Just a (Mostly) Bad Day

We sheared some more sheep today. Overall, it went okay, but just lots of little things went wrong that turned it into a bad day.

Several of the sheep struggled and rolled themselves into the hay and leaves as we were catching them to be sheared... putting lots of leafy junk into the gorgeous prime fleeces, which we then had to brush and pick out before we could shear, or else the fleeces would have been contaminated.

Ken knocked over the container of vitamin drench that I was giving to each of the sheep after they were sheared, and it all spilled onto the ground and was wasted.

I badly sprained a muscle in my calf, so now walking is slow and painful.

A sheep Ken was leading got away from him and crashed into me from behind, causing me to cut myself on the gate I was opening at the moment.

The check from one of the people who is buying a horse from me has not arrived---more than a week late---and we were counting on that money to pay our mortgage payment, because we used our mortgage payment money to buy hay.

I'm getting really discouraged about the whole horse situation. I wish they could just be gone, so Ken wouldn't have to worry so much about money. I can't even update my website yet, to help sell them, because Ken is still copying files from my dead computer onto his computer.

On the bright side, while he was doing that, he discovered something that might indicate that he can fix my computer after all. We're copying the files over anyhow, because I don't dare to trust that my computer will be fixed until I see it working consistently for several days in a row!

One cool thing about today: my sister Donna, who is an award-winning nature artist, has crafted a gorgeous one-of-a-kind walking stick for me to sell to help my farm. How much do you think I should charge for it? Can you think of a better place to sell this kind of thing than EBay?

One-of-a-kind, hand-carved, hand-painted cherry wood walking stick. The sorrel and white pony has real horsehair mane and forelock, a rawhide war bridle, and decorative face painting. Four bells on colored thread finish his costume. The staff is oiled with a natural oil.

The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling!

Yes, that's right: We are getting RAIN here. It's been so long, we've almost forgotten what it looks like. It's a lovely, gentle, intermittent rain that is supposed to continue for another 2 or 3 days.

It's far too late to help with the hay situation this year, of course, but at least there's some hope that all the pastures, hayfields, and lawns around here will actually come back to life next year. And at least we're not at such a risk for fire now that everything is a little damp.

Reading about all those wildfires in California right now is pretty scary. Before, when I was just a regular person, I would have thought, "If such a thing happened here, I would just pack up a few necessities and evacuate." But now that I have a farm with all this livestock... what would I do? There's nothing I could do, really, other than lose everything I've worked for.

So I'm grateful for the rain, and my heart goes out to the people in California whose homes have been destroyed by the fires.

I had to drive into town yesterday to get horse grain and to get shipping materials to ship my Ebay sales. While at the feed store, I had a disturbing conversation with the guy we buy our grain from. Apparently, hay is in such short supply, some of his other customers are reporting paying $9 to $10 per small square bale for hay that isn't even very good quality.

This is pretty terrifying news. When we started this farming venture a couple of years ago, we were getting hay for $4 a bale. That's what we budgeted for, in our long-term plans. Now we're paying about $6.75 a bale. Our livestock eat about 14 bales a day. If we end up having to pay $10 a bale, there is no way we will be able to feed our animals.

We still do have several people interested in horse purchases, though, so at least we may be making progress towards at least reducing our herd a bit.

The sad part is, the horse market is so bad, I've been reduced to selling foals for less than it cost to feed their mothers while they were pregnant with them, and bred mares for the price of the foals they carry.

My hope is that if I can hold on long enough, and keep my very best breeding stock, I'll be able to regain some of the lost ground in future years once the horse market recovers (assuming it ever does).

Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Keeping My Fingers Crossed

As of today, I have potential buyers interested in FOUR of the remaining seven horses I have left to sell. Of course, interested doesn't mean definite, so I'm not counting my chicks (or in this case, my checks) until they hatch. But still, it does give a person reason to hope.

While Ken and I were filling the broodmares' big hay feeder tonight, we made up a song.

The mares sing:

We are so hungry!
We are so hungry!
We wish you'd give us
Some grain as well.

Then we sing:

We have no money!
We have no money!
We wish that some of
You mares would sell!

Yes, okay. I'm way too easily amused, I admit it. :-)

I spent the morning answering email and dealing with EBay stuff, answering questions from buyers and such.

Then I had to rearrange all the animals in the paddocks so that Bob could finally come with his tractor and scrape out the last paddock for us. Then I had to put all the animals back into their original paddock.

