It seemed like one of those overwhelming farm dramas that Maria and I both love but which can be overwhelming and which increasingly reveal what I can no longer do. This morning, Maria checked on the animals and discovered that the sheep had broken through two fences – the two-wire fence near the Pole Barn and the mesh fence in the back pasture.

They were all grazing around our neighbor’s RV without neighbors inside sleeping. That’s a nightmare when that happens. I told Maria I needed to call our handyman Mike or a professional fence builder. I hate when that happens.

She didn’t blink,  she said she wanted to fix it herself.

A few years ago, I would have wondered what kind of wife tells her husband she wants to put up a fence alongside a muddy swamp, with thorny bushes, and many large rocks?

Even professionals groaned about that. But I could see by the look in her eyes that she meant to do it and will do it. I also know that when she says she can do something, she almost always does it.

We drove to the hardware store together, and she bought some chicken wire made for turkeys and chickens but suitable for patching weak spots in two-wire electrical fences. Our exterior walls are all impenetrable and secure. The two weak spots are inside the ring, the one where Zinnia (fresh from the swamp) is standing and the other is a stretch of bushes in the far back where the sheep ran over the mesh fence and laid it flat.

We needed something different for the rest.

I called Country Power, John Rieger’s farm supplies store (I contribute with excellent phone work and some helpful ideas), and told John our problem. In a few minutes, he called back and recommended fencing to stop sheep and be light enough for Maria to handle.

He was incredibly friendly and helpful, and it’s a pleasure to do business with a human who knows only too well what it feels like to have one’s animals running around. Amazon’s algorithms can’t quite handle that.

Tomorrow morning, we are driving out to John’s store and getting two more rolls of wire that are four feet tall and 150 feet a roll. Maria says she is fencing the entire back fence in the rear pasture by the neighbor’s property.

Even a few years ago, I could have helped. It sometimes kills me that I can’t, but I also see how pride and joy she takes in fixing things on the farm herself.

Rather than feel sorry for myself, I remind me how lucky I am to have married a person like this, a dear friend and wonderful lover and strong woman who grows stronger every time she builds a fence, or climbs on a roof or up a tree, or strangles weeds and digs beautiful gardens out of dry soil and rock.

She even thinks I’m handsome, perhaps the biggest miracle of all.

She is an amazing person, and I love her, but I am also immensely proud of her. She is just the best person I have ever known, watching her move into the life she was meant to live is an incalculable gift.

It seems a dreadful sin to complain about anything when I am this lucky.

By tomorrow afternoon, these fences will be solid and repaired, and our sheep will be safe and our neighbors (amicable and understanding people, they once had goats) undisturbed. They love to look out their window and see the sheep grazing.

Tonight, the sheep are in lockdown. The first hole was repaired, the second one out of their reach.