A few years back, my husband and I were called by Mrs. Lunson, on the 140-acre Helgesen Farm on Helgesen Road. She was wanting to get her lambs off to market and needed some help to get them caught and on the truck. She was already well into her 90s and a tiny, feisty bundle of Scottish ancestry.
When we arrived, we chatted a bit, and then we went off to the shed where she had put feed and hay in to lure the sheep in. When you feed, the animals don’t come in segregated, they all come in. We needed to separate the rams from the ewes.
Mrs. Lunson had fashioned up a lasso of sorts, from some heavy rope which was about. The rope was quite heavy, but she insisted she would lasso the rams and we were to help hold onto them and load them. The sheep began to move around in circles as we tried to break away the rams from the ewes. My husband, with his typical sense of Irish humour, stopped and asked Mrs. Lunson, “How can I tell which ones are the rams?” Mrs. Lunson, stopped with her lasso on the ground and looked at him with shock. She dropped the rope and with her one hand, grabbed her other hand at the wrist and left the hand dangling. She shook the dangling hand and said, “You look for the things hanging at the back end underneath that look like this and wiggle when they run.” My husband could not contain his laughter and Mrs. Lunson, realizing she had been had, picked up her lasso and threw it at my husband with a *&%$**bleep and then she too succumbed to fitful laughter.
In the end we did separate the rams and loaded them onto the truck, not without some tough times being dragged through the hay with heels dug in. We had our own rodeo. Just another day on the farm, and you thought it was a boring life.
Mrs.Lunson lived out her life on her farm and died at the age of 101. She and her husband started their farm with dairy cattle and when the milk truck no longer came to pick up milk due to muddy roads, etc., they turned their hand to sheep and goats. A healthy lifestyle of hard work and good food and as my husband says, he thinks it was the Werther candies Mrs. Lunson consumed on a regular basis, which helped her to live a long and industrious life.
Submittted by
Ellen Lewers