This afternoon, I gave Libby a bath and took some video of her for the person who might be interested in buying her. If you want to see it, here it is.

Top News: Farmer Takes Day Off!

Yes, that's right. Shocking as it may seem, I took the day off today.

Which, when you run a farm, "taking the day off" just means that Ken and I did the chores quickly first thing in the morning, and then drove into Charlottesville for a late breakfast.

After that, we went to a movie. Would you believe that the last movie I saw in the theater was Lord of the Rings? When you're a farmer, you don't get out much!

After the movie, we did my favorite "day off" activity: wandered around in the bookstore. There were oh-so-many new books I would love to have brought home, but I was good: despite the temptation, I didn't buy anything.

The good news is, while we were out, several of my items sold on EBay, and a new potential buyer started inquiring about my filly Libby.

Oh yes: and the cats caught two bats and brought them in the house tonight. They killed one in the bathroom, and released the other to fly around the front hallway, until we managed to open a door and shoo it back outside.

The adventures never end!

Up Before Dawn

For some reason, I woke up at 3:00 this morning and could not for the life of me go back to sleep.

The farrier was supposed to come first thing this morning to trim all the horses' hooves. So since I was awake anyway, I decided to get up before dawn to get everything ready: ate breakfast while waiting for the sun to come up, then went out to feed and water the animals early, put halters on the horses that didn't have them on, and started cleaning hooves.

Then the farrier called to say he'd hurt his back and could he reschedule for Saturday? Of course we're not going to say "No" to that. But I was grumbly to have gotten up so early for no real reason, just the same.

I managed to do a photo shoot yesterday and got good photos of most of the rest of the dolls I'm selling on EBay to raise money for hay.

Then I spent part of today packing up and mailing several that I sold in the past few days and writing up descriptions for the new ones that I'll be posting for sale on Friday (I wait until Friday, because sales are much more brisk over the weekend). I've included a few photos here, because I think they turned out pretty well.

It's tricky, because there's one specific place that has a nice background for taking photos, and it only gets decent lighting for a couple hours a day. So I always have to be ready for that time, and hurry through the photos before the light fades away.

Out of curiosity, I just added it up: so far, in the past three months, my EBay sales have brought in nearly $5000 to pay for hay and bills!

That's not bad for just selling stuff that we already had lying around not being used... mostly my Franklin Mint dolls and a few other valuables, plus Ken's old Sentra.

Of course, our animals eat more than $2000 worth of hay per month, so the Ebay sales are just kind of helping us tread water until some of the horses sell. But it's way better than NOT having that extra money!

Our neighbor Bob finally had a chance today to come by with his tractor and scrape the manure out of the main part of the front paddock for us. With so many horses living there, it accumulates too quickly for me to clean out by hand, so every now and then we hire Bob to remove it with his tractor.

He didn't quite have time to finish yesterday, because he had somewhere else to go, so he'll be back tomorrow. We may have him scrape out the sheep paddocks too while he's right here.

I do have to clean the weanling paddock and Senter's paddock out by hand soon though. It's been accumulating too long. The weather is mild enough now that I'm not going to be risking heat stroke to be outside working, and the fact that it hasn't rained in forever means everything I need to muck out is dry and (relatively) light.

Actually, things are beyond simply "dry" now. Our fields and lawns are scorched and dead. Any little breeze or an animal walking by stirs up clouds of dust that hang in the air like mist.

We are so lucky that our well is good. We've had no shortage of water to fill the horse and sheep troughs.

And we are so lucky not to have had any fire problems in our area. The whole county is so dry, there'd be no stopping a fire if it got started. So I'm very thankful it hasn't been an issue.

Oh, My Aching Back

My day started out with unloading 1,000 lbs. of sheep grain (with Ken's help) into the barn, then loading another 1,000 lbs. of hay into the truck and unloading it again to distribute it to the animals. Then I distributed about 75 lbs. of grain to the various critters, and filled about 500 gallons worth of water troughs.

I also had to drive to the slaughter house and pick up the hides from the sheep we sent yesterday. The first time I ever did this, I (foolishly) assumed that I would be getting back nicely skinned and relatively clean hides, ready for salting, much like the deer hides I used to help my dad with during hunting seasons back when I was a kid.

What I get back from the butcher is something quite different: a heavy, bloody garbage bag, with all four hides lumped inside. Because I salvage the horns and skulls to sell to people who want them for craft projects, I tell the butcher to give me the heads back. They're in the bag too, still attached to the hides. When I open the bag, the stench of dead meat is overpowering.

