Lambing Season in Normandy

Julia McLean writes of the rites of spring on her farm in Normandy where lambing season is happening and Pascal the Ram is keeping Julia on her toes.

Spring has sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where my lambies is…. Yeah, yeah, you’ve guessed it. It’s lambing time again. However, as the winter was very hard for the ewes and they weren’t looking too hale and hearty, I have been more than a bit concerned for the progress of the lambing.

Ghent Altarpiece: Adoration of the Lamb

The rams had started the beginning of October by fighting each other over who was to get the glittering prizes.  Taffy, my old and friendly ram came limping up to the fence dangling a front paw or hock or whatever ones calls them, blood dripping down his forehead. I scratched his head comfortingly and, murmuring few words of sympathy, told him to get on with it. Taliesin, his Great to the power of X Grandson, stood smirking in the background as only Super-ram can.

I had therefore expected a rush of lambs. They usually arrive a few days apart. The first to arrive made it into the big wide world about the ninth of March (is that the Ides? Does it signify?). Then there was a two-week gap. I speculated that some of the ewes may have aborted the foetus when the winter cold went on for so long, but then I thought the lengthy gap was probably due to the time when the two sturdy fellas were busy battling it out for female favours. After the two weeks we had a steady trickle of lambs, so to speak.

Meantime, in the other field, the unnamed (and extra to reproduction requirement) four rams edged hopefully towards the fencing awaiting their turn in love’s arena and getting more restive. So I called in some help and we managed to bundle them into the back of the cider van at 6 am and drove them off to the abattoir.

I am only allowed to sell them “on the hoof”, or I can slaughter then myself. If I had a suitable building I would probably do that and then I could keep the skins. Friends in the UK manage to recover the skins from the abattoir but here it is illegal. So, one of my cunning plans to sell matted black sheep skin rugs has fallen foul of the law. I picked up the butchered carcasses a week later – all nicely wrapped and ready for the freezer. How I am going to chomp 120 or so lamb chops or so I don’t know, but I daresay I’ll manage.

By this time, tragedy had struck our little community. I took my eye off the ewes for a millisecond, while I got my hair done, and came back to find a Mommy dying in the field and her baby skeeking and yelling. I called the vet but by the time he arrived an hour later she had been called to the Great Sheepfold in the Sky. She still had milk in her teats so I left her for a while until her progeny had tanked up. I went off to the vet’s to buy powdered milk for the baby and came back to try and catch her. No way. She wandered around bleating for most of the day and then chose a ewe, which had not dropped a lamb, as her mother. The ewe was not pleased but the lamb had someone to lean on.

The Exploits of Pascal

The next day, we rounded up the whole herd (all eight of them plus babes) and I picked up the little lamb with rubber gloved hands and managed to get five gulps of milk down its neck. Then it took off like a bat out of hell and I haven’t been able to feed it since. I gave up and put the milk in the trough. The milk duly disappears but I suspect the very self-satisfied looking ewes and some neighbourhood fat cats. Anyway, three weeks into life, the little lamb is learning to fend for itself and has integrated with the group.

Not so Pascal.

I became aware, while puttering in my herb garden, of an insistent bleating and greeting. All the ewes gazed at me tranquilly with that wide-eyed innocence for which sheep are renowned, and they watched indifferently as I tromped around the field, wellies (gumboots) squelching, until I came across a furious little ram, body still encased in his birth sac, trying to struggle to his feet and shouting for help and his Mom. Well, here I was. I peeled off his sac, pulled off the bits of his navel attachment, wiped his bum and took him over to the house for his first feed, all the while shaking my fingers reproachfully at the innocent looking ewes who had abandoned him.

Pascal the lamb

It was quite cold the first night so I carried the wet bundle of wool back to the house, dried him off with the hairdryer and put him in my bathroom over night. Baby bleating awoke me in the morning. So, it was feeding time. I could tell he had appreciated the previous food from the state of my bathroom floor. The next night I put plastic down but he managed to find the one uncovered corner and made even more mess. Plus, he doesn’t have a Mommy’s tongue so lick him clean so, as the Brits say, “he don’ arf smell”. Tonight, he can fend for himself because my dressing gown and pullovers are acquiring that particular acrid aroma of sheepfold and midden.

Pascal the Ram on day two

Now, you might find that heartless but if he can’t make it outside overnight, he ain’t gonna get past the crucial three-month stage.I don’t know why it happens but it seems to be a fairly usual occurrence. Bottle fed lambs rarely get beyond three months. (I know it’s true because there was a letter in The Times).

Sheep, in any case get very stressed and, like any child without family support, a lamb will be in difficulty. I have learnt over the years not to interfere with nature. Sometimes, ewes (like dogs or cats) may abandon the young or even actively kill them if they feel the little one is not viable. In addition, bottle-fed lambs are not accepted by the group – even by the other lambs. This little lad, whom I named Pascal because we are so near Easter, was making such a fuss about living I thought I had better give him a chance. So I’ll keep an eye on him but unless he is really strong, he will not survive even with my help. I don’t fancy eating him though but I might use him to replace Taliesin.

Pascal, growing as big as a daffodil

I didn’t mention this before but I think Taliesin “did” for Pascal’s Mum. He is a bit of a young thug, as you can tell by the way he treated his venerable Great to the power of X Grandfather. I think he hadn’t finished sowing his oats and was trying to “reap” (countryside expression) his young wife. I had seen him pursuing her around the field and trying to mount her just after the birth so I figured he had stressed her out and she died. He is not the only male to behave thus according to what one reads in the scandal sheets (but not in The Times).

Anyway, we are going to have a roast leg of lamb for Easter Sunday lunch and I am going to cook it French Style – Gigot a la Bretonne. Here’s the recipe.

French Style Roast Leg of Lamb – Gigot a la Bretonne

1 Leg of Lamb – enough for 6 people
500grs of dried flageolet or haricot beans – soaked overnight with two changes of water.
4 tomatoes (about 500grs), roughly chopped
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
4-6 large cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Cook the beans in plenty of lightly salted water with thyme, peppercorns and half a chopped carrot– takes 2 hours or so –until they are cooked but retain their shape.

With a sharp knife make incisions in the leg of lamb and place in them thin slices of peeled garlic. Place the leg, wrapped in foil, in your roasting pan and put in the middle of a pre-heated oven at 200 or Gas Mark 7. Roast for 45-50 minutes. Open the foil for the last half an hour of cooking.

Meanwhile, fry the onions and extra garlic gently in butter and when soft, add the tomatoes. Allow to simmer gently.

When the beans are soft enough to eat, drain them. Keep the cooking water but discard all the vegetable bits. Add the beans and enough liquid to the tomatoe and onion mixture to keep the beans moist. Simmer for 10 minutes. Season to taste. Keep warm.

Remove the roast from the oven and let it rest for ten minutes. This is important as it allows the blood, driven in towards the bone by the high heat to re-seep to the surface giving an overall pinkness to the roast.

Remove the roast from the pan and carve it into slices. Put it back in the oven to cook more if you need to.

Deglaze the roasting pan with a glass of white wine and enough water or stock to make a gravy. Heat the mixture briskly and if need be, thicken with cornflour mixed with a little white wine.

Serve the leg with the cut slices surrounded by the beans lavishly garnished with chopped parsley. Serve the gravy apart.

Enjoy. This is a traditional French Paschal lamb. My Pascal ram is bleating for his next meal so I’m off to prepare his bottle.

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• Old Dog - New Pavlovian tricks
• The Herd Instinct
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• The Desert Fox - Part One
• Kingdom of the Fungi: Part Two