A Painful Loss

It has taken me a several days to bring myself to post this. We had a very hard loss during lambing season this year.  Freya, Daniel’s “pet” sheep, the one who loved to be scratched and would wag her tail when we scratched her back, our friendliest sheep, and her unborn ewe lamb both died during birth.  We had the vet out and fought for them until 3 am, but couldn’t save them.  Very very hard.  It is amazing that we have made it 12 years birthing sheep and never lost a mom or baby in birth until now.  That is a blessing and totally against statistics.  But it is such a hard loss.  She was so special.  Lots of tears have been flowing.  

She was such a sweetie. We will miss her beautiful fleece. After using it myself the first year, it sold each year before it was even shorn off her. She had beautiful, large babies that were very majestic. She was one of the matriarchs of the flock, leading with quiet confidence. And she was always coming over for attention. There is a big hole left as we move around doing chores and she is no longer there beside us.

We spent the morning after her death cleaning out stalls and soaking in the blessing that this farm is to us.  Playing with lambs, listening to the chickens talking, just trying to soak it all in after such a huge loss.  It was a soothing balm on the pain. 

Other than Freya’s delivery, we had an excellent lambing season with lots of multiples, easy births, and lots of females.  So that has also been helpful as we look around at all the blessings while still processing the loss. It is important to see the blessings in the sorrow.

We will miss sweet Freya.