I need this place.
As gritty as it gets - the cold, the heat, the mud, the snow - I need this place.
It is harsh and healing in the same day (how can that be?).
It is playfully restful to my tech-taxed mind.
A wellspring of God's out-poured love on this summered brown world -- awoken now with the birth of autumn.
My eyes and heart are flooded with it all.
I feel it in my bones.
The necessity of living in the open fields. The air, the dusty breeze flipping my hair, hot sun on my cheeks, smells of farm - fresh alfalfa, warm wool, leather boots. The newest red-tail hawks flying just over my head and farm cats lurking just outside the old corral fencing.
It may be the connection I have to my childhood spent on the edge of the farmer's fields. Memories of a youthful exuberance of jumping ditches and running across tilled earth. Or it may just be that this is where God's handiwork is played out and I am lucky enough to have a front row seat?
I can feel its divine pull.
This day was a shearing day.
Joshe (my littlest son) came to help and he was brilliant. He loves the sheep and longs to be a farmer/rancher someday (along with a chef, scientist, and star wars hero). He ran the chute with his *so serious* face, my gloves, and a soft "shhhh" to the sheep. They love him, I can tell.
The ewes were thinned down (in numbers) and then given their trimming. The winter haircut looks like a scissor happy preschooler ~ I laugh every time. The poor girls.
I am home and in my studio the next couple of days.
Paints are out, sketches are planned and emails are lined up and ready to read (promise!). Prayers are shared outloud for your blessed autumn days.
I hope you are too busy, too~ xo
In His hands~
love & lambs,
jj
