Birth of triplet lambs brings shear delight to family
By NANCY TULLIS
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
NORTH LIMA -- On a warm and windy afternoon, Lauren Marie Neopolitan, 22 months, waves her arms excitedly as she approaches the barn. She knows just where to find Rosita and the lambs.
Rosita keeps a watchful eye as Lauren pets her new offspring. Meanwhile, Lauren's father, Michael, keeps a watchful eye on Rosita.
"This is natural cloning," said Michael. The 3-year-old ewe delivered triplet lambs, a male and two females, early April 1, apparently with little difficulty.
"I went to the barn, and they were there," said Maria Neopolitan, Lauren's grandmother. "I thought she might have triplets. She was so big, she could barely walk."
Maria turns Rosita and the lambs out into the pasture, and Lauren squirms in Michael's arms.
"She loves it here," said Michael, who comes from Niles frequently to visit his parents' farm. "She wants to run."
He sets Lauren down and she takes off immediately, running through the pasture as fast as a nearly-2-year-old can.
Lauren loves the animals, and the lambs are her favorite, her grandmother said. Even last spring, when she was not yet a year old, Lauren wanted to chase after them, she added.
Tiny farm: Rosita and the triplet lambs are part of a small flock on the five acres Maria and her husband, Ralph, own on Sharrot Road, just west of the intersection of state Routes 165 and 164.
They raise the sheep for meat and wool, along with a few head of beef cattle, some chickens and fallow deer.
"Te! Te! Te!" Maria shouts in clear Italian, calling the sheep just visible against the bright blue horizon to come to her.
"She'll start calling them as soon as she comes out the back door, and by the time she gets to the fence, they're there," Michael explained.
Maria grew up on a farm in central Italy just west of Naples, where her father raised cattle. She recalls milking cows by hand. To feed the cattle, she cut grasses with a scythe and carried the bundles home on her head.
She wanted her father to raise sheep -- a neighbor had a large flock -- but he never did. Here Ralph and Maria have raised small flocks since they moved to Beaver Township from Struthers in 1974.
Couple's history: Maria met Ralph, an American, when he came to Italy to visit relatives. They married when Maria was 24, after a three-month courtship.
"My father told Ralph he could marry me even before I agreed," she said. The couple moved to Struthers in 1961. Over the years they have created a small slice of Italy here.
During the summer Maria bakes bread in a wood-fired brick oven in a garden shed behind their brick home. Nearby is a plot for a vegetable garden, which will soon be dominated by tomato and pepper plants now growing in a small greenhouse across the yard.
Maria emphasizes proudly that the plants grown from her own seeds are thriving, and much larger than most she's seen offered by area nurseries.
Last year, she canned some 300 quarts of tomatoes from the garden, and countless quarts of naturally-sweet grape juice. The neat rows of vines now just budding will be laden with grapes ripe for picking by October, Maria said.
Friendly place: Hospitality prevails in Ralph and Maria's home, always a magnet for family and friends, Michael says. Backyard boccie tournaments will begin soon, and an annual summer lamb roast draws more than 100 guests.
Even first-time visitors are treated like longtime kin. Maria talks of family and freely offers advice on courtship and marriage as she hands out glasses of chilled grape juice and loaves of bread.
"No one ever leaves here empty-handed," her son says, grinning.