Eventide

I milk every evening at 7:00 p.m. Jolene is finishing up feeding the horses and the flock of Border Leicesters. We strain the milk, and walk out to my car. Detour over to the gate into the south pasture. It's now about 8 o'clock, the sun is well down, the light is golden. Leaning on the fence, it's a time of quiet conversation, enjoying a like spirit and the calm at the end of a day of work. We talk about our gardens, the sheep, the contentment of living on a farm, close to the land.


The sheep are content. They've had a good day.
We know each lamb, and contemplate their personalities, compare notes on their health and growth.

Being lambs, they get in a few last spurts of play.

A last snack before bedtime...

They begin to settle for the night. There is something so serene about sheep - maybe it's that concept of "counting sheep" to put yourself to sleep. Or maybe it's the perception of softness in their fluffy rounded forms.

Jolene spends a few moments talking things over with Cuddles. She is the oldest ewe, their first lamb 14 years ago. Cuddles has had her last lamb, an adorable and lovely little girl-sheep. Jolene knows Cuddles, who is in failing health, won't be with the flock after this summer.
That's the way of living with livestock and pets. On a farm, you know these things are the pattern of life, you accept them as they are meant to be. There is an assurance in that "circle of life", just as in the cycle of the field crops each year.

The hay bales in the field are part of that cycle. It's comforting to walk out in the evening, listening to the robins singing their evening song, catch the last light on the fluffy clouds.

Kinda remind me of sheep..