Apologies if this angers some but I just wanted to put my thoughts down because I am feeling rather pensive after a trip to town.

I fed all the animals, made a quick hand-felted sheep for Jamieson’s Knitwear and then I went into town to get the Eggbox (Jimny) through it’s now-annual MOT.

This was the Jimny’s first MOT. It passed and the mechanic mentioned that it hadn’t done many miles (just over 3,000).  I replied that it was a glorified wheelbarrow really!

Anyway, after the MOT, I went to the Agricultural Merchants that are next to the Marts (market) and Abbatoir.

Whilst collecting my animal feed around the back, I saw flocks of sheep in their stalls waiting to be sold with potentially a miserable fate ahead.  And there’s always one that looks like Edna ***sniff***.  We all know what happens. I won’t spell it out.  I just felt very sorry for the sheep and wanted to take them home with me so they could live out their natural lives in green fields.

But it cannot be.  I know that and I had to promise my physiotherapist and anaesthetist (pain clinic chap) that I wouldn’t have any more animals on my croft.  Eight sheep is the allowed number, plus a handful of horses and ponies.

It also made me think, as I drove home, that my sheep really do not know just how lucky they are.

They have the world.

The worst thing they have to worry about is who gets ownership of their shed.

I guess the difference is that I see my sheep as pets and not food.  It was just that the for-sale sheep’s resigned little faces in the mart stalls broke my heart.  I should really avoid these places and just concentrate on hugging my own ungrateful lot.

(and I don’t want a row about agriculture and farming methods – I am a realist. I know how the world works. I was just sad, that’s all).