Hello Reader,

We live in strange times.

This is not news to anyone currently living in these times with me. We’re all in the strange soup together.

This may be one reason why I tend to check out when Greg turns on the news at night. I don’t really require more evidence to build my case for The Oddness in How Things Are Right Now.

I’m sure all of you have some spectacular examples of your own. Rather than watch the news, which tends toward the dreariest examples of strange, I’d love to swap stories with you all. I’m sure that would be much more entertaining.

Here’s my latest entry:

As many of you know from previous writings, we are pretty new to this whole agricultural scene. I grew up in a university town that houses an exceptionally fine College of Agriculture. Both Greg and I got our degrees at that university, but in non-agricultural colleges.

These days, I find myself wishing that agricultural knowledge spread as freely and easily as the scents that wafted from the barns surrounding campus and permeated classrooms. There is nothing like trying to ignore the smell of cow manure during a discussion on aesthetics in a philosophy class.

In any case, I lived and studied for approximately 18 years in a location full of knowledge that I would find extremely helpful today and acquired exactly none of it. Well done, me.

So, we have, essentially, started from square one. This is fine. In one sense, we all do. We just don’t all do it in our mid-fifties in a crash course. But that’s okay. Lots do this, too. We are all capable of learning, and there are more resources available and accessible to us than you could shake a stick at.

UNLESS, of course, you want to buy a laminated card with five particular shades of pink on it.

Here’s the situation:

It is legal for me to buy sheep, breed sheep, vaccinate sheep (with NEEDLES!), castrate male sheep, treat various illnesses with medications and procedures, and graphically and memory-searingly internally assist with birthing during lambing with sheep with no education, certification, or board supervision of any kind. Whatsoever.

However, if I want to buy a FAMACHA card, I must go through a certification process.

What is this guarded resource? How is it used? Well, I’ll tell you.

FAMACHA stands for FAffa MAlan CHArt (which sounds a little like a sheep named it, doesn’t it?). It’s a small card with five rectangles, with different shades of a salmony pink ranging from dark to very pale, and corresponding numbers (or “scores”) from 1-5, with 1 being the darkest and 5 being the palest.

The chart is used by comparing the shades to the color of the inner lower eyelid of a sheep or goat. If the eyelid is very pale, the score suggests significant anemia and may indicate that treatment for barber-pole worms is needed. If the eyelid color matches the lower numbers, the animal is not showing signs of anemia by this test.

Helpful, right? You’d think we’d want one of these in the hands of everyone who cares for sheep, wouldn’t you? Like it should be present at birth, hung around each lamb’s neck by a pretty ribbon with instructions “Use this to keep me healthy! Also, apologies in advance for the dumb stuff I’ll do!”

But no. No, indeed. These are not free for the asking. These are not even for the buying! In order for me to acquire one of these laminated cards with pink rectangles, I am required to either attend an in-person training course (wanna guess how many of those are available in rural SE Kansas?) or go through an online training course.

The online training courses consist of watching a series of videos about the evils of parasites, the necessities of rotating pastures, and many other good and lovely pieces of information. I have to pass a test on all this information. And then I must make my own video to demonstrate that I can perform the technique of checking eyelids. I send all that in and if it’s approved, then and only then do I get the privilege of paying $20 for my precious card with 5 pink rectangles.

I’m a first-born daughter. I have RULE FOLLOWER tattooed in my bones in all caps. In bold. I had a nervous breakdown the first time I accidentally went the wrong way on a one-way street.

But I’m telling you, folks. I would like to talk to the manager on this one. And when I do, I would like to plunk Fitz down on the counter as exhibit A and say “This one’s coming back from anemia, and please have a seat while I tell you all the things I’ve learned and done since we encountered anemia and why would you make it cumbersome for me to get a tool that would help me do this better and prevent it more effectively for the rest of my flock?”

Then I’d plunk Lucy down as Exhibit B and have her explain the absurdity of restricting laminated reference material from people who are expected to make internal rearrangements as necessary during lambing.

