Whenever I am in need or trouble, the Gulleys, long-time dairy farmers and our friends, are among the very first people I will call. I texted Ed and Carol this morning and said I needed help. I knew we were likely to have to put Deb down and I had to figure out what to do with a 200 plus pound ewe, especially on a warm summer day.

Ed has done this a thousand times, and he is a big and powerful man.

The flies and maggots and smell would be long in coming. Most farmers have a dead animal pile, animals live and die all the time on farms. Carol Gulley asked if we wanted to bury Deb or have Ed come over and pick her up and bring him to his farm. We don’t bury sheep, we are fond of them, but they are not like dogs or horses or donkeys to us.

I confess I do not love all animals the same. The loss of a sheep is not the same thing as the loss of a donkey or a pony or a dog to me, although I was especially attached to Deb and her twin Jake, and their mother Ma. Sadly, I had to kill all three of them, Ma was a rescue and I don’t know much about her past, except she was in rough shape when she arrived.

Ed had a brutally long day haying and milking on a hot day, he finished the evening milking and hopped in his truck and came over  just at dusk. We put a tarp down and Ed – he is very strong – and Maria put Deb on the tarp and pulled her out to Ed’s truck. He put down a metal grid, pulled Deb up on it, then lifted the grid onto the back of the truck.

Sheep live humble lives, Deb was born in the dirt of the Pole Barn and left us on a tarp on the back of a farm truck to go to a dead animal pile. She will feed the crows and cultures and coyotes and worms and foxes, she will enter the chain of nature.

Ed was also here when the bear who crawled injured into our pasture was killed by state environmental police.  He is the best kind of friend, you can absolutely count on him when you need him, and I hope he feels the same way about us. That is what community is about.

So a humble ending to a humble sheep. Tomorrow, we wash out the barn and move on. We are buying 130 bales of hay from Ed, they will be coming soon.