Every day we make the rounds, checking the pastures, visiting the donkeys, brushing them and giving them some grain. Today it was carrots. They love to crunch carrots. This is Maria’s favorite chore.
Bartleby is growing up. He hangs out with a lot of ewes, and goes to his mother when he wants milk. He is eating grass and drinking water. In the fall, he is leaving to go back to Vermont. Maria and I have decided that we don’t want to keep sheep on the farm. Too much other stuff to do.
I’ve learned some lessons about keeping animals. Livestock are not pets. Farm animals are not companion animals. Animals like dogs, cats and donkeys have lived with humans for many thousands of years. They know us, and we know them. All animals are not alike to me, and Maria and both believe we need to be very careful about the animals that stay in Bedlam. It is mostly a pretty calm and creative place.
This flower challenges me to remember the small and beautiful things in life, and celebrate them. To start each day with an affirmation that life is a choice, and it is filled with good and bad things, painful and joyous ones, and the test of a life is not whether it is perfect or free of pain and sorrow, but how we deal with pain and sorrow.
Life is, I think, a gift as well a challenge. Every day Maria and I give a donkey or two a treat, and animals, I see, have the power to lift us up, make us feel better, lighten our load. You look at this photo, and you just have to smile, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. Lenore has this gift and people smile when they see Rose at work. I don’t quite understand it, but I see it and am fortuanate to be able to catch some of these images. Lifting people’s spirits is the greatest gift one could possibly have in life.
