On Friday, I picked up a chai tea latte with a shot of caramel and a couple of donuts from a local shop to drown the sorrow of losing all of my chickens to raccoons over the last month. The creatures had broken through every defense, tearing out staples and unwinding wires. Thursday night, I’d splinted one lamb’s broken leg, and lost another to a broken neck. Speculation is the only tool to tell what happened: either she was trampled or fell from the top of a hay bale.
After the tea and donuts, I worked at the Art Gallery and sorted through more than 1,700 New Zealand photos (and that’s just from November, with more in that month to go). I said to myself, I’m starting over. Again.
Food and art help heal. And sometimes, food is art.
And then we went into the weekend, and the poor little lamb with a broken leg was lost.
The ebb and flow of nature has been felt hard here. This week has been quieter, for which I am thankful. I weaned the four oldest lambs, pushing away the thought, There should have been six.
The Kiwi Hoosier 