One Lamb

One of the best movies I have seen in years was The Sheep Detectives. This is the description from the filmmaker’s page: Every night, a shepherd reads aloud a murder mystery to his sheep, pretending they can understand. When he is found dead, the sheep realize at once that it was a murder and think they know everything about how to go about solving it. But it turns out the human world isn’t as simple as it appears in books.

I would like to thank everyone who has urged me to see the movie, especially my friend and former client, Denise Buchanan, who never misses one of my blogs about our sheep and gave me the last nudge to get a ticket.

Aside from being an edge-of-your-seat thriller you can take the whole family to, I was astounded by how perfectly they captured the sheep’s mannerisms, fears, and personalities. I then saw a BBC clip that interviewed the sheep farmer who had allowed the CGI crew and other members of the creative team to study and pattern their sheep for the movie. They studied 40 of their sheep, and when the shepherds went to the movie, they said they could pick out their individual sheep and lambs.

In The Sheep Detectives, “winter lambs” are described as lambs born before the valued spring lambs and are shunned by the flock, so the term becomes a symbol of rejection, prejudice, and the outsider who later matters deeply. On our little farm, all the lambs are winter lambs because we show them at the Dutchess County Fair and other fairs and exhibitions across the country; they must be a certain age and weight by summer.

We do occasionally have bottle lambs who are rejected by their mothers and therefore need to be fed with a bottle. If they are particularly small and fragile, we sometimes put a diaper on them and let them live in our kitchen for a while. The rest of the sheep are fine to have them back when they are strong enough.

Two Lambs and Two Chickens

Curious Lambs

Lamb Close Up

Ewe and Lamb

Bottle Lamb Who Was Rejected by Her Mother

Cute Lamb

Black Lamb

Black and White Lambs

Lamb Sandwich

Two Lambs Feeding

Four Lambs, Two Just Born

Three Lambs

Two Lambs

Sheep and Lambs and Chickens

Photos by Alicia and Jimmy Crisp    Curated Brochure by Crisp Architects: Portfolio

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