Just as I hit Send on the previous Harvest Haven Happenings with my cute chicken story, Martin called in his distraught, woe-is-me voice.
"Marilyn, I just made the worst management decision ever here at the farm."
"Oh no, Martin. Tell me. I'm sitting down."
Here's his story.
I have a confession. I've made my worst management decision to date. It was supposed to be an innocent shortcut. Over in moments, painless... I thought it was quite clever. What could go wrong?
Worst mistake ever! It wasn't short. It wasn't painless. It wasn't clever. And everything, yes everything, went wrong.
As most exasperating, painful, frustrating, exhausting, infuriating and tearful situations begin on this farm, it started with a peaceful flock of sheep. They had run out of grass and several of the ewes formed a committee and agreed amongst themselves to yell incessantly until I couldn't hear myself think anymore. (I mention this because it helps me to justify myself throughout the story.)
You see, I needed to move my girls and their lambs back to their winter corral so I could dismantle their temporary electric fence and set it up around the next pasture.
Now this is where things started going south. Without drawing a map of my corral setup, I'll just tell you that the straightest line between where the sheep were and home base was through the pen with one-year old cattle and then through the pen with the cows and calves.
Now being mathematically minded, I gravitated toward the straight line theory. James, on the other hand, thinking outside the box, mentioned something about going around the corrals but I probably didn't hear him because the sheep were yelling.
So I laid out the plan. We'll feed the cattle and they'll all mind their own business with their heads in their feeders and we'll just scoot all the sheep right past them and down the alley way to home base. Simple enough!
So we fed the cattle and opened the first set of gates. All the sheep ran through past the yearlings! VICTORY! Except one lamb! And the chaos began.
All the other lambs look over their shoulders wondering why the one lamb wasn't following. Perhaps he found something good to eat. So they all turned around to find out. Their moms knew where home base was, so they went on without the lambs.
At this point, the lambs regretted their decision and started yelling for their mothers. The yearlings (teenage cattle) heard the commotion and pulled their heads out of the feeders. They had obviously never been taught to pick on animals their own size and decided to chase the lambs. Now the cattle and the sheep were yelling.
I would have been yelling too, but I was out of breath from running back and forth trying to split them up. We managed to get the lambs out of the frying pan and chased them into the fire.
The cows were waiting for their chance at the fun. I'll make it short. There were lambs running between cows, under cows, and attempting to leap over cows. I LITERALLY witnessed airborne lambs collide with cattle midflight and land on their backs. It was anarchy.
Miraculously, after many cycles around the corral we reunited all the terrified lambs with their relatively indifferent mothers. The cows had a good laugh and went back to eating. The sheep forgot the whole thing happened once they had something to eat and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Thankfully, there were no casualties besides my pride, which was fatally wounded. James muttered something about how "maybe next time we should go around." I asked him why he didn't mention something sooner. He gave me one of those looks and walked away.
So there it is. My worst management decision to date. I know what it means to feel sheepish.