Farm Thoughts 3

Don't push your luck. You have to be realistic about what you can achieve. Never take on too much because you'll end up doing everything a little less well. Unless you have a large enough community that is but even then you have to accept that there are limits.

Last night the three sheep got out as we were trying to corral them back to their home pen for the night. It was sunset, probably too late to start. The sun was a magical orange, the colour you get when you mix orange juice and cranberry juice. Stunning, but they all are once you learn to look. We had done this over a dozen times before but these sheep are skittish and you never know what they're going to do. They rounded the corner and saw us, in our usual places. That was enough. They quickly turned away and broke out into a field.

By this point, another pair of farm inhabitants, our horses turned up to check out what these crazy humans were up to. The sheep proceeded to cut into the horses' fenced in field; fenced for horses not for small sheep.

An almost-tragically comical scene developed. Both horses reared up and were hot on the sheep's heels. Did they mean to kill these small, black intruders? Were they just playing? It seemed real enough to us. The earth shook under their mighty hoofs. I have to admit that I laughed as the scene worsened.

Happily for the sheep, they escaped the horses. Trapped against a fence they blazed a trail straight for me and my trusty dog, Buck. Scared from their ordeal they broke through our line. Buck just watched them pass while I was almost bowled over. My moment, missed.

The sun was dipping ever lower and the shadows grew longer and longer. The sheep made it up the road to the neighbour's house. They led us on a bicycle chase there, no luck. Then they disappeared as we herded them back to the house. Searching for black sheep by flashlight proved fruitless and we retired to our beds.

These sheep were scared and never much cared for us anyway (the feeling is mutual). We thought we might never see them again as the coyotes hunt in darkness. But after a four hour morning search we found them with the help of a dozen smiling neighbours. Eventually they became trapped in a fenced in swimming pool and we lassoed them and bundled them into a truck for the journey home.

A monumental waste of time. Hours gone from our brief lives. I wish the sheep nothing but ill but really how can I blame them? And they did make me laugh, when they met the horses. What would life be without a few chases now and then?

Still my lesson in this is not to overextend oneself. To realize that there comes a moment when you have too many animals, or things or tools or clothes. We do not always need to grow and spread like a cancer. Perhaps there is a wider lesson in all this.