Summer is the absolute best time of year for me, and I always cherish every single day.  The LONG days and warm temperatures are absolute heaven and the opportunity to spend hours each day outdoors brings me great joy.  I truly believe I am solar-powered, and the warmth and light of the sun does wonders for me.

This summer has been a true test of resilience and has challenged our farm and family in every way.  It’s been an extremely difficult time and some days we just can’t believe what has transpired as it all seems so surreal. 

We had the absolute pleasure of welcoming several bottle baby lamb boys to the farm due to the kindness and generosity of our dear friend Ellen. Ellen took our ewes to her farm in Pennsylvania when we lost our pasture lease, and she took such a huge pressure off our shoulders.  She bred our girls to her rams to keep the lines of our heritage Leicester Longwools going.  Long story short, we brought three boys down to the farm as bottle babies this spring.  Alex, the son of our ewe Heazle, Mulligan, the son of our ewe Magnolia, and Cedric, a ram lamb from one of Ellen’s ewes who wanted to be their buddy.  As you can read in our other blog post (https://happyheritagefarm.com/hes-not-throwing-away-his-shot/), Alex gave us a run for our money and was on death’s door for several weeks.  Thanks to the incredible vet that took charge of his care, Dr. Flavie Payette, Alex survived against the odds. Then, our beautiful natural colored boy Mulligan, who was born blind, died tragically on June 11 due to complications from an emergency surgery.  This was a devastating blow which made no sense and was impossible to process.  He was the most beautiful soul and was only 7 weeks old. 

Then just a few weeks later, we tragically lost our deaf and mysterious sweet Beatrice who was our very special super quiet chihuahua whom we had just adopted this past February.  Just writing this out seems like there is no way it can be real, but we keep moving on hoping to be able to make it through each day.  Just when we were praying the bad times were done and we had suffered enough loss and heartache, along came more gut-wrenching news.  

Our beloved Penny Lane was diagnosed with mast cell cancer in July after us advocating and basically begging for further diagnostics to check a mass that we have been watching for three years.  Our vets kept blowing it off as nothing to worry about and we finally convinced them to do a fine needle aspiration. Our vet was shocked more than we were and here we now are.  It is sickening to think this has been there for many years, but we are hoping maybe the cancer cells just started to exist amongst this mass.  We jumped into action the minute the diagnosis came in and Penny has undergone extensive tests to stage and grade her cancer.  As of now, it has not spread to her lungs, organs or lymph nodes which is good news.  

We met with a surgical specialist last week for several hours to develop a plan.  It is a very challenging surgery due to the size of the tumor and her small body, but we were fortunate to meet a surgeon who gave us some hope and believes he can eradicate this mass.  The challenge with mast cell is that there must be large margins and with the size of this tumor, that may not be possible.  This week we await the scheduling of a CT scan to get a better understanding of the tumor structure and Penny is tentatively scheduled for her big surgery next week.  So many things need to fall into place in order for her to come out of this and recover.  Penny has already overcome two near-death experiences in her lifetime and survived against the odds.  One horrible night in 2020 we were advised to euthanize her as they didn’t expect her to survive due to massive trauma and head injury and yet she lived.   We can’t expect more miracles, but we know our little “Chicklet” has a huge will to live.  

Being a caretaker of animals is so very hard because you are constantly second guessing yourself and hoping you are doing the right thing.   We choose not to make decisions based on finances, but this year has certainly put us in a dire situation financially.  It’s unfathomable to decide to do nothing because of the cost.  This is why we hope to start a non-profit foundation in the future to help people who must make these very expensive decisions.  “Mulli’s Mission” will be created in the future once we have time to breathe and get to work on the very arduous IRS/legal process.  One day at a time.  For now, we ask all our friends, family, farm fans to please send us good vibes to get through the next few weeks.  We are battle worn and are in desperate need of positive energy.  Penny is a fighter, and we will give her the chance.  We pray that her surgeon gains additional wisdom from the upcoming CT and can do his best work ever on our little girl.  We don’t know how this will end but we know we will have no regrets. 

We take our duty as stewards of the earth’s creatures seriously and it’s an honor and great responsibility.  We will know we did everything possible.  It has been a cruel summer, but we have been put on this path for a reason unknown to us.  We hope to gain experience and insight and connections through these difficult days and to be able to find something positive from all these horrible events.  We will not give up no matter how tired we are.