It’s nice to go away so that you can come home. Homecoming for us involves greeting dogs and donkeys, barn cats and sheep, shoveling out the barn, checking water, checking on Simon’s wounds, moving the sheep into the back pasture,  and pulling some weeds out of the garden on a gloomy, eerily beautiful day. By night, things are settled.  I love the farm, it is a powerful place. I read a story to Simon from the wonderful donkey book “Platero and I” by Juan Ramon Jimenez given me by a friend this week and Maria shot a video of the reading which I’ll put up later.