Mary's Sheep

They’re everywhere and they’re every color. Black ones, white ones, spotted ones….and she names them all.  And the babies….well, she gives them a hug and a kiss just like she would her own babies at nap time….but wait, aren’t they her babies? 

The expression on Mary Skaggs’ face changes from happy to sad back to happy again as she remembers her father and the tradition of sheep in her family. 2015 marks the 60^th year the sheep have been in her family.

“My favorite memory of growing up with a sheep farmer as my dad was going into the fields after the babies were born and carrying them to the barn. Mom and Dad and my brothers and sisters all helped. Dad would put the babies up with their mommies for a few days to make sure they would be ok. We still do that today” said Mary (Rose) Skaggs

            Russell (Plummer) Rose was 28 years old in 1955 when he brought home two Dorset Cross lambs, one ewe and one ram.

His daughter Doris remembers “He was working in construction in Chillicothe, Ohio and staying with Uncle Kit and Aunt Bess. Uncle Kit would bring him home almost every week-end. I remember the day he brought those two little sheep home with him. From time to time he would bring more ewes until he had built a flock of about 30 sheep”.

“Daddy named him Lamb Chop”. Mary’s sister, Loy, remembers her favorite sheep, a little ram. “His mom, Edna, had triplets and she didn’t have enough milk to feed all three so she didn’t want him. I bottled fed him until he was old enough to eat on his own”.

Plummer Rose loved sheep and the land where he raised them, a farm of about 400 acres on Mauk Ridge. He said “They are the most humble creatures God created”. Plummer named each one at birth. Although, he would not harvest the sheep and use them as food, from time to time, he did sale them. “He made it plain that the person purchasing the sheep was not to talk about its fate”, Mary remembers.

In 2005, fifty years after he brought those first two little sheep home, Plummer Rose died from complications of bone and prostate cancer. In January of that year he called his daughter Mary (Rose) Skaggs. She recalls, “It was Sunday after church”, Mary recalls. “His voice was very week. He said ‘I want you to come over and bring your cattle trailer’. When I asked why he just said, ‘Don’t ask why, just come’. John Paul”, Mary’s husband, “and I went out there. He said ‘You’re the only one that has shown the same interest as I have in my sheep. Just promise me you will carry on the tradition”.

“We brought 20-30 sheep home with us. That was ten years ago but it seems like yesterday.”

“I still have the blood line of those two sheep Dad first brought home. Following his tradition, we purchase a new ram each year and keep some of the ewes. Right now we have a flock of 50 counting all the mommies and babies. We care for the sheep, as much as I can, just the way Daddy did”.

As it was while Mary was growing up, tending the sheep is a family project. She and John Paul are joined by their son, Daniel and daughter Emily (Skaggs) Kiser. 

“If it was up to Mary, we would never sell a sheep but we can’t keep them all. We take some to market but rarely do we sell them locally”, said John Paul.

“Just like Daddy, I name each one when it’s born and watch them grow up. They have a personality all their own”, Mary said.

“It shouldn’t take over half hour to feed the sheep but it takes Mary at least two hours” John Paul says with a big smile.

“When I was younger, I wondered why Dad wanted to keep the sheep. It seemed like something was always killing them. The neighbor’s dogs, coyotes, and accidents seemed to take a lot of them away. Now I understand exactly why he kept them. I like to watch them. When I look at the sheep, I think about Daddy. He thought they were the most humble creature God created. To me, he was the most humble person who ever lived. I believe he lives on through the sheep”.

“I think Daddy would be proud of me for the way we raise the sheep with respect and love. I hope my children, Daniel and Emily, will carry on the tradition when John Paul can no longer do it.

Mary and John Paul are not the only members of Plummer Rose’s family who have sheep from his blood line. His great nephew, Donnie and Lori Rose purchased sheep from Mary and John Paul. “Last week when it was 0 degrees outside, one of mine had three babies. She got mastitis and couldn’t feed them so I’m bottle feeding all three,” Donnie said. Donnie and Lori, they too, see the need to carry on the tradition.

