The rain we expected a couple of weeks ago arrived, marking 0.60 in my rain gauge on the vineyard in Los Alamos. We were hoping for more, but we are grateful for any amount.

The hills dotted with vines, cattle and oaks are beginning to show the green hue we are accustomed to this time of year. The forecast as I write this column calls for a wet, cool week from Feb. 18 through 23. We'll take every drop. Our vines are still dormant, but I expect them to begin to bud out after this rain goes through.

Rainfall always brings back memories of the ranch on Alamo Pintado and taking care of the sheep and their lambs. It seemed like we faced new challenges when a prolonged wet period came along.

The ewes would always wait to lamb during a heavy rainstorm, or so it seemed.

It was during those times we would, on occasion, need a veterinarian to come out and help us. For many years, we would call Dr. John Carricaburu, who lived in the Valley for many years and went to high school with my mom.

Dr. Carricaburu's office and home were located on Baseline Avenue, about halfway between Ballard and Refugio Road.

I remember he always wore a straw cowboy hat and he drove a yellow Chevrolet pickup, with his vet supplies enclosed in the back. He covered all the ranches in the Valley, and his truck was a common sight along the rural roads from Happy Canyon to Buellton.

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As time went on, Dr. Carricaburu, who I believe was the only large-animal veterinarian in the Valley at that time, began scaling back his practice.

To fill the needs of a growing Valley, a new veterinarian, Dr. Craig Larsen, moved into the area with his family and began his new practice. I was saddened to see that Dr. Larsen recently passed away.

Dr. Larsen, or Craig, as we called him after getting to know him better, started out with both a large- and a small-animal practice.

One time we had Craig come out in a driving rainstorm to help us figure out why our ewes were suddenly lying down on the wet ground and appearing to die.

The sheep had been through rainstorms before, and we never had anything like this happen. One by one, the ewes would just melt to the ground slowly and not move.

When Craig arrived, he asked us to move some of the stricken ewes to a different area in the corral so he could look at them. He determined they were not dead but paralyzed.

While he was trying to figure out the cause of paralysis, my brother Dana jumped over the fence near the pump house that was made out of corrugated metal.

His left hand hit the pump house as he jumped the fence and it shocked the daylights out of him. He was not hurt, but as we walked closer to the pump house, which was located inside the corral, we could feel a tingling sensation through our rubber boots.

About the same time, we all looked with amazement at the ewes that we had moved and were paralyzed minutes earlier now standing and walking around.

Apparently, the electricity that powered the starting motor for the well was traveling through the corrugated metal into the wet ground surrounding it.

The sheep's hooves were picking up the electricity in the ground, slowly electrocuting them.

We moved the sheep away from the pump house, and the problem was solved. Craig never had a case like that before and drove away thankful that we solved the problem.

Craig came out another time when we had several healthy ewes die for no apparent reason. We could not figure out what was going on. It was not raining. In fact, it was during the last warm days of spring.

My grandfather, Sam, was still helping with the sheep but was recovering from cataract surgery about the same time. He would fill a trough with water softener salt for the sheep to lick and munch on.

He kept the salt on the porch of the adobe. Dana and I were also using the porch to store our oat seed and urea fertilizer.

Dr. Larsen could not figure out what was killing the ewes and after examining them decided to send some samples taken from the dead ewes to a lab at Davis to help figure out what was going on.

About that time, one of us noticed the salt in the trough looked different. It turned out that it was not salt at all but urea fertilizer.

My grandfather mistakenly opened a sack of urea thinking it was salt and fed it to the sheep. After the eye surgery, it was hard for him to tell the two apart.

Another first for Dr. Larsen. Luckily, we only lost four or five ewes before we found the mysterious cause.

We used to laugh about it later with Craig, as he never really knew what he was in for when we called. Most of our calls were pretty routine.

Let's hope we are blessed with abundant rains in the coming days ahead and, quoting from the old Irish benediction, “they fall softly upon our fields.”

Kevin Merrill is a vineyard manager for Mesa Vineyard Management in Santa Maria. He is president of the Central Coast Wine Growers Association Foundation and a board member for the Santa Barbara County Farm Bureau.

Feb. 25, 2007