Reunited

This past Friday, we received some spectacular news: we had an offer on our house!  It was an intense month of waiting but it all culminated when our realtor called to share the good news.  We were ecstatic.

In our preparations for moving, we’ve had to make some very difficult decisions, namely what animals would be coming and which would be left behind.  The cats will come–they’ve been with us from the beginning and it’s easy to house them inside until we can find another acreage.  Of course the horses won’t be sold, especially since a large portion of my desire to live in the country is due to Stoney and Dancer.  That meant the chickens, sheep and goats were most likely not going to make the trek as much as we wanted them to.

If it were up to me, I’d have been blessed with unending financial resources but as of yet, God hasn’t seen fit to do that.  So, the chickens are going to live with our neighbors who I know will appreciate the fresh eggs and will give the girls a good home.  The goats are for sale and last Friday night, the sheep were sold.

It wasn’t too difficult to find someone to take three ewes of breeding age.  It was hard to say goodbye though.  We went out together and sat with them, patting their heads and feeding them handfuls of sweet feed.  I cried like a little girl.  Though I know farm animals change hands all the time without seller or buyer batting an eye, I felt like I had somehow betrayed or let down our ewes because I couldn’t afford to move them too.

The buyers arrived well after the sun set so we parked our truck, headlights on, so we could see the sheep dart through the darkness.  The buyers were Hispanic so Jack struck up a conversation and I listened to them negotiate in Spanish.  A fair price was reached and we said goodbye to the ewes.

I put on a happy face though my heart was broken.  As a way of delivering some comfort, God sent us a tender mercy.  It turns out that the people buying our ewes are also the people who bought Murphy earlier in the summer.  He said he still had the rascally Murphy so it was a bit of a relief to know the sheep would be reunited.

We thanked them for giving the ewes a good home and watched them drive off into the darkness.  I spent the rest of the weepy night, partly celebrating, partly comforting myself with chocolate chip cookies.  As glum as I felt, their reunion was a silver lining.  Someday, we’ll have sheep again though they’ll always be compared to the standard of our first.