Daisy turned ten this week. She and her mother Rosie came to Apifera in 2004 and started our flock, with the help of Joe Pye Weed. Rosie died in the Spring of Death in '09, but Daisy continues on as lead ewe, retired, slower, with one remaining tooth. She has always produced beautiful, friendly sheep and usually gives us buff browns and little white caps. Her last ewe was born on my birthday in 2011 and I named her Kappie to honor her white cap, but also to honor my grandmother who died the day I was born in 1958.
All these interconnected elements of one's life, swirl around at a fast pace and one day you look around and you are half way through the journey.
The farm is such a wonderful role model for me. I am so graced to have it, especially in hard times or transitions where one needs to hold on to something, anything. For the farm is always shifting too, the earth underneath grows or wanes from too much water or just the right amount, old trees eventually fall and their limbs provide more homes for rodents and birds or burn into the chimney and out into the night. While we are allowed to keep a field in fallow for a year, that field is really not resting.
And I choose to believe we never really rest either, we shed our skin like a snake and move on to the next stage. Each year more lambs come, their elders die off but I remember each one and can see their traits in their offspring. It's a continuous thread from the farm to steward.
