This year we [OK, my husband!] fenced in a part of our land that is just weeds...we cant afford to spray it and fertilize and seed it properly, so we did nothing...thank goodness sheep love weeds!  AND they produce free fertilizer! Well, after we had moved the sheep off of this new pasture earlier this month, onto the "real" pasture, [which is full of shady trees and lovely grass] there was a select group of rebels - actually, they are almost all my daughter's Icelandic sheep.  VERY independent thinkers.  
Here is what I realized yesterday... the rebel horde, as I call them, THINK they are totally independent.  They're going where they want to go, doing what they want to do. [what they want to do is crazy - there is nothing to eat on the field that they insist on grazing!  Like really, nothing...thistles and foxtail... it's bad.  And the "real" pasture, where we want them to go, is lovely, and shady. The water trough is nearby.  Things are much better for them on the other side of our property. But they won't go there...they are too stubborn.  We always watch out for them, and make sure they are safe.  We don't forget about them, even though they want nothing to do with us. It reminded me of how God must see us sometimes, thinking we are doing or own thing, and it's not nearly as good as the thing He wants to do for us.  But we refuse to follow the Shepherd.

I live on a quarter section of kind of crappy, kind of good, land, a few miles outside of a tiny village nestled against Riding Mountain National Park.  When I look out my west-facing windows, I see the Manitoba Escarpment.  Which we call mountains.  There are no mountains.  When I first moved out here, I was excited to see them from the other side...guess what?  There IS no other side! It's all rolling [beautiful] farmland until you see a panoramic vista open up before you, and you are going DOWN...and then you're back in farmland. But it's what is on that down slope that's so wonderful.  The trees, and valleys, the wildlife...but I digress...
On our farm, we have about 70 ewes.  I work part time, and my husband works full time...our kids are young adults now, so we're in that transition. Each of our kids owns their own sheep, so any work that needs to be done should, theoretically, be done by each of us...right?  Well, that usually works. 
I am a devoted Christian, and we attend a small church in our town.  Some of my blog posts will relate to this. Some of them will be about my adventures in wool processing, spinning, knitting, dyeing. etc. And some will be about country life, a subject I am passionate about.
Just to whet your curiosity - the next post will be about the first and last of these...