Magical Night

 We, as parents, want to give our children a better life than we had. So we purchase expensive gifts, computers and tablets and ipads and cars before they’re mature enough to have one and the list goes on and on and on. Sometimes I wonder why we do such things. When I think back, and when I talk with my children about growing up it isn’t the purchased things they remember. When my youngest son was just six months old, I took my two boys and  ran away from home to never go back again. That's another story too long to tell here. Josh, Kevin and I grew up together at a place we call “the End of the Road”. Many special memories were created in this house and yard and the farm that surrounds it.

Now, in the middle of a cold January my thoughts go back to a snowy night when Kev was about three years old and Josh was nine.

Late in the evening a few huge snowflakes started falling. We sat in the window and counted them, one, two three….

A bit later they were falling faster but still huge we had to count them by twos, two, four, six, eight….

But then those giant flakes really started coming down we counted them by tens…. ten, twenty, thirty, forty….then there was so many we couldn’t count them.

When dark came the driveway to our neighbor’s house was covered with about four inches of snow.

“Wanna go out and play in the snow”, I asked with excitement

“Mom, it’s dark”, Josh was a bit apprehensive.

“Oh but we can see by the night lights”. The light at the corner of our yard and the one in our closest neighbor’s yard met making the snow glisten like sun dancing on a frosty field.

I put Kev’s snow suit on him. He looked like the Michelin man with his arms stuck out and his legs almost stiff from all the padding. By the time I got dressed, Josh was ready to go.

Josh helped me dig through the bathroom closet to find a rope.

When we got outside, we wrapped the center of the rope around my tummy and tied the ends to the handles on the sled. I placed Kevin on the sled so I could pull him down the road. Josh ran from Kevin to me and then behind the sled to help push. Yonna, our dog, bounced and barked alongside Kevin and the sled.

The snow was still falling fast. Large flakes looked the size of quarters or larger. The light glistened on the white crystals that had piled up on the ground. They clung to the needles on the pine trees bowing their limbs toward the ground. Big eyes full of excitement were all I could see when I looked at Josh and Kev. Hoods and masks to keep them warm hid everything else.

We parked the sled under Verdie’s night light. Josh Helped Kev off the sled and the tree of us played in the snow. 

“Open your mouth and stick out your tongue. See if you can catch some flakes. We must have looked silly running around in circles catching snowflakes and laughing out loud. 

Josh thought his mom was crazy for sure when I stepped out of the rope and lay down in the snow. I started waving my arms and feet back and forth through the snow.

“This is how you make snow angels. Wanna make one”.

The three of us lay side by side in that field of snow and made a family of angels while Yonna pranced all around us.

After walking, running and throwing some snow we started the trek back to the house. It was a much quieter walk. I looked back at Kev in the sled, he had laid down with his hands under his head trying hard to keep his eyes open. Josh yawned and Yonna was walking instead of bouncing.

Carrying Kev into the house was a chore. He must have weighed twenty pounds more than when we left the house.

There’s nothing warmer than hickory burning in a cast iron stove when your toes and fingers are frozen. After we thawed and had our jammies on, I tucked Kevin in bed and kissed him goodnight. He was fast asleep before I could turn out the light. I sat in the floor looking out the window. Josh came sneaking down the hall.

“Mom”, he said as he put both arms around my neck then with a big kiss to the cheek he said “Thank you for this magical night”. Before I could say anything, he was off to his bedroom.

As I lay there in the floor watching the snow pile even deeper I thought about his words. I would never have imagined a walk in the snow would be seen through the eyes of a child as a “magical night” but indeed, it was. Now, more than twenty years later that night seems like yesterday, but, too, it seems like another lifetime. Sometimes I steal a few moments to lie in the floor in front of the stove with hickory wood crackling and the ceiling fan humming. I close my eyes and think about the kisses on the cheek, the hot chocolate after sledding and playing in Laurel Creek or riding the merry go round at Grayson Lake. It makes me happy to think about those simple things we did as a family, just the three of us. This little bit of time lying in the floor, it's my magical moments.