June 9, 2023
I’m always slightly envious of other people’s bucket lists. Things like bungee jumping or an African safari sound exhilarating. My bucket list is way more pragmatic, it’s a list of things I need to finish or fix before I go. I live in fear of leaving someone else stuck with my well-intended “to do” list – and all of those things that I never actually “got done”.
Last month we were contacted by someone in charge of finding a home for a flock of 6 sheep whose owner had died of Covid. We needed to pick them up immediately, so we cleared our schedule, hitched up the trailer and went to collect them. I had visions of them all in a corral with their bags packed, patiently waiting to load onto our trailer. Ha!
They clearly had the run of the place and showed no interest in going anywhere, with anyone. It had taken months of probate to settle the farm’s estate, meanwhile the laws of entropy raged on. The sheep had been fed during the winter and let out to pasture in the spring, but the farmer, who was also the caretaker, the fence fixer, the gate mender, the corral tender, and the one person the sheep had relied upon their whole lives, had been gone for far too long. On a farm, if things aren’t monitored and repaired as needed, animals and weather quickly take a toll. It’s a constant battle – and one this farm was losing. As we chased the now feral sheep from paddock to paddock, every gate I tried to close fell off its hinges and every corral we tried to gather them in fell apart. My own to do list flashed before my eyes.
After an entire afternoon of chasing, we finally caught, wrestled, and loaded them into the trailer and triumphantly brought them home. We put them in a separate, but adjoining pasture alongside our original flock so they could all get used to each other. They have indeed been slowly acclimating to their new home and after two weeks of adjusting from afar, they finally followed us into the barn where we were able to get them shorn. The next day the temperature spiked to 90 degrees and had they remained unshorn, the stress and the heat might very well have killed them.
I think they are starting, once again, to see the usefulness of having a shepherd around. They are coming closer and closer to us each day, looking to see what we might have to offer, or which pasture we might let them into next. They seem content to watch me go about (now with renewed determination) the process of fixing my own fences, gates, and buildings. I tell them - as if to satisfy their curiosity - “It might not be as fun as bungee jumping, but it’s really gotta get done”.