Every autumn a shepherd

Every autumn a shepherd from across the valley brings his flock over to our side to graze the fields that had hay on over the summer. It’s a nice custom and one of the ways in which traditional farming is still carried on here – the fields benefit from fresh fertilizer and the sheep get some good end-of-season grazing before the winter sets in. These sheep are a thin, black, rather goatlike local breed used for milking, and Misici, the shepherd, is well known round here for his superb pecorino cheese.

The sheep have been in the top field opposite our house for a week or so, being moved about by the shepherd on a daily basis, and attended by four or five of the usual enormous white Maremmano dogs. We hear the sheepbells tinkling as the flock pours from one field to another. When they’re on the move, Teo goes mad with barking and makes forays towards them, but not near enough to let the dogs get him. When they come into the field just below the house, the horse can hear them but not see them and she starts to fret, staring in horror in the direction of the scary noises and periodically setting off round her field at a frantic trot in, I suppose, an expression of the flight part of her fight or flight instinct. (The horse is definitely a flight animal. Especially this horse.)

Yesterday morning the shepherd brought the flock into the field below the house for a couple of hours and then took them away again, hidden up over the brow of the hill. Teo barked solidly for the two hours that they were visible. After lunch I happened to be gazing out of the kitchen window and spied a tiny black shape in the grass. It was a lamb, and through binoculars I could see that it was a very small lamb with two or three very big black crows hanging round it. As I watched, one of the crows hopped right up to the lamb and pecked around it threateningly; the lamb scrambled to its feet and the crow moved off, but not very far.

It took about five seconds to decide to rescue the lamb. By the time we got out into the field the crows were gone. The lamb was lying down but it got up as we approached and staggered about a bit in that funny, unsteady, sweet, lamblike way that’s part of what people like about very young lambs. I grabbed hold of it fairly easily and we carried it back to the house. We put some hay down in one of the old store-rooms and put it in there. It didn’t seem very distressed, and let itself be cuddled, but it did seem hungry – tried to suck the hay, but refused to suck water off my finger. Occasionally it said “baa”, in a heart-melting kind of way.

I went inside to track down the shepherd and reached him on only the third phonecall. “Have you found my dog?” he said. “No,” I told him, “but I’ve got one of your lambs.” He promised to come and get it. I promised to look for his dog. Alessio came home from school on the bus and fell in love with the lamb. I got into trouble for half-saying we could keep it if the shepherd thought the mother wouldn’t accept it back. Luckily when the shepherd turned up, he had no such worries and carted it off in his van. Alessio was devastated, and I was pretty sad too. There’s something about lambs.

Please, no one mention mint sauce.