I am lucky. To be alive. To have work that I love. To be in love. To be healing, growing, changing. I am lucky to live on a farm where life surprises me almost every day, as it did this afternoon when I rounded the corner of the pole barn to help with the chores and came upon this scene: Maria getting to know her new ewe Kim, joining the ram and the ladies at dinnertime for a chat. Maria knows intuitively what it took me years to learn, that the way to bond with almost any animal is to join them at meal time, to be part of the life-and-death process of eating, all of their instincts focused around it for much of the day.

The new shy Ewe, Kim, lets her get closer, the other ewes eating their hay alongside of her, I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I imagine Maria was having a chat with her sheep, as she often does. This is what elves to.