Originally, the first time we sent lambs to slaughter, I felt a little guilty for not having to face the animals' deaths directly---after all, I order their deaths, but my part consists of delivering them to the slaughter house and picking up neat white packages several days later. I felt a little bit like I was getting off easy, because I didn't have to participate more directly.

But now that I know what it's like to deal with the hides, I know that I do face their deaths directly. I reach my hands into the bloody bag and haul out a hide. I cut the head from the rest of the hide, then turn the pelt upside down and bit by bit cut off the leftover bits of fat and meat still attached to the skin. When the first one is done, I hand it to Ken to carry into the shed to be salted, and I start on the next one.

It's a disgusting, smelly job. By the time all four hides are salted, the scent of dead flesh has soaked into my hands. It'll take many washings to remove it completely.

On the bright side, at least the pelts, heads, and horns won't go to waste. I even have a new idea in the works for an interesting use of the sheep bones.

And of course, the ones I don't use, our dogs will eat. They're eating a big pile of beef bones right now. The butcher had a huge box of them he was about to dispose of, and he offered them to me for our big dogs. Even Leeloo got a little one.

After that, I did some cleanup around the house, and packed up some of my recent Ebay sales---although unfortunately, I missed getting them to the post office before closing by just a few minutes.

Now, my back is aching from all the lifting this morning. It doesn't bother me until after I sit down for a while. It'll be fine by morning, but now I'm going to go to bed early and get a good night's sleep.

I tried to go to bed early last night, but for some reason the horses were all going crazy in their pastures, galloping around like wild things, neighing at the top of their voices, setting the dogs to barking.

I got up out of bed to go check on them, and they all seemed fine. I think it must have been a bunch of deer crossing the field that spooked them, and since the weather has finally gotten seasonably cool, they were just having a good time exaggerating their fear to give themselves an excuse to run.

Oh... and here's a neat thing: my stallion Senter has developed a helpful new habit. First, a little explanation: Senter gets his hay and grain in a big plastic trough. When he runs out of hay, he tips the trough over, so he can eat any wisps that have fallen behind it. Every day, the trough ends up knocked over.

This is annoying because when his trough is upright, I can drop Senter's feed directly out the back window of the feed room into the trough. But when it's tipped over, I have to walk all the way around the barn, through three paddocks to set it upright again, then walk all the way back and toss the food in.

Well, for the past week, Senter has been knocking his trough over as usual. But when he hears me in the feed room getting ready to feed him, he knocks it back upright and (most days) shoves it back into place under the window!

He's done it almost every day this week. Every time it happens, I'm just floored. That's pretty advanced reasoning skills for a horse to figure that out all on his own, and then care enough to do it.

Now if I could just teach him to muck out his own paddock, I'd be all set!

A Shift in Power

After giving them last night to adjust to each other over the fence, today I opened the gate to let the yearling horses (Torchsong and Shane) in with the weanling fillies.

I'm putting them together because the yearlings are getting a bit thinner than I want them to be. Partially because at their age they need to put a lot of energy into growing, and partially because at their age, they were at the very bottom of the herd pecking order, which means the older, bigger horses would take more than their share of the food.

So by moving the yearlings in with the weanlings, I am able to give them more feed and make sure that no one drives them away from it.

Both yearlings---most especially Torchsong---have been too mild mannered for their own good amongst the adult mares. But today, finding themselves suddenly the oldest and biggest members of their new little herd, they were quick to assert themselves.

There were fierce looks, bared teeth, ears laid back, even some charging and kicking... all with a great, dramatic flurry of dust in the dry paddock. When the scuffling was over, Torchsong and Shane were happily in possession of the hay feeder, and the weanlings were standing bewildered at the other end of the paddock.

I moved a second hay feeder in, and soon everybody was eating happily.

The new hay we just got from our hay guy was super expensive---because of the drought, prices have gone up yet again. But at least this new hay is better quality, so we may be able to feed less with more nutrition and less waste. With luck, it will even out to be about the same as what we were paying before.

Everything is so painfully dry here. The soil has turned completely to dust, and what little grass there is has turned crunchy under foot. It was 90 degrees here today---scarcely normal for October!---and no rain in sight. The poor sheep were just miserable all day. They can't wait for real fall weather to finally arrive.

It was so hot that when I was filling the water trough, Libby and the other weanling fillies came up and wanted to be sprayed with the hose. Libby loves that! She turns herself around and around to make sure you get the spray all over her.

