SDPB’s Social Media Specialist Heather Benson lives on and operates a small Clay County acreage named “Dalarna Farm,” after a province in central Sweden known for its horses. A fan of Scottish country veterinarian James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small book series since she was a young girl growing up around Menno, Benson reflects on the series’ influence on the cusp of the new Masterpiece adaption premiering January 10 on SDPB.
Photos: Heather Benson/ dalarnafarm.com
“Moving a hand carefully around the uterus I began the fascinating business of sorting out the tangle which is just about my favorite job in practice. I had to bring a head and two legs up together in order to deliver a lamb; but they had to belong to the same lamb or I was in trouble. It was a matter of tracing each leg back to see if it was a hind or a fore, to find if it joined a shoulder or disappeared into the depths.” – James Herriot, All Things Bright & Beautiful
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That single paragraph of Scottish veterinarian James Herriot’s second book is something I pull from my mental reference library each lambing season. His stories provide not just entertainment but an education, of sorts. A sizable portion of the animal husbandry skills I use today on our small farm come to me courtesy of a childhood spent immersed in Herriot’s Yorkshire veterinary practice. Reading Herriot is how I learned to untangle a jumble of lamb limbs while elbow deep inside an ewe, about giving beer to a grumpy sow (only works if she is a happy, sleepy drunk and not a mean drunk!) and how to work cattle without modern cattle-working facilities. A little James Herriot education goes a long way when you grow up and decide that filling your farm with livestock would be the perfect way to absorb every moment of free time for years to come. Learn. Dream. Grow.
