Day: May 1, 2013

At the first Bedlam Farm, we had acres of grass and shrub and we never really needed to worry about rotational grazing. Here, we have 17 acres but only five to seven acres are good for grazing. Donkeys are big eaters and they and the sheep are already leveling much of our grass – we have a lot of marshland. So we have to get inventive. We got some temporary fencing and are splitting the sheep pasture in two. Two weeks of grazing, two weeks of shifting and resting the pasture. Todd Mason is coming soon to fence some acreage behind the farmhouse – not enough money to do the whole thing for sheep and donkeys – so we will have to be creative. We are starting by fencing off the sheep pasture and when Todd gets the fence up, we’ll split the sheep and the donkeys.

This is one of those things that is a creative challenge for me, like chess. Got to plan and figure it out.

Thomas Merton wrote that our life is divided against itself. We are torn between the love of life and the fear of itself, the fear of death. Death operates in the midst of life, but not at the end of life.

For me, death is the fear of life. Death is life afraid to love and to live and to trust itself because we are so obsessed with our own anxieties, the things we are told we must fear. We are so preoccupied with life’s ending that we are afraid to live it while we can.