Debora Dale Alt logo
ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
where fear and passion collide
Debora Dale Alt logo
ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
where fear and passion collide

The last day of the Queens Farm Spring Festival was yesterday. We always go to the farm for their events. Yes. I live in the city, but the farm has been here since the 1700’s.  In fact, this is the same place I spoke about not long ago. My daughter’s homeschooling group had gone there for a Colonial Cooking class.

Yesterday was different. Yes, they had rides, funnel cakes and cotton candy, and yes you could feed the animals and get tossed around on the hayride. And yes, the Fabio of roosterdom was there, as always.

Crazy headed rooster

But what was so unique yesterday was all the babies. Not human babies… goat and sheep babies!        

   

They were all born either Saturday or yesterday morning. Most of them still had the umbilical cord attached, yet they were following their mama’s around everywhere they went and trying to ‘jump’ over tiny obstacles lying in their paths.

One tiny baby – a black lamb just hours old – wandered out of the barn where we assumed its mother was. This little thing started bleating the moment it stepped out the door. It was crying and crying as if lost. On spindly legs, it wobbled along the grounds, crying, sounding like he was saying, “Maaaaaa! Maaaa!” He went up to all the sheep out there, nudged as if looking for mama and milk. Each one in turn, sniffed him then shoved him away.

And he cried. “Maaa! Maaaa!”

mama?

Some of the adults were not to gentle with this tiny thing – I mean tiny, like the size of a tall, skinny cat. One shoved him so hard, he fell over and had to struggle to find his footing again. Everyone gasped. Everyone watched, hoping this baby’s mom would come out and rescue him.

She didn’t and this went on for a painfully long time. I couldn’t stand it and told Hubby to go tell someone. “Who?” he said. Since there were hundreds of visitors to the farm, finding a worker free to redirect a lost lamb seemed impossible. The baby must have exhausted his little lungs at one point, because he finally stopped crying and simply lumbered around, looking lost and lonely.

Lost and lonely

And then… this guy in camouflage pants, white shirt and sunglasses climbed into the pen. Everyone hushed. He had a walkie and we figured he belonged to the farm. He strode purposely into the barn ignoring all the other sheep and lamb as he passed them. Not a second after stepping inside, he came right back out. He stood in the open doorway, scanned the crowd of nursing mamas, bleating babies and snoozing papas, then shook his head and went directly to our lost little lamb as if he’d done this a thousand times already. He lifted the little guy with one hand and carried him back into the barn where his mama, it turned out, was having another baby.

Queens Farm - look at that face!

Everyone in the crowd cheered the happy ending, and then dispersed.

We went over to the rides. Poor hubby. Mr. Topsy-turvy-roller-coaster-riding-dude. Daughter convinced him to go on what looked like a harmless ride – a spinning ride.

 Ha! She laughed and screamed the whole time. He… turned all shades of green.

 

After the three minute ride, he was out for the count, sitting on a bench, recovering, while Daughter and I strolled around some more. Ah, to be young again… though, judging from the trauma of that baby lamb, I’m not so sure I’d want to go back so far in time that I’d have to learn my way through life all over again.

The old saying never seemed so accurate before – Youth is wasted on the young.