Field notes

We're having quite a warm week here in the Bluegrass.  It's been in the 80's and sunny and we've had the doors and windows open; listening to birdsong, peacock cries and lambs calling their mothers (or mothers calling their lambs).  Having weather this warm, when the trees are just barely leafed out, makes for lazy afternoons in the pastures.  The ewes seek shade wherever they can find it - sometimes it's in the thin shadow of a fence post for just a little while before they have to search out another spot.  These are the days I wish could last all summer, but eventually we'll get into the 90's and the sheep will lie panting under the trees until mercifully the sun starts going down. 

Evening has always been my favorite time of day and that's the time I love to go out into the pastures to sit, to just be, to just watch.  The ewes are grazing, efficiently moving from one spot to the next, focused in the way only sheep can be while eating.  Meanwhile, the lambs are running, jumping, chasing each other, trying to prove which of them is the biggest and baddest.  The brave ones and the bottle babies will come to me and nibble at my clothes and pull on my hair and a few will push at my hands, angling in for a chin scratch or ear scritches. 

That's the best time.  It's when I know that I'm where I need and want to be.