I’ve lost that daily contact with the sheep. New people have come to the farm who want to be involved. These last few days, someone else has been checking in on them, counting the lambs, seeing how much they’ve been growing, seeing where they’re grazing, which stones they’re jumping up onto, taking stock of the atmosphere in the group. It feels empty. It’s easy to think it’s a bit irritating to be bound by your duty to the animals, that it’s stressful to feel you have to be there every day, that you’re not totally free. In fact, it’s just the opposite. I sit in the kitchen staring into space. There’s nothing free about that.