Two 18-wheelers groaned up Oregon Highway 203 toward Medical Springs. Local curiosity was aroused, where in the hell would those sheep be going in this ‘ere cattle country? Yeah, Jacobs’ run a range band in Keating but these trucks are carrying way too many sheep for a place up here.
The trucks turned at mile post 26, up Blue Mountain Ridge Road, toward the old barn, corrals, farrowing houses, and granary located one-and-a-half miles down the road. The old Ringer Place. Hmm. New people there. Calling themselves Double Diamond Ranch; kind’a high faluten for Fred’s old place.
It was November 1979 and fast cooling down to winter and, yes, the newcomers were bringing 400 head of sheep to Medical Springs, long-established as cattle and timber country. We didn’t know it then, but a very cold and snowy winter was hovering…. As my mother used to say, Fools rush in …. Unlanded people, 3 generations removed, attempting to return to the land. Two families, 2 couples: a Viet Nam vet helicopter pilot, a Wallowa County gal with experience growing great vegetable gardens and raising chickens, and 2 OSU graduates: fisheries and zoology.
After all, how hard could it be?
One truck pulled in to the rickety old chute loader. One of the Ringer boys had built it at least 2 decades before as a 4H project. The green paint was peeling off the wood sides but the big old fat tires had just been aired up. It would do the job! It took a good 20 minutes to maneuver the livestock trailer, with a number of location adjustments of the loader, into what we hoped would be a good UNloading alignment. The men were ready at the trailer and the chute. The women were ready at the corral to direct any renegades back into the main flock body. The doors were opened; everyone tensed for the stampede. But … not one white body was evident at the open door of the trailer.
Driver #1 took over, climbing up into the trailer. A big commotion was heard, the driver yelling, the stamp of hundreds of cloven hoofs moving from one end of the trailer to the other. Then, finally, the first ewe appeared … hesitated … and was forced by her followers, pushing her into this new world, where who knows what would be waiting; this strange new land, smelling of cows, pigs, turkeys, dust, dogs, and 4 strange humans … tensed and staring at her with sheep staffs in hand.
One-by-one they came and when the unloading ramp was filled with sheep and the bodies were finding space in the corrals, the dam was broken. Running ovine were streaming off the truck in a gushing rivulet. Don’t get in their way! Find a fairly safe place to stand that would still hinder escape from the leaning old corral that was meant to hold them! It seemed they would never end! Oh My Gosh! The corrals were filling up; did we really buy that many?
Sure enough, one old gal broke free in blind panic, found a hole and headed down the road, back to where they had come from. About 20 more followed her before we could plug the hole. The 2 men took after the run-aways and got them turned back to their imprisoned compadres. All but one. She was both the best sprinter, and long-distance runner. She looked like she was bent on running back to Idaho, coyotes and wolves notwithstanding.
But the men in the pickup had another tool at their disposal, a lariat. And one of them (to this day I don’t know which one) succeeded in lassoing her. They got her in the bed of the truck and, with one of them in the back holding her front legs and setting her up (which is a common position to work an individual sheep), drove back to the corrals.
As the weeks slipped by, she started slipping too! When a sheep gets sick or very stressed, they will often slip wool. Lasso Lilly’s wool started coming off in trailing streamers. Being a Rambouillet, those streamers were long and trailing the ground like a bride’s train. Her pink skin showed bare in patches, but she was queenly in her persona, long legged and graceful. She would walk along, head held high, trailing her garment behind her and would stamp in defiance if you came too close. Even in that cold winter ahead, she remained healthy in her short new growth of wool and delivered lambs in February with the rest of her sisters.
Lasso Lilly was the first sheep (remember, in the beginning they totaled 400) that distinguished herself with a name, though several exceptional such characters were to follow. These individualized themselves, being brave enough or, perhaps, unfortunate enough, to be caught in unique circumstances which marked them for life.
