When we got home from Vermont, there was a note from the ever-vigilant Deb Foster, our animal and farm sitter, that one the sheep – it was Socks – started limping on Thanksgiving afternoon. I went out and saw her limping and figured it to be one of the sprains that are common with sheep, they usually go away, I didn’t see anything.  We decided to take a closer look after we unpacked and settled in, and I held Socks and Maria looked at her right paw and a huge, inch-and-a-half nail was sticking out of her hoof, it was right between the two pads, we just pulled it right out and it came  easily, it was not deeply embedded. It was a huge nail.

We applied some antibiotic cream to the entry point, I suspect Socks will be limping for a few days. Red helped us hold her in place, but we won’t be sheepherding for a few days. Old farms are studded with nails, old rusty buckets and other debris from the years when farmers simply dumped their trash out in the fields and there were no dumps. Thus stuff came up out of the ground at Bedlam Farm and I remember many times when the donkeys caught their hooves in metal brackets or parts of old farm tools. When we knocked down the old barn at the new farm, we used magnets to find some of them, but others come up right out of the ground when it rains or the ground freezes and thaws. This one must have been sticking straight up, Socks will be fine. I’m always reminded of the real life of real animals. And real farms.

I check each of the animals every day, morning and night. I am often surprised by what I might find.