I never feel the responsibility of animal care more acutely than in winter, when it is cold and there is too much snow on the ground for them to move around. Animals like sheep are utterly helpless, the donkeys less so. I suspect if they had to, the donkeys would make their way to the outer pasture and chew up some trees. Sheep seem much more helpless to me, although they are probably not. They can’t graze or forage in this weather, so we make sure to get out early and feed them – they are fed twice a day. They spend their days and nights in the pole barn, we can tell where they are by the manure they leave behind, there is quite a bit in the barn and much of it is frozen solid to the ground, we can’t really get at it with our rakes and shovels.

It is gratifying to care for them, it helps us develop our own sense of empathy, it feeds the notion of compassion which is, after all, just empathy.