Then, once they were all clean and wet, they immediately went and dried off by rolling in the dirt, leaving themselves completely coated with grit, like chicken cutlets breaded for frying. It was pretty funny!

Thanks to my recent Ebay sales, we were finally able to pay our neighbor Bob for the last of the alfalfa he gave us on credit two months ago. That's a relief, since I know the drought is really hurting his farm's finances too. I felt really bad about making him wait for his money!

Busy Day

It's late and I'm tired, so here's just a simple run down of what I did today:

• Made my first prototype splint for Peri's leg. I padded her leg with sheep wool (I figured that's a pretty natural padding for a sheep's leg), wrapped it with Vet Wrap, put on a cylindrical splint I cut from a plastic water bottle, and held that on with Vet Wrap. Now I'll keep my eye on her to see if she seems to start using the leg at all, now that the ankle joint is stabilized. If not, I'll have to make a new design.

• Made a new isolation pen to put the sheep in that have been at the fair. Last year, at my request, they had a second barrier around their pen to keep people back (I didn't want some little kid poking a hand in there and getting her fingers mashed by Nicholai's horns). But this year, the fair people didn't provide that barrier. So all week long, my sheep have been petted by hundreds of people who also petted every other animal at the fair. Not exactly a biosecurity dream come true. So I'm putting the returning sheep through quarantine, just to make sure. The two ram lambs are probably bound for the butcher pretty soon anyhow, but I don't want them mixing with the other sheep until then anyhow.

• Set up the back pasture with a hay feeder, water and grain buckets, and moved Shane and Torchsong back there. Being yearlings, they are using energy on growth, so they are a bit thinner than the adult horses they've been pastured with, so by moving them into a separate enclosure, I can feed them extra. Torchsong is so submissive to the other horses, she barely dares to eat with them at all, so she'll do much better with less competition for the feed.

• Went to Richmond with Ken to pick up the sheep from the fair. Loaded them up, came home, and put them in their isolation pen.

• Checked my email and discovered that 3 out of the 4 dolls I put up for sale on Ebay two days ago just sold tonight for my full asking price. That's an extra $400 that I didn't have this morning. Yay!

Sheep Secretary

I spent today being a sheep secretary.

I never would have guessed that being a farmer would involve so much paperwork.

For one thing, now that I've sold just about all the sheep I'm planning to sell for the year, it's time to send in their registrations and ownership transfers.

Plus, it's just about time for our annual Scrapie program inspection, so I have to get all my records and paperwork in order for that too. We've completed two years in the program so far. In another three years we'll be able to be certified as an official "scrapie free" flock.

I don't mind the paperwork so much, it just takes a while to get my records organized. I have to have all the details at my fingertips for all the sheep that have come or gone from my flock since last year.

Details like: name, description, tattoo numbers, ear tag numbers, registration numbers, sire, dam, birth date, name and contact info for each person we bought a sheep from or sold a sheep to, date we acquired the sheep, date we sold the sheep, or if it died, the date and cause of death.

For my own records, I also track things like birth weight, birth number (single, twin, triplet), assisted or unassisted birth, purchase price, sale price, shipping details, etc.

In truth, all this information is good to have anyhow, and having this inspection come up once a year forces me to set aside the time to make sure the records are organized---which is convenient at other times of year when I need to know a piece of information. All I need to do is pull out the printout of my inspection data, and most everything I need to know is already right there.

I'm almost done now, and my info chart is about 14 pages long. I just have a few stray details to look up, and then I'll be done.


An unrelated bit of good news: My Ebay sales have done well enough that not only was I able to save up enough money to pay for the two new rams I'm getting this week, we were also finally able to pay most of what we owe our neighbor Bob for the alfalfa he gave us on credit last month.

We still have some outstanding bills to pay off, though---and of course an unending need for hay---so I'll be putting some more things up on Ebay before long. I really hope some of our horse sales come through soon. I hate having to make people wait for the money we owe them!

My Hero

Thanks to my wonderful husband, Ken, my computer is now fixed (We think. So far, so good, anyhow). And the leaky toilet is fixed.

And thanks to me and Ebay, Ken's old broken down 1992 Nissan Sentra (which didn't even run anymore) just sold for $1100. I can't believe we got that much for it. Back when it was still running, we didn't bother to use it as a trade in on the Subaru, because the car dealer said he'd only give us $300 for it!

Now that my computer is working again, I'll be able to put some more things up on Ebay as well as finally get some real work done on those websites I'm doing for people. Plus, I'll be able to get back to writing real entries to this blog. Being two days without my computer seemed like forever!

