United Suffolk Sheep Association

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December/January 2003/2004

By the time you good people get our Suffolk News, it will be around Christmas time, my favorite holiday.  It’s always an exciting time. The grandkids are all here turning our old farm home into a real Christmas scene. Our nearly 300 purebred ewes will be driven down our busy street, across a 5-lane highway, past Wal-Mart’s, Meijer’s and Menards’s huge stores. This has been our old custom that my children, and now the grandkids enjoy and will always remember.  After the drive, my good wife makes a huge breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and so forth. Driving 300 ewes down our street looks more like 3,000. In fact, it’s a sight. The city people are so curious; in fact they love us and our sheep. I tell them that we are back in the 1880s having our annual drive; this is close to a two mile trip. It’s done fast and furious and you can bet that the old ewes are tired and glad to be home from their summer pasture.

            As the years go by, I find myself writing less about our sheep or livestock in general. I feel that we have plenty of experts giving advice, maybe too many. In the future, I’ll throw out my opinions and write about perhaps more important things, like what a flock of sheep can do for families- bringing them together by working together and of course, making money. For the life of me, I’ll never figure out why these so-called sheep papers have not mentioned the great year we have all had in the sheep business. At times I feel that they have concentrated on the negative so long that it has come to be a habit.

            As my title says, this is only story telling time, maybe nothing more. I heard this story a few years ago about an old fella who had worked at the same job all of his life.  There was nothing that he didn’t know about the business. In fact, he had all the answers.  The trouble was though he had all the answers, there were no questions; his great knowledge was wasted.

            I was reminded of this story when my grandson, Jeff, who graduated from Michigan State University last year and is now in the insurance business, wanted a loan from good old granddad for a down payment on a house. He met a wonderful girl from college; she comes from an outstanding family and is a financial expert. She had everything on paper and seemed to be an expert on money matters; I was impressed. It didn’t take me long to see that the two of them were serious about having a future together. As always, I gave them my lecture on marriage, telling them that picking a partner was the most important and serious thing that two people could do. I probably talked to them for thirty minutes of the good and bad aspects of two people having a life together. After all, I have been married for 54 years. That must make me an expert of the subject of marriage. In short, I had all of the answers, but of course, there were no questions from grandson Jeff, or his pretty girlfriend, Stephanie. Four days later, they came to me with silly grins on their faces and moonstruck looks in their eyes, telling me that they were getting engaged and planning to get married next June.

            After giving it some thought and talking it over with my dear wife, Thelma, of course I was overjoyed. If anyone could make marriage work, we decided that Jeff and Stephanie could. I did give each one of them separate advice, telling Stephanie that it’s a fact that men do not reach maturity until they are 26. I always felt that men were dumb as a stone until they at least reached 30. I told Jeff that my secret was to always act dumb as a fence post or act real charming. The things that I’ve gotten away with over the past 54 years are amazing. This always works well on the grandchildren.

            I was going to give you all a break and not mention sheep at all until a very unfortunate, depressing thing happened to me that I thought that I should share with all Suffolk breeders. In the last issue of the Suffolk News, I told about our friends, the Gibbs family, in Jordan, Montana. Mrs. Gibbs and I have been pen pals over the last three years.  To make a long story short, she invited us to the ranch two years ago. They dropped everything, showed us the sights and told us the history of the state, took us to see many of the big commercial flocks. They treated us as if we were royalty; this year we went back again at the end of July. I thought it only right to show my friendship; after giving it a lot of thought, I would take them an outstanding Suffolk ram, one that would be good for the commercial buyer, yet help their purebred program as well.

            Now for the sad part of this fun story. The ram lamb had little interest in the ewes that the Gibbs had picked out for him. They called us, asking what we thought. My son George and I made a few excuses for the ram lamb, but told them that if he didn’t have the sex drive or libido to really breed ewes like they wanted to, they should take him to market. To my dismay and shock, I got a letter back in a week, telling me that they did just that; they took him to market. I’ll share a little of Mrs. Gibbs’s hard-hitting letter, and each and every one of you Suffolk breeders breeding big sheep better pay attention, because this is a very serious problem with our breed today. She writes that they would never risk introducing low libido into their genetics. A Suffolk ram lamb is expected to breed aggressively when they are six month or less. If they sold a Suffolk ram lamb that would not breed ewes, their reputation would be dirt. She goes on to say that rams, bulls, and stallions are shipped all over the world for breeding purposes. What good is form without function, meaning no matter how great he looks, what good are they if they don’t breed on time? She says, “Survival of any species depends on libido; don’t worry anymore, the ram did us no harm.”  Tough, hard-hitting letter? You bet.

            The moral of the story this story is probably that I lost the respect of a dear friend when it comes to the Suffolk sheep business. From every bad situation, there is always something to learn.  You can be sure when we call our ram lambs the last of July, we’ll give a close look to the libido situation.

