hospital

I checked my watch. I was certain it was past 6, it had to be. I had been working out the sticky-wet all day between storms. At 9AM I loaded up the Dodge at Tractor Supply with new t-posts, wire fencing, grain, and chicken feed. I had bought electrolyte boosters, syringes, and a new bottle of Safeguard. The plan was to spend the day creating a small sheep pen, laying it down with fresh bedding, green hay, grain, and vitamin water and then somehow catching Lisette and her lamb and sticking them inside. Once inside they would get an oral helping of dewormer (If I could catch them and hold their mouths open long enough to take it) and spend a few weeks in their own spa. It was a last-ditch effort at recovery and well-being, and when they were both healthy and good—sell them off or give them away as pets to folks who wanted heritage-breed lawn mowers and had no interest in keeping them for anything else. These were not to be returned to the gene pool.

It was 2PM.

I was shocked. The timelessness of the gray sky made all day feel like 4PM on a Tuesday. I had just finished setting up the girls in their private Hospital, both let me give them fresh dewormer without fuss and catching them was luck and ease. If these two were to be on the mend, this was step one. Isolation, medication, and plenty of clean water and good feed.

To get to the point of nursing required hours of removing good field fencing from around a dump pile, replacing it with a lesser-quality (but equally deterring) garden fence, and then pounding posts and staples, hauling water and hay, and wrangling sickly sheep. I already felt like it was time to quit and it wasn't even 2:30.... I must sound exasperated, but this is a great thing. To realize that I had more daylight, more time, a whole afternoon to clean up, read, grill, and know the entire farm was running on the right train schedule. If this was a regular workday I would be contemplating afternoon iced coffee and chatting in our bistro. I stood in my lawn, heaving, but smiling. No one ever told this new agrarian that you get more minutes out of your hour on a farm!?

So the big work of the day is done, and so I am retiring to an afternoon of reading, relaxing, and grilling some leftover veggies from yesterday's kabob fest. A good meal and a cold drink, a few chapters of a good book, and I am born again.

P.S. Did anyone get their swap books yet?