Lambing Season — Not Everyone Speaks Farm

I had a doctor’s appointment on Monday to discuss my right ankle, which has officially crossed the line from “annoying” to “needs a complete replacement.” Before that can happen, I need a CT scan so they can manufacture the correct part—which makes me feel less like a patient and more like a vintage piece of farm equipment. The kind where someone squints, sighs, and says, “Well… we’ll have to make one.”

Originally, this was all supposed to work.

If things had gone smoothly, I would have had the CT scan done in mid-November, the replacement surgery scheduled for mid-December, and enough recovery time—not perfect, but sufficient—to be back in the barn by lambing season in April. That was the plan. A reasonable plan. A farmer-approved plan.

Which is exactly why Murphy took an interest.

The problem wasn’t my orthopedic specialist. My team at Concord Ortho has been right on their game from the start—orders sent, follow-ups made, timelines explained clearly. If competence were hay bales, they’d have the barn stacked to the rafters.

Radiology, however, had other ideas.

For over a month, Concord Hospital Radiology insisted they had never received the CT order. This was after the doctor’s office resent it at least half a dozen times. Each time, the response was the same: Nope. Nothing here.

Eventually—through what I assume was divine intervention or exhaustion—Radiology received the order and an appointment was finally scheduled for mid-December. I drove all the way there, right on time, only to be informed that their machine was down and they couldn’t do the scan.

“Oh,” they said cheerfully, “you should have been called.”

That would have been useful information.

But there was no phone call.
No voicemail.
No text.
No missed call.
No carrier pigeon.
No smoke signal drifting over the parking lot.

Nothing.

At that point, Murphy wasn’t just involved—he had clearly taken over scheduling.

Because of those delays, the earliest I could now have surgery would be the end of January. And that’s too close to lambing season. Not enough recovery time. Not enough margin for error. Not enough ankle to bet the farm on.

So now the plan is to limp along until next November, get the CT scan then, and schedule surgery for next December—not because the sheep are finished with their annual reproductive rodeo (though that description still stands), but because December is when they move into their winter paddock. That’s when chores settle down, routines tighten up, and farm life begins to resemble something that could loosely be described as normal—assuming such a thing exists on a farm.

The doctor gave me a corticosteroid injection to buy me some time and wanted to see me back in three months. I asked for four.

“Lambing season,” I said.

The woman at the scheduling desk stared at me like I’d just referenced a minor holiday she’d somehow missed her whole life. She had absolutely no idea what I meant.

So I explained. I have sheep. And yes, I did carefully time when I put the ram in with the ewes, which means lambing isn’t a surprise—it’s a window.

Unfortunately, that window lasts about a month.

And during that month, it is best not to plan anything. No trips. No appointments. No commitments that require being more than ten minutes from the barn. Because if I do, if I schedule a doctor’s appointment three hours away, I can guarantee that someone will go into labor just as I’m backing out of the driveway.

This is not superstition.
This is Murphy’s Law.

And I am convinced Murphy was a farmer.

Who else would arrange a torrential rainstorm precisely when you’ve got a hay field cut, dried, and ready to bale? Or schedule lambs to arrive the one morning you’re wearing clean, socially acceptable church clothes? Or injure a sheep just as you’re headed to your cousin’s wedding where you are the maid of honor and already running late?

Murphy doesn’t visit farms.
He lives there.

Now, Katahdin sheep are known for being easy birthers and good mothers, and most of the time they live up to the brochure. More often than not I walk into the barn in the morning and find two lambs tucked into a corner, dried off, well fed, and deep into a milk-coma nap while their mother is at the hay feeder pretending she didn’t just perform a miracle overnight.

But these are first-time mothers, and first-time anything comes with a learning curve. A lamb can get stuck. A ewe can look at her newborn and think, Well, that’s interesting, and walk away. Twins can arrive, and she might decide only one of them belongs to her—like an accidental buy-one-get-one she never intended to redeem.

Is that likely? No.
Is it possible? Absolutely.

So I need to be available. I need to be mobile. I need to be able to respond quickly to situations that begin with, “Well… this isn’t ideal.”

Eventually, the woman at the desk nodded.

“Oh,” she said. “So… babies.”

“Yes,” I said. “Babies who wait until you’ve made other plans.”

She smiled and scheduled my follow-up for the end of April instead of the end of March.

Which was the right call.

Because Murphy doesn’t care about calendars, medical specialists, or carefully engineered replacement ankles. He only cares whether things were supposed to work out—and whether he can prove, once again, that you should have known better.

He just waits until everything is lined up, pats you on the back, and says, “That’s cute. Now watch this.”

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