Then maybe Frederick can explain the sharp shiny things. Or maybe it’d be best to keep him out of it.

Greg's Got Questions

Thank you to those of you who participated in the poll last week.

The winning question: Regarding that Odyssey marathon movie that I was able to watch without having to take a bathroom break (that’s a humble brag in case you have any other guys in their mid-50s reading your newsletter) and the sheep scene. How in the world did they get those sheep trained to do what they did? Based on what you told me, there was no CGI and that flock behaved nothing like ours would have, even on their best day. If you want to explain why that one guy was banging that thing on the table as he chanted phrases, that would be great too. I have no clue what that was all about.

This called for research, pal, and oh, boy, were we rewarded.

It turns out that all the animals for the movie were trained to perform as they did, including the sheep. I know that sounds absurd, but it’s true. And it took about two months for the 40 Italian sheep who were part of the Cyclops’s Cave scene to learn how to do their dance. You have to scroll down a bit to get to the sheep parts, but there’s a transcript of a great interview with Christopher Nolan about the making of the movie that covers some of this, and you can see some behind-the-scene photos on this blog article.

From what I can gather, it’s similar in principle to some of what we’ve done with our sheep. It’s just that we’ve done it accidentally, and these trainers do it intentionally. When we rattle the paddock gate at the end of the day, our sheep come to it. When we open a latch, Fitz hollers (almost) on cue. If we budge the wooden door to the big stall, everybody stands up and faces the door.

These trainers figured out a way to cue the sheep to follow a prescribed path and perform certain actions on cue. But as we know very well, sheep are still sheep and will do their own thing. Apparently, this was exactly what Nolan wanted: authentic sheepiness contained within a rough choreography.

I imagine if they’d tried it with Georgiana and Kitty, they’d have had a mutiny within 2 weeks. Georgiana would have commandeered the IMAX camera, and Kitty would have hijacked craft services for the duration.

As far as the banging, I like the thought that the movie The Odyssey is still functioning as a living thing in the oral storytelling tradition, and that Nolan is the bard for today, shaping the message and the medium to fit his audience. We know there must have been variations through time in what was actually told as “The Odyssey” and so it’s not too much of a departure from that oral tradition to make modifications for today’s audience. Personally, I loved Nolan’s interpretation.

I don’t know, but the banging could be a signal of the communication style of the time the events take place. The Bard telling the story for the suitors uses it as percussion to call for attention and set the rhythm for his poem. Later, when Odysseus is victorious against the suitors, there’s a similar banging that communicates unity and submission. The two occurrences are bookends to the story, as if one were, “Once Upon a Time” and the other were, “The End.”

Or perhaps that banging also echoes something more of our own time, something loud and percussive in our public forums, suggesting that this story is for us, too.

This Week's Questions

(As a matter of procedure, the poll function takes you to another page to submit your vote, so if that happens to you, you’re on the right track!)

Question 1: You mentioned the necessity of rotating pastures and I know we’re doing that. But are we concerned only about barber-pole worms or are we fighting other foes who seek to destroy the citizens of Pemberley? Shall we deploy The Regiment as our protection against these adversaries?

Question 2: 2. I’m not sure I really want to know, but how did the barber-pole worms get their name?

Question 3: Could you explain the procedure you went through to get RULE FOLLOWER tattooed in your bones? Does that require a radiologist? This caused me to wonder if I had misunderstood what a tattoo is and, as a result, severely underestimated the scope to which they can be applied to the human body.

Happy knitting!

Kiersten J

P.S. This is the last week to join the Founding Correspondents and receive the first letter of the very first season of Pemberley Correspondence, planned to begin this September.

Each month I'll tuck a handwritten letter and a few small pieces of Pemberley into an envelope and send them your way. If that sounds lovely, I'd be delighted to have you join us.

P.P.S. You can find this and more of my knitting journal entries at KierstenJ.com.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reply to this email! I read every one!