Day: July 1, 2012

My life seems filled with words, images. This will be a quiet week, the Fourth. More showings of the farm. One woman e-mailed me from California and said she couldn’t buy a woodshed there for what the farm is selling for and she wanted to come back East.  But she had to convince her husband to move. I thanked her, told her to contact the realtor, not me, and wished her luck. I hope she finds what she wants, but I doubt it will be this farm.

When the farm and its buyer meet, everyone will know it. The farm is dancing with me these days, and when we get close, it whispers to me that it wants a person who loves nature, loves animals, and wants to live their life. It is a Thoreau kind of place, I fantasize. For people who know what is important, know what they love, know that this – doing what you love – is the most important thing there is on the world. Who follow impossible dreams and make them come true.

There are few such people, I know, but they will make their way here. The farm has promised me, and I have promised the farm I will find them. They are close. I can feel it. So says the rustles of the leaves on my path in the wind.

This old sheep. Closing her eyes. Lost a bit in time.

Our friend Jenna Woginrich of Cold Antler Farm came over this morning with her medical kit to take a look at Tess. It is great to have a friend like Jenna living nearby. If you ever  want to have a farm, have one near somebody like her. She and Maria think it might be tetanus. We are giving Tess penicillin injections and put some lactose in her water for energy. She struggles to stand up, but otherwise looks good. Good appetite, bright eyes, dry nose.  Maria is on it, using her own healing and communications skills. And Red provided back-up, helping keep Tess in place with his piercing stare.

We’ll know in a couple of days if this works. I am fond of Tess, she is unusual. Putting up an album on Facebook.

  I’ve never had a dog enter my life so quickly and completely as Red has. Maybe I am open to it. Maybe we both were. Red and I work every morning, do farm chores all day, hang out in the car, go together on chores. He lies by my feet when I read and watches me all day. Like a true working dog, he defines work more broadly than sheep. I am his work, I can feel it.

I have some of that feeling again that I had with Rose, that something strong and powerful has got my back, is here with me, is walking through life with me and with Maria. Our morning work has become a sacred rite.

The old sheep came a few days ago, a farmer’s notion. His sheep had served him long and well, lambing year after year. Now, in human years, they are about 80 years old and he knew that I had plenty of pasture and he wanted them to have a last summer. They are not rescue sheep, and I am not rescuing them. They are not my sheep and I have no right or interest or say in what happens to them when they leave here.

Real farmers do not have sheep as pets, and they cannot afford the medical and other costs of keeping elderly animals who do not produce revenue and take up grass or space. I understand and respect this. If he says it is their last summer, then I understand what that means, and I have no wish or need to interfere with this process or keep them here beyond this summer. They have gotten to me, though, touched me and I want to record their time here photographically all summer – Chronicles Of A Last Summer. This morning, at 6 a.m. I went out to their pasture with my camera and lay down on the grass. Red came with me, but did not go near the sheep.

I’ve been out there a few times and they trust me and my camera and they don’t move while I am there. It is striking how much they seem to connect with one another, leaning on each other for support, as if they have an instinctive sense of this experience. I will follow it.