“Mom, what should the fourth chicken’s name be? So far I have Gunther, Rosemary, and Pekkers.”
“Honey, why do you always ask me? You know I’m not creative with names.”
“How about you Mike?” He shrugged.
“You already made me name the donkey.”
“True… ok so I think I’ve narrowed it down to either Esmerelda or Emmet…”

Growing up I always dreamed of owning a farm. Many afternoons were spent filling journals with animal names and notations on what they ate and how much, space requirements and any other factors I could think of. I would lay out, time and time again, the structure of the property; allotting acreage to beehives here, a small orchard there, an alfalfa field on the far side with the chicken coop wedged between the sheep pens. I would schedule the rotation of fallow pastures and brainstorm ways of making the property completely self-sufficient. Vegetable gardens, Vermi- compost, a quaint little well. Everything had its place and purpose. It was going to be great. I went through the not so uncommon horse phase that, to my parents, never seemed to end. I wanted a puppy and a bunny and chickens and a goat and a little teacup pig and and and. I would fixate on one animal at a time and learn as much as I possibly could about them. I plastered the walls of my room with important articles. ‘Guide to Goat Grooming’, ‘Organic Lamb Food Recipe’, ‘Raising Chicks’, ‘The Advantages of Owning your own Dairy Cow’ and the like. After accumulating what I deemed a satisfactory amount of information on each animal I would add them to my future farm. It was taking shape more clearly every day. Yes, I could already make out the shapes of the barn and the expansive pastures that had begun to materialize out of the bright white light that was my future. Everywhere we went I would snag a real estate magazine and check the land prices, keeping a log and comparing the price and quality of acreage from Ramona to Canada. After years of fixated research, my mom realized that this might not be a phase that I would snap out of and decided to get me some experience. I was thrilled beyond belief when she signed me up for 4H, a program that enables youth interested in agriculture to raise livestock and learn about the farming lifestyle. It took a little bit of convincing for my dad, but in no time at all I was enrolled to raise a lamb to sell at the Del Mar Fair.

Months of preparation passed in a blur. My dad helped me carefully design and build the pen, a 12x8 frame with wire fencing connected to a roofed shelter with a raised platform and soft bedding area. I went to meetings and consulted with other lamb raisers to get advice. My mom and I crisscrossed San Diego, visiting tack and feed stores, gathering the needed halters, blankets, and feed troughs. The pickup day arrived so quickly that I didn’t even have time to be impatient. 

The sheep farm was out on a little dusty patch of land. It wasn’t as quaint and rustic as I had pictured, more high metal fences and peeled-paint sheds, hard-packed dirt, worn down signs. It was all stiflingly dry and breezeless. A traditional Ramona farm weathering a traditional Ramona spring.  I loved it nonetheless. My own glowing excitement seemed to project itself onto my surroundings, intermingling with the dazzling sun rays, reflecting back at me from the glinting surface of the glass wind chimes and the barn window, the empty soda can balanced on the fence post and the clasp of the farmer’s clipboard.

“All right, your turn little lady. Take your pick.”

Around 30 lambs had been herded into the small pen. They all had large black numbers spray-painted on their backs and were ready to be categorized and compared. They jostled against each other impatiently, competing for the corner spots, milling around and mewling adorably. I had previously decided on the name Haley’s Comet, one that I found cute, versatile, and cleverly complimentary to the fair’s extraterrestrial theme. Now I just had to figure out which one looked like a Haley.

I studied the slowly circling lamb vortex. 29 looked cute, but 14 looked really healthy….

“Remember sweetie, your lamb has to be a certain weight by the time you sell it at the fair. Otherwise you won’t break even.” My group leader chimed in.
Yeah, I guess that is an important factor, huh. Haley, Haley, which one looks like a ... There!
Something about the way she passed gently through the crowd, drifting through space. That was definitely a Haley.
“How about 20?”
“Awrighty then. I’ll pull her out.” The gruff farmer lady swung her leg over the fence and waded through the mass of woolly bodies, retrieving the requested specimen, plucking my comet from orbit.

I sat in the pen, watching her adoringly as she circled and pawed the ground, exploring her new home. She was absolutely filthy, dusty and grey and smeared with fecal matter from head to hoof from her time in the pen with her brothers and sisters, but I didn’t see any of it. She was a sparkling star, answering my dreams and blinding me with her perfection. 

I bathed and brushed her the next day, scraping off a few layers of muck and revealing the cute little lamb from the story books. Her short coat was white and soft, her damp clean nose twitched curiously and her eyes twinkled with and investigative fervor. Fuzzy little poofs stood out on her cheeks and forehead. Yes, this is exactly how I had imagined she would be, all knobby kneed, floppy eared, and doe eyed.

