We are going back to Merck Sunday about 2 p.m. to work with the lambs and sheep there. Couldn’t get there today, or Friday. Might make it Saturday afternoon. I am a member of the Merck Forest and Farmland Center, a beautiful 3,000 acre farm and camping retreat in Rupert, Vt.

I am not a person who often goes backwards, or who looks back. But I seem to be going back these days. I am not leaving the farm. The donkeys returned last week and the sheep in a week or so. This is not what I thought would happen. I thought we would have moved by now, and that my life with animals other than dogs was over. Doesn’t seem to be. My friend Margaret jokes that the way to make God laugh is to say “I have a plan.”

He is perhaps doubled over laughing at me.