Bravo!” Pasqual says when Baby Stephen successfully attaches to a nipple.

“Aye Madonna!” he curses when the mom urinates on his leg in protest.

Knowing the drill, the older infants scurry to the secured mother - free milk with no kicking and no head butting. Ah.. but I know the drill too! Being bigger, they’d push my little friend aside, so still with mom between my legs and Baby Stephen underneath, I hold the freckled lamb with one arm and place the second lamb on top of the mother. No free lunch for these two.

“Bravo!” I say as Baby Stephen eats.

“Aye Madonna!” I curse as the freckled face lamb urinates on my arm in protest.

The Barn

The Ca’Mazzetto Barn is an E-ticket Fun House. It’s my favorite ride on the farm; it’s where all the 4-legged action takes place: feeding, milking, mating, birthing, nurturing and even dying.

This house is the home for the several hundred sheep and lamb. There are various rooms and passageways, gates and fences, stairs and platforms, bathtubs and hay dispensers, pens and nurseries, corridors and feeding stalls. On the floor sits hay, feces, mud and urine. On the metal beam ceiling hangs string, like stalactites in a cave.

The sheep move through this maze without so much as a floor map, occasionally spurred on by a dog or Pasqual yelling “Ale! Ale!”

My first task: figuring how to enter the barn. There is an array of openings but all seem to be blocked via a sheet of metal, barricaded door, or wood piling. Wisely, I deduce that if the sheep can use the dogs for guidance, so can I. Bubul the smallest dog leads the way. My canine friend jumps on a wooden frame, over a wire fence, on to an inverted palette, through a wall opening and into Room Function x_(y^2 ) (Maybe in a few weeks I’ll have construed what the room functions are but at this point, it remains a variable in an unsolved equation.)

There is a brief moment of silence upon entering the premises; hundreds of beady eyes look up at me. The moment is over and the background music comes to the foreground in forte! Every pitch of “bah” is heard. A number of sheep “jingle” from the bell around their neck. Bubul barks. Few sick sheep cough. And the head-master gives orders to move. The concerto sounds like this:

Bah Bah BAh BAh bbbaaa bbbaaa Jingle Jingle BAAH bark bark bah “Ale! Ale!” bah bah bah cough cough BaH BaH “Ale! Ale! Bastardo.. ALE!” Baaaaaaaaaaah.

It’s pure magic and worth the price of admission.

Three Moments

Years ago when traveling through Europe, we traversed a valley. Down below, a young women bundled in layers of wool tended a flock of sheep. She held a large stick to move them around as they grazed the grass lands. Next to girl was man’s best friend - her companion and fellow worker - the header’s sheep dog.

The moment was captured on film by my traveling companion and my best friend but already the picture was forever imprinted in my mind. I could be that girl..perhaps in another time, another life, but I could be her.

--

On my computer in Santa Barbara, there is another picture. The moment I saw the photo last year, I down loaded it from the Agriturismo Ca' Mazzetto website. On my desktop, the Coccorano hills of Italy make home to a flock of sheep; the working dog takes refuge from the sun under an olive tree. Every day I would look at the picture. I could be there.. perhaps one day.

--

This afternoon I completed applying primer to the repaired sections of the restaurant wall. Slowly I walk to the stables where the clamor of the evening feeding and milking can be heard. Pasquale opens the gates of the barn and the flock of sheep hustle out to the fields and into the evening sun.

In this moment I knew.. one day is here.

Mind Reader

Holding a bucket of concrete-putty substance in one hand and a bucket of patching tools in the other, my host darts up the path to their “restaurant”; he plans to repair holes in the old farm walls before the arrival of the Easter guests that will be dining there next month. I’m thinking it’s a never ending job and am rather embarrassed by my bedroom thoughts upon arrival. (I wonder if he read my mind.)

Trotting on the path behind his owner is one of Ca’Mazzetto’s four dogs. And limping behind the collie am I, unable to take my eyes of Pasquale’s left pant leg that is tucked inside his striped sock; it’s adorable.

But even before the sock, Pasquale endeared himself to me last night when we were introduced; he asked if I was a vegetarian. (I wonder if he read my mind.) The girls were at dance class and he was making dinner for the teenage boys; they wanted sausages.

On my personal menu, dinner was an assortment of vegetables and salads, various breads, seasoned spelt with carrots, and the crowning glory: farm made pecorino cheese, farm made fresh ricotta, and farm made olive oil.

Clearly I’ve come to the right place.
(And you don't need to be a mind reader to figure that out.)

Reality

I’m scared.

This is not at all like I pictured my new wwoof quarters. And why is it when apprehension is involved I’m always cold? I sit in what is to be my room for the next month - zipped up in my down puffy jacket and fingerless gloves - trying to find comfort in the little that is familiar. The hole in the bed cover and the hole in the wall do not make me feel better.

Nervously I crack peanuts from Leonora’s parting gift when she took me to the Borgotaro train station this morning. God I miss her. It is evening in Valfabbrica now and outside the wind howls. The driver who picked me up from the final bus station reported snowfall last night.

The room is sparse. There is a single lamp and a roll-out folding bed which currently doubles as my desk and chair. My mind wanders to where I was this time yesterday - in front of a cozy fire, in the company of my dear friends. Boris invited Sarah, Maria and me to his home for our departing dinner. We discussed quantum physics and parallel realities. If I were a Master, I’d jump into the alternate reality of last night. I crave warmth, comfort, and love.

And that is it. Even as I write the word – love – it becomes clear to me that the weather and the accommodations have little to do with how I am feeling. Unaccompanied, by myself, alone, I sit in anxious solitude waiting to meet my new host family who are currently not here in the house.

I take a fresh look: three rolled towels are carefully placed next to my bed; dried lavender is tucked in the corner of the room; a small red petunia sits on the window sill and a single picture hangs on the wall. It is of a white-bearded man gently carrying a white-wooly sheep. How could I have missed all that before?

I’m pretty certain this reality will be just fine; I just needed a change of view.

The Last And The First

It is my last day at Casa Lanzarotti. Tomorrow morning, I leave the crutches, I leave this farmhouse, I leave the chickens, I leave the cows, I leave the valley, and I leave my friends. Tomorrow morning I depart for Camezzo, a new farm, new livestock, new countryside, and I’m certain – new friends.

Still I am sad. I’ve never liked good-byes.

In the last few hours I’ve written and re-written my last few stories. Each one remains on my laptop unfinished as if defying the inevitable end of my Casa Lanzarotti journey. Like me, they’re reluctant to reach some concluding finale.

The story ideas now seem exhausted.

On Friday I had my last bread day. On Saturday I had my last clean-the-mouse-poop-in-the-lab day. On Sunday I had my last “free-to-just-be” day. I find comfort in routine and yet I know my life yearns for continued growth and experiences. It is not finished.

It is time to go.

Maria runs into the house from her morning chores crying “The sheep! The sheep!” I’ve heard this before. Only now, on this last day in Albareto, our pregnant sheep has her baby, correction, babies: twin black lambs. The mother cries her loud protective “BAH”; the first lamb cries his tiny confused “bah”; the second lamb cries his tiny confused “bah”; and Brigit cries her tears of emotions.

It is my last day at Casa Lanzarotti; it is our lambs’ first. Welcome my little friends; it is a good life.