The Ones I Keep, The Ones I Let Go

On hard decisions, small lives, and what it really means to care

I read a quote this week that has really stuck with me: “The shepherd makes the flock.” I have it taped to my desk where I can easily see it. You see, there are parts of farming that are easy to share.The first wobbly steps of a newborn lamb. The way a ewe “chuckles” softly to her lambs. The steam rising off the pasture on a cold morning as the flock moves together, heads down, grazing.

And then there are the parts that live mostly off-camera.The ones we don’t always talk about—but think about long after the barn is quiet again.

This week, I made the decision to cull a ewe.

She’s a first-time mother, and she tried. She nickered to her lamb, stood for him, stayed close. But she didn’t make enough milk—not nearly enough. And despite all the small interventions, all the second chances, it became clear that she wasn’t going to be able to do what her lamb needed her to do.

So her lamb and I stepped into the gap.Tube feedings, several times a day. Measuring, warming, checking, hoping. Watching for signs—strength, alertness, that instinctive drive to nurse that sometimes comes easily, and sometimes… doesn’t.

There’s a temptation, in moments like this, to keep trying to make it work. To give it just one more day. To tell yourself that effort alone should be enough to turn the tide. After all, she’s out of one of my best ewes, and from a very strong mothering line. Surely she’d step up to the task, right?

But farming—at least the kind I believe in—asks something different. It asks for honesty. It asks me to look clearly at what an animal is able to pass on to the next generation, and what it isn’t. It asks me to think not just about this lamb, or this ewe, but about the flock as a whole. About the land that supports them. About the kind of animals we are shaping, slowly, over years.

A ewe who cannot raise her lamb without heavy intervention is not one I can keep—not if I want a flock that thrives here, on this land, within its limits. Not if I want to move toward resilience instead of dependence, running in the black and not the red.

That doesn’t make the decision easy. Because care, real care, isn’t just about the moments that feel good. It’s not just about saving every lamb, or holding on to every animal that we’ve named and watched and hoped for.

Care is choosing not to pass on a weakness, even when the individual animal in front of you is endearing and trying her best. It looks like stepping in for a lamb in the short term, while making a different decision for the long term.

This is the tension at the heart of farming: I care deeply.And I make hard choices anyway.

The lamb is still here. Still fighting, still learning, still being monitored for progress or struggles. And for the moment, he remains with his dam, because even imperfect mothering is still warmth, still comfort, still something I can’t replicate with a bottle alone.

I work in these in-between spaces all the time. Not perfect or broken. Not success or failure. Just… ongoing.

The ones I keep.
The ones I let go.

Both shape this farm.

And both, in their own way, are part of doing this work well. “The shepherd makes the flock.”