“Remember Man that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.”

Greetings Dear ones!

Happy Ash Wednesday—Prudence’s favorite holiday—when we pause to grieve all that we are and think that swearing off chocolate can help. “We’re not here for a long time, OR a good time,” she insists, producing a list that looks uncannily like the New Year’s Resolutions I have refused to adhere to once already. The next forty days will usher in mud-season and prom-season, with heaps of gawd-awful glitter. Why not add a dash of penance and atonement too? “Offer it up,” she says with a saccharine smile. Meanwhile, I gaze around me. If men are turning into dust, this place is covered with them. I’ve had very little time for “Man-removal” from under beds, inside fiddles, and all those over-head places I cannot reach. I’ve been in a swirl since returning from fiddle camp last week.

It was amazing to work, cook and play together again. Our hearts, our spirits, our tummies are full. But are we talking about how good most of the meals were? The oatmeal, the tatties, the neeps? No. We are still talking about how we all forgot to put the oven on when we tried to cook fifty pounds of baked potatoes for lunch, only to discover that they were damp, raw, rocks twenty minutes before we were about to serve them! We are reminiscing about how some conscientious night-clean-up volunteer turned off the lower oven that was supposed to roast meat slowly all night—so that it was all still raw in the morning, setting us back twelve hours in prep time. Are we steeped in gratitude for all the times we went into the walk-in fridge and didn't get trapped? No. We are laughing (with relief) at how two young men went in and got stuck and pounded on the door for about seven minutes before thinking to call me on a cell phone. (When the call came, I was sitting down for the first time all day and assumed my leg, which was buzzing, had fallen asleep and ignored it.)

From the mishaps come the moments we remember most. From the love and care comes the ability to team up and laugh. We carry on by carrying each other.

And so it is with Summer Sunshine.

The first time I met Summer Sunshine, she was a soggy little mop of wool lying in a patch of sun near her mother. Of course, I had no idea then that it was her. No one did. She was just another anonymous lamb born in another anonymous Spring three years ago. She grew quickly and ran and played with the other lambs. When they were cold or tired, they curled up on their leeward side of their mamas in warm, snug, smug little bundles. Sometimes, if the mamas were lying down, they cuddled into the wool on their backs and slept on them like giant smelly pillows. Their shepherdess is a dear friend of mine who was not well at the time and was having a tough spring after a double hip replacement. She relied on the kindness of neighbors and friends to help with the heavy farm chores involved in caring for eighty head of sheep. (It wasn’t just heads; they had legs and tails too.) By fall, the lambs were weaned and my friend had Lyme disease, bringing yet another series of set-backs in a difficult year.

One horrible day, someone noticed that the lambs were “acting funny.” When a farm animal acts “funny” I don’t mean they dance around with oversized hats and rubber chickens and tell a few good rippers. No, these lambs were walking in circles, drooling out of one side of their mouths and pushing their heads into corners. They looked haunted. They weren’t eating. They had listeria poisoning. Within forty-eight hours, most of them were dead.

Listeria is a deadly bacteria named in honor of British surgeon Sir Joseph Lister (1827–1912), an early advocate of antiseptic surgery. It is found in soil, water, manure—three things your average sheep farm has plenty of. In this case, the lambs were probably infected by mouldy hay, which may have been given to them by an unwitting volunteer who did not know any better. We will never know for sure. Recovery of sheep from listeriosis depends on early detection of illness, together with prompt and aggressive treatment prescribed by a veterinarian, most of which does not work. Brain tissue of the animal is usually infected, which causes all sorts of motor issues. Long-term recovery is extremely rare. Only one lamb survived—and my friend named her “Summer Sunshine.”

Each day, my friend would limp to her barn and sit with this lamb on her lap and perform Reiki healings and feed her orange slices as treats. Because of her neurologic deficits, the lamb was unable to walk for more than two months. My friend had to teach her, patiently, and put her in a pen with sheep who would be gentle and not knock her over all the time. (Sheep need company and are not happy alone.) On a farm of 80 sheep, this one became a special pet.