            After that sad story, I’ll tell a more dramatic one. I’ve had this story in the magazine twice since I’ve been writing in the Suffolk News, but I feel that it’s always worth telling.

A Christmas Story

            I’m not one to dwell on the past, but at Christmas I like to reminisce. I feel this is a special time for us parents and grandparents to tell our children stories of the things that we did when we were their age. They should know of our culture and the important moments in our lives.

            We all have great stories, and I thought that I would share my very favorite. It’s a story that I’ve only told my children and a few veterinary students at MSU. Maybe they are the only ones that would really appreciate it. It may be that you had to be there or get the real emotion and meaning of it or that you had to live at the time. It’s not about sheep, blue ribbons, championships, or big trophies. It’s about the pride and faith that men have in their livestock. This is a story of my father and his favorite and most dependable team of horses. I’ll try to write it; if you’re interested, read on.

            We’ll go back to 1938, when my twin brother and I were ten years old. We were just coming out of the great depression of the early 1930’s. Like everyone else, we were as poor as church mice, but things were finally looking up for us and the rest of the country.   

            At the time, we didn’t have a tractor. We had eight good work horses, and we always raised two or three colts a year. My father took great pride in his horses, as he did all of his livestock.  He gave them special care, and in return he expected them to always produce, work, and of course, help him make his living farming.

            It was about dark, a week before Christmas, when we heard a knock on our door.  It was a fellow who owned a fuel truck. He had gotten his truck stuck delivering fuel to one of our neighbors and he wondered if we had a tractor that could pull him out of a very muddy driveway. My father told him that we had no tractor, but he did have a great team of horses that could pull better than most of the tractors of that time.

            The fuel man of course thought that my father was crazy to think that a team of horses could accomplish this tough feat. But my dad assured the man that he could pull him out. We quickly went to the barn to get the horses harnessed. Before we left, my dad made sure that the harness was clean and polished, and he brushed the team’s manes and tails. We hooked them onto a hay wagon and drove the mile to where the truck was stuck.

            By the time we got there, probably 15 or 20 people were standing around waiting for the big show to start. Of course, not one of them thought that our great team could pull the truck out of them mud. We quickly hooked the team to the back of the truck as my father told the fuel man to start the truck and be ready to back up when he started to pull.

            But things did not go as planned. The driver killed his truck, and Dad’s team failed to pull like they were supposed to. I could see by the look in my father’s eyes that he knew he was in trouble, and maybe he had bitten off more than he could handle.

            My father quickly halted his team to a stop. He seized them by their bridles and just stared into their eyes. He then spoke to them in a very stern voice, as though they were human, and told them his very reputation as a horseman and livestock man was at stake. They could pull the load and were not to let him down. Then, he again shook their bridles and just glared at them.

            At this time, I was relieved to see that my dad was in control, and his big team had understood the meaning of his stern words. But the suspense began as he told the driver to start the truck and that he better be able to keep it going. My father had changed his strategy this time.  He backed his big team up and was going to give the truck a huge jerk to get it moving.

            I can still see it and have thought about it a million times. My father had backed his team up. Reins look like shoelaces intertwined with his huge hands. He held the lines so tightly, you could almost hear them crack under the pressure. He was calling out their names, very slowly at the start, his voice getting louder with each second. When he thought his team was together and ready to pull, he let out a war whoop to PULL! When the force of the pull hit the horses, it picked their front ends off the ground as though they were dangling in the air. They were breathing so hard that it looked as though fire and smoke were streaming from their nostrils in the cold night.

            When my father’s powerful team came down, they were together, pulling like the champions that they were. My father was calling out their names, commanding them not to stop. He had let the lines almost drop and was towering over them as the horses were almost up to their knees in the soft, muddy ground, but every step got easier. When they reached the road my dad even put a flare of showmanship into his great pull. He turned his horses sharply in the road and just pulled the truck around to straighten in out.

            The look on his face was one my brother and I had seldom seen during the hard years of the ‘30’s. He was almost laughing, his eyes dancing like big brown diamonds.  What he did next I will never forget. He took the horses by the bridles, looked them deep in the eyes, and thanked them for not letting him down. The horses, still breathing almost fire and smoke with slobber all over their mouths, rubbed their damp heads all over his shoulders, knocking his hat off. It was like three kids bragging and laughing about a great victory, a truly joyous moment. Everybody there was shaking hands with my dad, confirming what a great team of horses he had. You can be sure that he was enjoying that special moment as much as we were.

            We quickly hooked the horses up to the wagon, and I got to drive them home.  The Christmas trees were all on in the neighbor’s homes. The sounds of the horses’ hooves on the pavement were like a Christmas carol as I let them trot home.

            Like I said at the start, maybe you had to be there to appreciate this special event.  Or maybe one had to live at that time to appreciate the special emotion that my brother, father, and I had felt that cold night. To me, it will always be the greatest livestock event that I have ever seen. The ribbons and trophies weren’t there, but there was no doubt that my father was a master livestock man.