But first, tomorrow we have to take some sheep to the state fair. Guess I better go to bed and get some sleep. It'll be a busy day tomorrow.

My Secret "Girlie" Side

I've never been much of a girlie-girl. I loathe pantyhose and high heels. I almost never wear makeup or jewelry. I have no interest in designer shoes or handbags. Heck, some days on the farm, I don't even brush my hair!

But for all my daily concerns with dirty, non-girlie things like loading hay, training horses, and picking maggots out of wounded sheep, I have to confess (with a certain amount of embarrassment) to one exceptionally girlie hobby.

I collect porcelain dolls.

Not just any porcelain dolls. Just the most exquisite---and usually quite pricey---dolls made by Franklin Mint. Preferably the Gibson Girl dolls or some of the historical or storybook themed ones. I have an entire wall of my office with shelves on it to display them, about two dozen in all, plus another half dozen or so other dolls that I started with before I graduated to Franklin Mint.

For several years now, these dolls have been my secret addiction. Whenever friends come to visit, I'm embarrassed to show them my office, because this wall of dainty, elegantly dressed porcelain ladies doesn't fit with my idea of who I am.

I like to blame them on the fact that I'm no longer in the SCA. My husband and I did medieval historical recreation for many years---in fact, that's how we met. But after moving several times and getting busy with other aspects of our lives, we eventually stopped participating.

For all those years, I had the creative outlet of designing, making, accessorizing, and wearing my own medieval-style costumes. But after we quit, I got tired of seeing them hanging unused in my closet, so I gave them all away to a friend: Thirteen years worth of green, crimson, purple, royal blue, and ivory colored gowns, embroidered, beaded, jewel-bedecked. Once they were gone, my closet was spacious, practical---and dull.

Right around then, the doll collecting began. I guess they were a smaller-version, eye-candy substitute for the costumes I'd given away. Having spent many tedious hours making my own costumes in past years, I could really appreciate the dolls' intricate level if minuscule detail.

I love them, and I hate the fact that I love them. I can't wrap my brain around the idea that I have such a girlie hobby.

But soon, that inner conflict will be resolved. I'm selling them all on EBay to try to keep this farm running a little longer while we wait for some horses to sell.

When I started putting the listings up today, I soon learned something: It's really time consuming to make a good EBay listing!

After you decide which item you want to list first, you have to find a good place with a nice background and take lots of close-up, well-lit photographs of the item. Then you have to download the photos to your computer, select the ones you want to use, crop them if necessary, and save them in the proper format. Then you have to fill out the EBay forms, upload the photos, and write a detailed, sincere-yet-enthusiastic description of the item.

I have LOTS of things I'm planning to sell, but I only managed to get five listings made today. Three of the Franklin Mint dolls, my gorgeous leather motorcycle jacket, and Ken's 1992 Nissan Sentra GXE.

There will be lots more listings to come in the next days and weeks. Everything I sell will go towards helping us keep this farm going, so please check my auctions every now and then to see if we have anything you "need." Tell your friends, too!

If you want a preview of some of the things that will be coming up for sale soon (and some things we're offering for sale directly, not on EBay), visit our Online Yard Sale. The list is not complete, and it doesn't have a lot of detail right now, but if you see anything you're interested in, contact me, and I'll be happy to take photos and send you a more thorough description of the item.

We are almost entirely out of hay now, and almost entirely out of money.

On the bright side, our mare Bonnie has suddenly become very popular. I have two buyers who are interested in her already, and today I got calls from two more people asking about her!

All the potential buyers seemed knowledgeable and pleasant, like they would probably provide Bonnie a good home. So keep your fingers crossed for us that one of them will decide that she's the one for them. That money would do WONDERS for our cash flow right about now!

Getting Used to the Maggots

Another sweltering near-100 degree day here on the farm. The sheep lie around in the shade all day, and the horses take shelter down in the woods.

I shipped off one of my EBay sales this afternoon--a one-of-a-kind porcelain gypsy doll who is going to Puerto Rico.

We got a small load of hay today, courtesy of my EBay sales. We still don't have the money to pay Bob for his alfalfa, but the animals have to eat.

After feeding the animals, we cleaned Peri's leg again. There were maggots, but not quite as many as last time. After my close encounter with them yesterday, they've lost a lot of their shock value. I realized at one point I had started picking them out of the wound with my fingers--Look at me, voluntarily touching a maggot! EWW!--and I brushed one off my face without getting too grossed out.

