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Sheep Herding

With seven girls in our family, there were always "extras" to send on tasks that seemed very menial to us. One day in summer, my two sisters and I, the three youngest, were sent on a task like this. We were sent to the pasture to keep the neighbor's sheep out. There was a drought, as we hadn't had rain for a long time, and the grass was brown and short. The neighbor's sheep would come through the fence and eat what little grass there was, so that our cows would not have enough to eat. Cows wrap their tongue around the grass, so they need it longer. Sheep eat it right down to the ground.

After watching for the sheep for awhile, we got tired of waiting for them to graze their way through the fence, so we started to play. We were so busily engaged in our play that we hadn't noticed that the sheep were all in our pasture, busily eating away. So when we saw what had happened, we stopped playing, and immediately we ran after the sheep, waving our arms and yelling and chased them back. They ran through the fence so fast, that they left some of their wool on the barbs of the fence. It was then that one of us got the idea to gather the wool, take it home, and when we had enough, sell it and buy a doll for me. Mine had gotten broken by a two year-old cousin who played with it and dropped it. After that, we purposely allowed the sheep to come through the fence before driving them back, giving us more wool to gather.

We did this for many days until we had a half gunny-sack full of wool. We brought it home proudly and asked our mother if she would take it to town and sell it. The wool never did get sold. Mother said the price of wool was so low that it would not pay to take it. So ended our sheep herding experience.