What is justice?

Sometimes I wake up thinking about something and the above question was on my mind one morning. The thinking probably came out of many individual events strung together with no particular thread connecting them.

One was a delightful morning and afternoon with a dear, old friend, where we hadn't met for years when we ran into each other at a December funeral. My friend and I had drifted apart due to her remarrying (she was a widow), having babies again, and moving from this rural valley. Actually, my own life changed quite a bit about that time also. We always though cared for each other and her coming out to the farm on Monday was a wonderful, deep time of renewing and reconnecting. I always knew strong friendships endure through long separations and this was one of those.

As we sat and talked, had a lunch of soup and half a sandwich, we shared our lives through the intervening years, told our stories, and those of the people we had in common from many years earlier. We talked of how life so often works out, the consequences of actions, and even the luck of how some are born into nurturing families as both she and I had been. She grew up out in this rural community, had been in my home as a guest before I was here and even had been in the original house on the property before it was torn down. Her roots in this country community go deep as her father was born on the land her family still owns. She didn't move that far away; so she's still here and yet not quite the same as it once was.

I talked of my own family roots as we also shared what is going on right now in our lives. We caught up on 15 years in that morning/afternoon. I told her some of how this winter/spring has been on our farm. Frankly it's been a (pardon my language but there's no better word for it) hell of a season where it comes to animal problems. We have lost more new or recently born calves than ever happens even in a year let alone a two-month period. Some were due to first time mothers but most we think were a result of the unusual stormy and cold spring where the weather changed so fast and pneumonia was more common that usual. Heck, we normally have no pneumonia in our calves or lambs.

To add to this, we have also experienced some of the weirdest sheep behaviors (and you’d think after having done this over 30 years, there wouldn’t be much new to us).

Example: Farm Boss and I were sitting down to eat dinner one evening and a neighbor came to the door-- your lamb is on the road. We weren't totally shocked to hear that as the smallest lambs had been maneuvering their way through the wire panels. Farm Boss had hoped he had finally stopped their escapes, but it's easy to miss a place.

We weren’t shocked that is until he said it’s on the highway and we looked out the door to see the lamb on the shoulder of that highway and on the other side of the creek from the farm. Without trying to figure out how it happened, we ran, Farm Boss to get in the car and me to head up the road on foot. When I got to the highway, waving my arms to attempt to slow down rapidly approaching cars didn't work. Maybe they thought I was trying to hitch a ride.

Then I saw on the bridge a small black and white lamb in total panic as our neighbor was closing in on it from behind. Farm Boss had driven on past to find a safe place to park, I assumed. The lamb jumped onto the cement rail of the bridge which panicked me as I visualized it losing its balance and falling to its death or worse into the creek where I am not sure what we could have done to save it as it's bank full or rushing water and more like a river these days.

Instead of falling, it immediately jumped right back onto the highway; then recognized me, ran straight for me, saw the familiar gravel road and ran down it, through the open gate and to its own pasture acting as though nothin' had happened. Yep, absolutely nothing. Farm Boss drove back shortly after with a second lamb in his lap which the neighbor kids had run down over there.

So here is what we surmise they did. First, the two got out, ate some tall grass alongside the gravel road, meandered down that road possibly eating grass and then comes what reason cannot possibly explain. When they got to the highway, they continued on it to cross that cement bridge which is about 100 feet long, with no grass to tempt them as they couldn't see grass on the other side while on it, nor with the solid cement sides could they have seen anything to make them thinking going forward would do anything good for them. They then went down the other side of the road, continuing to move further away from their home but seemingly to them, since the farm is just across the creek, maybe they didn’t think that was the case. They were calling to their mothers on the other side of the creek. Like that was going to do them a lot of good!

Was there any logic to that behavior? None that we can come up with. There is a bit of an echo in our valley and maybe at some point they couldn't tell from where their mothers' maas were coming.

That doesn't explain crossing a cement bridge that should have appeared very foreign and even scary to small lambs. Logic does not apply to the world of raising livestock (often not of people either).

Well, in discussing how I got to thinking about justice, I got distracted, but will get to it in the next blog.