Eldest brother Stuart could pick an unwell sheep at 100 yards, looking into the sun and possibly in a sand storm under the cover of enemy fire.
He brought two unwell ewes into a shearing shed so iconic that Tom Roberts once turned it down for its over-authenticity.
Fly-struck. It was awful, and not from poor management either: it had been a very dry summer with flies coming down from the north in swarms.
This was very good management due to Stuart’s diet of carrots.
Buzz went the shears boys, buzz, BUZZ, BUZZ!
Stu cleared up the infestation on the first ewe while I watched wide-eyed .
The girl was then powdered and sent out into the sun.
The second one had no such fortune, and when Stuart held his palm to the girl’s nostrils to feel for a breath, he sighed.
I wept. A blend of many things burned behind my eyes.
“You okay there, Ted?”
“Just a spot of dust in my eyes.”
“Of course. I thought you might have been listening to some country and western.”
“Barry Manilow, actually.”
Tish-boom. We both laughed, into which I might have snuck a snob.
The next day university-pal-who-got-me-into-all-this-misadventure Bruce showed me how to butcher a sheep. It was sobering.
“Grit your teeth, Ted.”
We held down a sizeable ewe.
Bruce then curiously plunged his hands deep into the wool on the old girl’s underbelly.
I felt a small squirt into my face, right into my eye in fact.
Letting go of a rear leg, I wiped my eye clean only to see Bruce’s freckled fingers grab another of the ewe’s teats and send a second squirt of milk into my other eye.
“Bruce, you utter b–”
One leg free was enough for the ewe to kick me four times in quick succession: chest, neck, chest again and then the webbing at the base of my thumb which split open and from which I still carry the scar.
The dogs’ behaviour was a marvel with only the newest one, Jock, daring to approach the butchering shed to be met with a furious “Get out of it!”
He returned to the other six who sat in a neat line about 30 yards away.
Bruce was meticulous. I was covered in blood — my own.
“If, on a bad day,” Bruce explained, “you hear a slow hiss, your eyes are gonna water and you will want to vomit.”
He was meticulous not to puncture the intestine.
Gathering all the organs at one joining point, he explained how it should all come out in one go.
“Just cut that little bit there.”
Curious, I turned back to see the line of dogs still at perfect attention.
I must have lost concentration, for when I poked the blade in, a lovely long hiss tried to reach my ears before the stench of ungulate horror reached my nose.
Hell hath no odour. I started seeing white.
The dogs bolted from the scene and didn’t return.
Bruce rallied with clucking tongue and somehow we all got out alive.
Except the ewe of course, which was soon zipped up, bagged up and frozen, save for that evening’s barbecue which blended the rich taste of un-hung hogget with slight sadness and the odd hint of blood from my hand which they all assured me wouldn’t need a stitch.
This resourcefulness stayed with me until when, a marriage and three children later, I raised my own two pigs and Scottish Highlanders to try to attain the eternal myth of self-sufficiency.
I will spare the details, except I never did it again, much like killing the first of 16 cranky Muscovy ducks we raised to the size of a small child.
I could not get past that first kill, so we enjoyed 15 white fluffy pets who never misbehaved again.
