NOTES FROM BECOMING
Sometimes we start living the dream long before we recognise it.
We used to joke that we’d thrown the whole darn box away.
For us, the move from Corporate IT to rural shopkeeping had been a brave adventure—a climb out of the proverbial box.
This move felt different.
This time we weren’t escaping one life.
We were beginning to build our own.
Not because we were trying to be unconventional. We just kept discovering that the things everyone said you were supposed to do didn’t make sense to us, and didn’t really seem to make anyone happy. So we got busy building a life that felt like ours.
Months before we owned the farm, we’d already started living pieces of the life we imagined. Gus started collecting chickens, someone offered a lamb, then another set of twins – all abandoned by their mother, and not financially worth hand-raising by the farmer himself.
Of course we said yes!
Neither of us had ever done such a thing before. How hard could it be?
The answer, it turned out, was every three hours.
Day and night.
For weeks.
And weeks.
And weeks.
Rather than climbing in and out of bed all night, Angel and I moved into the TV lounge and slept on the lounge floor. We had down duvets and pillows, soft cotton blankets and patchwork quilts for warmth and comfort. The lambs absolutely loved sleeping in our arms, on the pillows and under the blankets.
Every few hours the alarm would go off. One of us would stumble into the kitchen to warm the milk while the other gathered up three ravenous little lambs who never seemed to learn exactly where or how to find the teat without jabbing and squirting milk everywhere first.
They drank noisily. Their fuzzy tails wagging so furiously while they fed that their whole little bodies seemed to wiggle with the effort. Eyes closed, tiny pink noses tilted upwards, sucking the bottles out of our hands as we bent to kiss their velvety little faces.
Afterwards they would simply melt into us. Warm and impossibly soft in that way only sleeping baby animals can be. Sometimes with one tiny hoof still resting on my arm or a warm nose nestled in Angel’s neck long after they’d drifted off.
During those weeks they stopped behaving like lambs and started behaving like…well…family.
They followed the dogs.
They waited at the back door.
If the dogs barked, they came running too.
You could hear them long before you saw them. Tiny clattering hooves racing and slipping down the stone passage or wooden stairs after the dogs, convinced they belonged wherever the dogs were going.
They chased the dogs over the dunes, hopped and bounced in the soft sand, paddled in the shallows and nibbled the bright green plants growing along the edge of the estuary as though every family outing naturally included lambs.
At night they climbed into the dogs’ baskets, squeezed themselves in beside Max or Jessie, and fell asleep as though that was the most natural thing in the world. Exactly where lambs belonged. We couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing, and we absolutely loved it.
Visitors would stand in the doorway staring.
There would be this long pause.
“You’ve got sheep in the house.”
We’d look at each other, smile, and say something like,
“I know. Isn’t it wonderful?”
I know.
Isn’t it wonderful?
It wasn’t “normal.”
And it delighted us.
We had lambs sleeping in the dogs’ baskets.
I had forgotten that eighteen years earlier we’d already had a chicken that adamantly slept on Gus’s sleek and modern bedside clock radio, and ducklings swimming in an old roasting pan.
Not much later Angel announced she wanted a teacup pig.
Of course she did. It was 2012.
By then we’d become the sort of family who didn’t immediately dismiss ideas just because they sounded ridiculous. And it never occurred to me that “teacup piglet” might not be a real thing.
Looking back, I smile at how seriously I took the assignment.
Years in IT had trained me well and I approached the search exactly as I would have approached an IT project. If there was a decision to be made, there was research to be done.
I found breeders.
Read everything I could — between raising lambs, bootstrapping a business, downscaling a large home, caring for a five-year-old child . . .
I made umpteen dozen phone calls each time we stopped somewhere along our delivery route. Asked what I hoped were intelligent and probing questions.
Eventually we found a registered breeder. He worked closely with a vet to ensure legitimacy, health and welfare. She would come with a guarantee – never to grow bigger than a Jack Russell.
A twelve=hour, three-day round trip to fetch a piglet. Insane. So we broke the trip by overnighting both ways — Granny was delighted to be part of the fun and joined us for our trip up the west coast. Anticipation hung thick in the air – the way it only can when a five-year-old, eager little girl is the centre of the mix. It was hot, dry, barren and more than a little shocking – but what did we know about these things.
So we bravely dished out a huge wad of cash and came home with little black piglet tucked deeply into Angel’s lap, so tiny she could curl up in my hands. It wasn’t a surprise that she spent most of the trip asleep. And Granny spent most of the trip asking if we were sure she was alright with me impatiently assuring her everything was fine. Angel seemed to have picked the smallest, weakest looking one – and that made sense to me. I was glad we had rescued her from that awful place.
As we drove back along the beautiful, but long straight road home, each lost in our individual thoughts about pigs, farms and what exactly we had just purchased, we were unexpectedly interrupted by much yelling and squealing from the back seat. Passengers, not the piglet – who would become known as Lillianna.
A takeaway box had lain open next to Angel and the tiny piglet had woken up, launched herself at the box like a deranged monster and gobbled up all the bacon. When I turned all I saw was a spotless container and Lillianna looking exceptionally pleased with herself.
Granny found it most distasteful, I felt a wave of disgust, then Angel’s worried eyes flipped me quickly into reassurance. She had not been negligent. The piglet would be absolutely fine. We just didn’t like the idea that she relished bacon so much.
Thankfully Gus found it hilarious, and soon we were all laughing and chattering in relief, shock, and general disbelief at all the stress and ridiculousness of it all.
We laughed until we cried. Granny went home with her concerns. Lillianna joined the lambs, dogs and us. She was a pleasure, much easier than lambs to housetrain and no bottle feeding required.
Watching that tiny piglet demolish the bacon with such determination, it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps “pig” wasn’t just a species after all.
It might also be a personality.
She thought she was a dog. And to be honest, so did we.
The dogs, to their credit, seemed prepared to overlook the confusion. They accepted lambs, a pig and, eventually, just about anything else we brought home. Looking back, I think they had far fewer opinions about how life was supposed to work than people did.
And walks to the beach now involved three dogs, three lambs, a piglet, a five-year-old who thought all of this was completely wonderful. . . and two adults who thought so too.
We’d accidentally discovered that life could be assembled differently.
We’d accidentally discovered
that life could be assembled differently.
It was round about now I discovered Pinterest – I still have those boards.
White French farmhouses.
Wildflower meadows.
Vegetable gardens.
Long wooden tables.
Beautiful kitchens.
Fresh bread.
Linen curtains flowing through open windows.
At the time, I thought I was collecting ideas for a future life.
Now I realise I was recognising the one we had already begun.
Looking back now, I don’t smile because we dreamed so boldly. I smile because, without realising it, we had already started living the dream.
Long before the farm.
Long before Pinterest.
Perhaps even long before we recognised it ourselves.
It had been there all along.
With vegetables growing where flowers were supposed to be.
A chicken adamantly sleeping on Gus’s bedside clock radio.
Ducklings swimming in an old roasting pan.
White farmhouse couches draped in quilts.
Then came two lambs sleeping in the dogs’ baskets…
…and a tiny pig who thought everyone’s bacon belonged to her.
A Small Invitation for This Week
Perhaps this week you’ll notice something you’ve always known how to love.
.