The first day in the new pasture was easy, natural. Maria and the donkeys and Red just walked across the new bridge and into the newly opened old cow pasture. There was something graceful and sweet about it – I am putting up some photos in an album on Facebook. Those of us who love animals know the particularly sweet pleasure of creating lives for them that are healthy, and nourishing and that offer them the chance to live their lives in a free and natural way. There were many good and solid reasons to clean up the mess around the new pasture gate, but to be honest, it was really for the feeling Maria and I got watching Lulu (she who is first in) and Simon and Fanny head into a place that they will surely love. It is filled with food and fresh water, nooks and crannies to explore, a hill or two to climb, bushes to eviscerate and nibble on and grass to the horizon.

Doing this for them is a gift for us. Through animals, I began to learn how to love. I began to understand empathy and generosity – because they cannot speak, we have to speak for them and think about them. Animals brought me to people, as they did with Maria, as they did yesterday when the Big Men In Trucks came to meet me and help me out. As they do every day. We separated the sheep from the donkey so they would just be left alone for the day to explore the new pasture and we closed the gates behind Lulu’s Crossing and we went in to do our work and leave them to theirs. I enjoyed taking photos of them. More on Facebook, more later and for many days to come. (Rainstorm tomorrow, back in the Pole Barn.)