It's just another one of the many up close and personal experiences you get with the stinky, slimy, and squirmy things of the world when you run a farm. Manure, urine, vomit, placentas, meconium, blood, pus, snot, maggots... if an animal can excrete it onto you, at some point it probably will.

Don't you all want to go out and become farmers now? :-)

On the bright side, I ordered some screw worm spray and SWAT paste to kill the maggots and keep the flies off Peri's wound (also courtesy of my EBay money). I can't wait until they get here.

I may be getting used to the maggots. That doesn't mean I enjoy them!

Magic Beans

This is a story about a boy named Will and a sheep named Rio.

(Oddly enough, it's also a story about EBay. Be patient--I am going somewhere with all of this. Really!)

Rio came to live on my farm when she was just a little lamb. Inky black with white socks, cap, and bib, she was just about the cutest thing I'd ever seen.

As she grew up, even though both her parents were horned, Rio's horns never grew. All she had were a couple of little nubs (called "scurs") about the size of the tip of your finger.

Icelandic sheep come in both horned and polled (naturally hornless) varieties, but I specialize in just the horned type. So, cute as she was, Rio was no use to me. I put her up for sale.

Before long, I had a buyer. A woman contacted me, interested in buying Rio for her son Will who had fallen in love with her from the pictures on my website. We were ironing out the details when personal circumstances came up that forced them to withdraw their offer. Within a few months, Rio was purchased by someone else. It seemed that young Will had lost his sheep.

The man who bought Rio was in the process of buying a farm and moving to Virginia. He wanted me to hold onto Rio for him until he was able to move to his new farm. Time passed and again circumstances intervened. The man decided he couldn't take Rio either. So once again, I put her "for sale" ad back up on my website.

Almost immediately, Will's mom contacted me. Will still wanted Rio, and his parents decided to buy her for him as a birthday present. I was so happy to hear that he was finally going to get his sheep, that when his mom started asking about breeding Rio, I offered her one of our nicest proven breeding rams for half price, so Will could start his flock right.

Today, 8 months after their first inquiry about her, Will and his mom came to my farm and Will finally got to meet his new sheep. As I write this, Rio and the ram are riding in the back of the family's van, all the way home to New York.


That's the first part of the story.

The second part is that I have just recently started selling things on EBay. Encouraged by my first sale (I sold my long-neglected Argent Fox harp for $700), I spent yesterday afternoon posting a few more items to my auctions.

One of these items was something I had received as a wedding gift many years ago but had always secretly hated. I knew how much the thing was worth, but similar kinds of items listed on EBay seemed to be selling for less than 1/10 that. Still, I figured I didn't have much to lose, since I didn't like the item anyway.

I posted it with a "Buy It Now or Best Offer" price of $100, figuring that was a good midway point between what it was actually worth and what I could probably get for it.

To my astonishment, less than 8 hours later, it was bought (and paid for--thank you PayPal!) for my full asking price by the 7th person to look at my ad. Far from hating the item, this person was quite excited to get it.


That got me thinking. (See, I told you I had a point... Here it comes now!)

After the EBay sale, I was counting up how much more money I have to make to finish paying for the two new rams I'm importing from Frelsi Farm in Maine this fall.

For some reason this got me thinking about Jack and the Beanstalk. Like Jack in the story, I'm trading conventionally "valuable" items for something a bit riskier, because I believe the trade will improve my prosperity. The two new rams will improve the quality and saleability of my flock. Those two new rams are my "magic beans."

Then I got to thinking how much my EBay buyer wanted that item I disliked, and how much young Will wanted the hornless sheep that was no use to me.

And I started thinking, maybe the magic isn't in the items at all. Maybe it's in the love. Maybe in anyone else's hands but Jack's, those magic beans would have been just BEANS. Maybe that cow he traded, in the hands of it's new owner, became a magic cow who gave chocolate milk and gave birth to golden calves.

Maybe the wedding present I hated will bring years of joy to its new buyer. Maybe Rio will be young Will's "magic bean."

~~~~~

After the sheep were loaded in the van, just before they pulled out of the driveway, young Will reached onto the dashboard and handed me a present. "Here," he said. "This is for you."

It was a tiny velvet pouch he'd gotten on a previous day's trip to Skyline Caverns. I tugged the drawstring and peeked inside. It was full of shiny, polished stones: green, blue, red, orange, pink, and speckled.

They were about the size and shape of beans.