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Mending fences

My pasture in better days
No, not patching things up with my enemies (enemies? I have none! What a waste of my muleness that would be!), but fixing my pasture enclosure. FarmWife made the devastating mistake of ignoring a blackberry overgrowth, trusting us with a shorted-out electric wire, and turning a blind eye to the state of the fence for a month or two last summer. The upshot? Climbing goats, reaching mules, and leaning livestock turned her lovely tight woven wire fence into a hammock of mangled decrepitude.

Now that Arrietty is safely installed in Fatland, the better for to diet in, FarmWife feels that Missy and I ought to get out on the great green grasses of spring. After a winter of restricted access, we are ready to go graze.

The sad thing is that we have mangled the fence so badly that FarmWife thinks it is a) unsafe, b) unattractive, and c) unsecure. She says that we are not to be loosed within the pasture again until the whole thing is tightened up—if not to perfection (some wrinkles will never iron out), at least to a point where it is straightish and healthful and strung about with electric wire.

It's a tough thing, FarmWife thinks, to look at your lovely, expensive, back-breakingly big fence and see it in a state of ruin. Where does one begin? "Every journey begins with a single step," I told her. "Begin at the beginning, go on until you've reached the end, then stop." (Speaking of which—was Lewis Carroll a Taoist?)

She began at the beginning, and do you know what? She made great strides today. The fence is one quarter mended, which you would agree was rather good progress if you had seen the state it was in.

Good job, FarmWife.



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