Early in the summer I started taking pictures from the porch swing as I ate breakfast each morning. They became the #porchpicturedujour on Instagram. I worried the pictures were too repetitive, but they were hugely popular and I even had several folks ask if they could go sit on the porch when they were here for the Hug A Sheep Day farm party. I love that :-).
With the days being short, it's too dark to sit outside and eat breakfast, unless I sleep in, so now I'm trying a #barnshotoftheday. Again, really repetitive, but if you watch for the subtle differences, it's kind of fun :-).
The bright green is where the underground spring(s?) lives. I keep contemplating the size of the area. I thought I knew where the spring ran...but this is a big area, seemingly far enough away that it should be snow covered. Wouldn't still warm(ish) ground be a better insulated than water logged ground? What does this mean? Those sorts of thoughts...which are not nearly as interesting as the sunrise on Hank's face.
Liddy is as wide as she is long...and am I'm not sure that's all wool :-o.
This would seem to be just a picture of a sheep and his guardian dog, but here is "the rest of the story." Rocky and Jared had been breeding rams for 10 years. They'd lived together, but separated from their main flocks except for six weeks or so during breeding season each year, until they moved here.
They had their own routine that didn't always mesh with the rest of our flock. In the heat of summer, our main flock would go out in the early morning and again in the cool of the evening. Rocky and Jared thought that was silly and they'd come and go all day long. They didn't mind leaving the flock. They'd spent their whole lives away from the flock.
I'm not sure if Hank hated that they didn't stay with everyone else or maybe they reminded him or Hickory and T-Bone (who he really hated) grazing out front together and then coming back to the barn, too close to his sheep, or maybe he just flat out hated Rocky and Jared on general purposes (they did try to steal his food once).
Regardless, there were two or three months of high discord around here. Rocky and Jared would go out to eat, they'd try to come back to the barn, I would try to watch for them and escort them past Hank, but if I wasn't around to do that, Hank would see them coming and lose his ever loving mind, then I'd lose my ever loving mind...all the while thinking "I am starting to hate a dog I thought the world of" and that was one more loss of a good friend this summer that I just couldn't bear.
I'm not sure why things finally settled down, but they finally did. I do know Hank stopped to stand there next to Jared yesterday. Jared looked up for a second, but wasn't concerned and went back to eating. Were they just greeting each other? Reminding each other of their places? Or just randomly stopped. I don't know, but I thought enough about it all summer that I'm just going to go back to thinking about the green grass over the spring...
...while "old" Hank continues on his rounds, taking good care of all of his sheep.
Enjoy :-)
