June 24, 2008 – When anyone asks me what life on a farm is like, I often go to great pains to say it is not a perfect life, not a life of brilliant sunrises and pastoral moments, and cuddling with cute animals. It is often dark, dirty, smelly and hard, a place of life and death. It has been nearly three years since an animal died here, and this morning, we decided to put down No. 74, an oddly expressive sheep who graces the cover of “My Place On Earth,” and who recently has been coming up to me and staring (above.) I even posted a journal item about her. She was rescued from a nearby farm, and many people thought she was thanking me.
  I didn’t think so, and now, I suspect, she was expressing some discomfort to me, a sign I missed. Kirk Ayling, the Granville Large Animal vet, and a friend, came this morning and said she damaged her treachea somehow and was struggling to breath, and was uncomfortable and in pain. There was no cure, short of massive surgery, and that was unlikely to succeed, and I am not at ease putting an animal through that. Nor do I think it’s appropriate, in the case of a sheep.
  In my mind, there was really no option but to put her down or send her to market, something I wasn’t comfortable doing, and Annie reluctantly agreed. I don’t really love sheep nearly as much as dogs or donkeys or, for that matter, cows and steers. But I was attached to Number 74, who had so plaintive a look we put her on the cover of Mary Kellogg’s book and who did seem to be trying to communicate with me.
  I am glad we didn’t permit her to suffer further. I called for Rose, who is always present when any creature comes or leaves the farm, and we put her to sleep and Kirk and I hauled her into my four-wheeler and Rose and I took her off into the deep woods where I have a burial place for farm animals I can get up there. There, I said goodbye, Rose sniffed her (Rose keeps an inventory in her head of all things on the farm, and it is essential she sees all the comings and goings.) and I thanked Annie for taking such good care of her, and said goodbye. This is always tough on Annie, who accepts it and has a personal relationship with every animal on the farm.
  Annie secretly names some of the sheep, but I call them by numbers. Number 74 was an odd creature, often off by herself a bit, wary of people. She had nothing to do with Lenore and stayed as far from Rose as she could get. Once in awhile she came up and stared at me.
  This is part of what I love about a farm, the coming and going, life and death, notions of management, the responsibility to keep the farm solvent, functioning and healthy. I do not believe in keeping unhealthy animals alive on a farm. It is not a veterinary clinic, or a rescue facility, although that sometimes happens.
  The farm is an entity bigger than any of its individual parts, and the death of an animal marks that clearly.

  Number 74