Twenty-Nine – MarkingTime
It’s Saturday morning of the wedding. I’moutside as fast as possible and have milked Eighty One. The sun istrying to round up the clouds in the south west. The rest of thesky sides with the sun and is a brilliant blue. The first snow ofthe season appears on the highest hills. Where there is clearedland it appears like runaway ice cream that has refrozen. Thicktongues of white, river around trees and become a dusting of icingsugar in the valley.
‘We’ll separate the boarsfrom the rest and leave them in the pen,’ my father says as hecarries the separated milk towards the farrowing pen. Esmeralda andher litter have been sheltering in a shed the pastweeks.
My father drops an old jam pan in the penand lifts up one end. Esmeralda rushes underneath with her suckersin t
