The Glamorous Life of the Poopsmith

Much of farm life deals with poop.

Take today, for instance:

I noticed that Yoshimi had worms. The way I noticed this was, when I was in the pasture, I stepped own and my foot went SQUISH! Which is bad. Sheep should poop in little pellets, not little squishes, so I knew someone had worms. I looked around for a poopy bottomed sheep, and Yoshimi definitely was it.

Are you still reading? Really? I never write about this stuff.

So, today I caught Yoshimi by feeding her corn, and then tying her to a post. Her mom, Sevilla, came, too, but that didn't matter. The one with worms will always be the hungriest, of course. Yoshimi is fiesty one, so I tied her with two ropes and a chain. Then I shoved the dewormer down her throat with a little medicine gun. This was my first glamorous act.

Next, was the true glamour. Yoshimi had a lot of dried up poop stuck to her butt, which had to come off, or she might be attacked by flies. Normally, you cut it off because it just sticks to the wool. Unfortunately, she was so recently sheered, that the wool wasn't long enough to really do that. So, I got the hose and started washing her bottom down.

The hose water is from the well, so it's ice cold. Yoshimi seemed surprised to have ice cold water sprayed on her bum, but not entirely adverse to it. Everything was going quite well, she was almost ready to be let loose, and then she shook herself off. She shook like a wet dog, so that the poopy water spread out everywhere and sprayed over me! Ew!

But Yoshimi will feel better now. I let her loose and went off to take a shower.

Here is a song to make you feel better about all of this:


Such is the life of the poopsmith.

P.S. Today was the first day of first grade for Little Z, and my first day not being a teacher when school was n.