Lambing Time

Our neighbors' lambs arebeing born here in Vermont now, and soon it will be lambing time in Icelandtoo. I remember one Icelandic friend of mine, sad that they were giving upsheep-farming, say, "But it won't be spring without lambs bouncing around."
I've never been in Icelandduring lambing time, but when I went to Greenland to see Eirik the Red's Vikingsettlement there in May 2006, the people who lived on Eirik's old farm,Brattahlid, were in the middle of lambing season. They had learned theircraft—and bought their sheep—in Iceland, and were trying to recreate (withgovernment help) the Viking economy.
Jacky of Blue Ice Explorerswarned me, when he rented a cottage for me on a Greenlandic farm, that Iwouldn't see much of the farmers, and I didn't. They were hardly sleeping, twoneeding to be in the sheep house twenty-four hours a day. But one day I didget a tour of the barn. My hostess, Ellen, was small and patient and proud ofher sheep. When she spoke—to me in English, to her kids in Greenlandic—hervoice was soft and even, and she raised it only slightly in surprise when ayoung ram butted the housedoor with a bang. She slipped out and grabbed hishorns before calling to me to follow.
The ram, nearly as big as she,was a yearling, bottlefed last May because he was born too small. "Now he won'tstay with the other sheep," Ellen explained. "He likes to come in the house.Watch out he doesn't hurt you."
Holding tight to both of hisimpressively curled horns, she dragged him off the porch and through a muddystream to the barn, then waved me inside before shooing him away.
The high, wide barn wasdivided lengthwise into five aisles, each about six feet wide and filled withsixty jostling, curious, pregnant ewes. We walked between two aisles on araised boardwalk, which was also where the sheep's noontime hay was piled (andthe dogs were napping). It smelled very sweet. Ellen's husband Carl and ahelper were busy in the aisles, both slim, short, dark, sweaty, and tired. Carlhad a wide, open face and a brightness to his expression, as if he'd like tospeak to me but couldn't, knowing no English. Instead he merely smiled, hoppednimbly up out of the pen in front of me and stretched up to the rafters tofetch down a wooden grate that he then slipped into grooves in the sides of theaisle to separate off a ewe and her two lambs. The far end of the aisle, Inoticed, was already divided that way all along its length into little ewe-and-lamb-sizedpens.
"There," Ellen nudged me andpointed toward our feet.
A birth-slick white lamb laysprawled on the aisle floor, glistening, two ewes competing to lick it dry."Will the others step on it?" I asked.
"Only if they are scared,"she said, and I held very still until Carl reached it. The new lamb's fleece bythen was just starting to curl. Carl lifted it carefully by its head andcarried it down the aisle to make it a pen, both ewes anxiously trotting behindhim. He held the grate high for a moment until only one ewe was on the lamb'sside, then quickly slid it into place, leaving the second ewe trapped, baahingmiserably, outside.
"How does he know which one isthe mother?" I asked.
"Its rear end is bloody. Andthe other one is fatter."
Off the back of the barn wasa spacious shed carpeted with hay, to which the lambs graduated in groups often or so when they were strong enough. There, Ellen said, they "learned tofind their mothers" before being taken up to the mountain pastures and letloose until October, when they are rounded up, sorted, and sent by boat to theslaughterhouse.
It's a short, but sweet,life for mountain-raised lamb.

If you want to visit the Viking sites in Greenland, Irecommend Blue Ice Explorer at http://www.blueice.gl/ in southGreenland. Greenland doesn't export lamb, as far as I know, but you can often buy Icelandicmountain-raised lamb at Whole Foods; on their website, read "The Tender Story of Icelandic Lamb." It's the wild thyme and other herbs they graze on all summerthat makes it so delicious.