Two years later, Summer Sunshine, still wobbly, is not a good candidate for breeding. The coyotes have made a few kills in the field and are becoming a relentless threat. My friend has to keep the sheep penned up and feed them hay, which is expensive, due to the poor weather we had last June. Two years in a row of soaring hay prices for sheep and food prices for humans and my friend has to cull her herd. She has no choice. She sells what she can but she cannot find a home for Summer Sunshine and she cannot afford to keep her. She can no longer turn her out in the field with the others because she could never outrun the coyotes.

I talk to this friend on a daily basis to check on her. One day her voice sounds hollow, dead. She has taken a bad fall at the barn and is resting. I can “hear” that something else is wrong.

“I took Summer Sunshine to Barney’s with the ram lambs this morning,” she admits finally. “I feel just sick about it but I think it is really for the best. I think I fell because I just don’t want to get up any more today. After 60 years of raising sheep, this never gets easier.”

Barney is her friend, the butcher, who processes all her meat, which she then sells.

Silently, on the other end of the phone, I nod tearfully. This is why I don’t raise my sheep for meat. I too am battling the exhausting price of hay the way all of us, world-wide are battling the exhausting and prohibitive cost of fuel. I could not have afforded another mouth to feed either, not that I had the chance to offer. The deed has been done. Instantly, I think of a plan.

“Please, let me buy her meat!” I say.

“What?? That’s crazy,” she says. “You don’t even eat meat!”

“No,” I admit, “but I have friends who love lamb. I’ll share it with them. I’ll bring Summer Sunshine to the fiddle camp and have her turned into music. She won’t go to anonymous carnivores—she’ll be enjoyed by the most amazing and talented people I know and she will power their songs well into the night.”

My friend sniffs. “That’s perfect. I certainly couldn’t eat her myself. And I need the money so badly.”

“It’s settled, then” I say feeling suddenly happier. “These camps I cook for support local farmers and I always try to source our meat responsibly when I can. What could be better than knowing she was such a loved animal from a good farm, always cared for?”

“She’s over two years old and totally grass fed so use a lot of spice. This meat will be very lean but extremely flavorful,” she advises.

Those who ate the Shepherd’s pie and lamb curry told me it was extremely flavorful. Some got nourished by the meat, some by the story. No doubt, some of you Dear Ones will be horrified by this story. (I know I will get “letters” about this.) I feel your pain, sensitive empaths and vegans. Truly, I do. More than you could ever know. Still, I think the story of Summer Sunshine is worth telling. (Not telling a story doesn’t make it any less true.)

We humans make the best stories from our tragedies and the best music from our pain. Hopefully, those stories help us to see ourselves, not as solitary individuals, but as part of a web with concentric circles and strands that stretch across counties, countries, the entire globe. Buying “local” IS global. Our music doesn’t come from the radio any more than our food comes from a grocery store.

I think of this as we witness the terror unfolding in Ukraine—a terror that puts raw potatoes and a decent lamb curry into a totally different perspective. We talk about how the Darkness comes to overwhelm us and yet, through the stories we tell ourselves, the heroism we observe in others, we survive. We rally. We simply refuse to perish. We ask the nearest Joan-of-Arc-of-Baked-Potatoes to stand by the microwave and do her best. And she does. We ask our grandmothers to make Molotov cocktails and they do. Who made this mess? We did. Who needs to clean it up? We do.

Bad things happen to lambs and countries. For all the horror happening in the world right now—may hopeful seeds jump from the bad things and take root in our hearts. Sometimes we do all we can and it is simply not enough. It’s what we do NEXT that counts too.

May those who are fighting find peace.

May those who are fleeing find refuge.

May those who are staying behind find safety.

May those who are despondent find hope.

May all of us whose hearts break at the suffering we witness become the comfort that others need.

May we help each other to Mend.

Transcendent realism confronts truth: Life is hard. Farming is hard. Playing an instrument is hard. Being at Peace can be hard. Peace is not the absence of war. Peace is when we can transform our pain into something useful or beautiful or nourishing as we begin again to be better stewards of our world and each other. Take heart. What is horrible and sad can become our means of Grace as surely as limping Lambs can become dance music.

Let the Mending Continue!

Yours aye,

Nancy