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EDGAR, Mont. - Andrea Clark stumbles from a bed she's barely slept in, wearing the smelly jeans and shirt she had on just a few hours earlier, to work at a job she's paying to do.
"Let's go check for babies," Clark, 32, of Lakeside tells her mother as they make their way to the nearby corrals and hundreds of pregnant sheep.
It's 2 a.m, the air is crisp and the women are tired. But if they came to Pachy Burns' ranch to be pampered or spend relaxing nights under Montana's big sky, they've driven down the wrong gravel road.
This is "Jam to Lamb," a monthlong getaway that brought Clark and about 30 women from around the country to Burns' Montana ranch to share her rural lifestyle and work that accompanies lambing 700 sheep.
Many are stepping onto a ranch for the first time. Others are in search of adventure. Nearly all are in for experiences they never expected when they made reservations on cards listing "blisters to calluses" and "hands-on learning" as benefits.
"You certainly can't worry about getting dirty," Ellie Taege, a psychotherapist from Rhinelander, Wis., says, her T-shirt spackled with manure and her new gloves stained with iodine.
On Burns' ranch, accommodations aren't lavish and the workload isn't light. There isn't even a guarantee of a bed - women bring sleeping bags just in case - and there is just one bathroom.
Everyone is expected to chip in, from checking ewes and tending lambs to fixing dinner and mowing the lawn.
"I never want people to think they're being waited on," says Burns, who works almost nonstop, from sunrise to nightfall, following a schedule set by the sheep.
Women pay $250 for a week to reconnect with their roots or build their confidence, but they admit they forget their needs and problems almost as quickly as they drop their bags in Burns' house.
"Jam to Lamb" is about sheep and getting involved in a way of life that's fading.
The camp allows Burns to promote the lamb and wool industry by giving women experience with work that goes into producing the food and clothes they buy. Hers are among 300,000 sheep in Montana; there were 564,000 head in the state 10 years ago.
"As long as I'm in the sheep business, I'm going to bring people in," Burns says. "If you can't speak about what you believe in, what's the point of believing in it?"
Burns, 53, never intended to make "Jam to Lamb" an all-women event - or even an event.
But when her daughters left for college, Burns had difficulty juggling the demands. A friend brought five others to lambing camp. The work went well, word spread, and this time of year hasn't been the same since.
There are a few men on the ranch, including two full-time sheepherders. But women mostly run the show. Clark and her mother, Gayle Reid, returning for their second year, are grateful for that.
"Being around women frees you to ask more questions. You're not afraid to look stupid," says Reid, 53, an office manager from Missoula. "In the company of men, when you ask questions, they come and take over and do it themselves."
Burns and her older daughter, Piney Hardiman, teach the women how to bottle feed or match ewes to lambs with painted-on brands. Growing up, Hardiman didn't like this way of life.
"Now I appreciate it and the hard work and what my mom went through," she says.
Psychiatrist Nancy Wilson, also from Rhinelander and a friend of Taege's, came hoping to see a lamb born Easter morning. She saw several.
"The idea of new life in the spring and of helping newborn lambs get started," she says, "I just love that idea."