She was an absolute charm to walk. I would buckle on her halter after school and we would parade up and down the streets of the surrounding neighborhood. She pranced perfectly just alongside, never passing me. Must have been part of her herd mentality because I sure wasn’t equipped to teach her how to do that. This was the absolute greatest, I was so lucky. A fantastic opportunity, once in a lifetime, not so different from getting to watch Halley’s Comet cross the sky.  Yes, this piece was fitting exactly as I had hoped it would into the jigsaw that was my future farm. I could see it all, the sun peeking over the barn, illuminating the pastures and reflecting in the pond, warming the pig wallows and waking the cows…

Wait, a policeman? A cop car drove slowly by. Am I zoned for a lamb at my house? Is this technically legal? I guess I never checked. Oh, never mind, he’s passing, it’s all ok. Wait no, he’s turning around. The cop pulled up to the curb. Is there a law against walking livestock on the streets? The window rolled down painfully slowly. I’m too young to go to jail!
“Is that a sheep?”
“Yes sir, a lamb I am raising for 4H.”
“And you’re taking it for a walk?”
That was it. I was a goner. So much for my dream, I would have to wait until I had a property of my own to have any animals, this – his face broke into a smile.
“This is too great. I have to show my buds. Do you mind?” He waved an IPhone, raising a questioning eyebrow.
“Oh, haha, sure.” I stammered, smiling for the picture.

“So great, they’d never believe me otherwise. Have a nice walk, it’s really great that you’re doing this.” And with that, he rolled up his window and drove on. That turned out to be the first of many of what my family and I labeled ‘lamb jams’. People would pull over and ask questions, take pictures, get out and pet her. Some drove around looking because ‘their friends had told them that someone was out walking a sheep but they hadn’t believed them.’ Sometimes three or four cars stopped at a time. We were celebrities and I was loving every minute of it.
Sooner rather than later, however, weeds began to grow in my little lamb-pen-shaped paradise. Haley made a habit of waking up at 5:30 sometimes earlier, ready for a walk. I am an early bird so that didn’t bug me as much as it might have another person, but still, waking up to lamb baas isn’t ideal. I’m not talking cute little baa baas like she would do when we first got her. She would stick her tongue out, throw her head back, and scream at the top of her lugs.

“MMMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!”

Naturally I had to get up and dressed with great haste regardless of the hour to go out and comfort her. Couldn’t have her waking up the neighbors - they were good, but not that good. After school she needed constant attention. I would do my homework in the pen to keep her from getting lonely. Any time she saw someone walking in the house through our glass back door she would cry for attention. Even when I had kept her company for a few hours or just taken her for a nice long walk she would turn around and baa at us from her pen if she could see us in the house. It got bad enough that we hung a curtain over the door so she couldn’t see us. That fixed the problem to some extent.

I got home from school and flopped onto the couch. It had been an early morning with Haley. I lay for a few minutes reveling in the silence before I started getting suspicious. She was never this quiet. What if she had escaped or choked or something else? Would that be such a bad thing? Yes, yes of course it would. I better check on her.

I crouched and lifted the corner of the curtain, peeking out into the yard. Haley lay in her pen, head resting on her front knees. Was she sleeping? Hallelujah!  Well that handles that, wow could she only need one walk today? It would be nice not to have to do homework in the pen. Suddenly her head jerked up, ears twitching suspiciously. I hastily dropped the curtain and backed away, did she see me? Oh please go back to sleep Haley, pretty please? The all too familiar clanging started up again. Maybe she was just shifting? Getting comfortable or maybe she was rolling? It was always cute when she did that.

“MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”
Lord have mercy.
Crash. Clang. “MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Haley nuzzled me, smearing my sleeve with snot. Lamb boogers. Yay. I settled on my towel, back resting against the plywood wall of the roofed portion of the pen. I turned back to my annotations. Darn, where had I put my highlighter? I looked around, where..? Ugh it was laying on the ground next to the can of droppings, must have dropped it when I was cleaning the pen. Poop scooping had turned out to be a much more predominant element of lamb ownership than I had expected. Get up, scoop the poop. Get back from school, scoop the poop. Take her for a walk, hope she doesn’t poop on the sidewalk, because that is a pain to scoop.  I sighed discontentedly and turned to study myself in the mirror. I had read online that mirrors were supposed to help calm lambs. Ideally they would see their own reflection and not need as much company, yet here I was for the second time this afternoon. When I had installed it, the mirror had been so much brighter, so much more reflective. Now the image staring back at me was murky and blotched with lanolin and water marks. The entire pen had taken a beating in the last few months. The hinges and fencing that had shone so brightly when they were first installed were now tarnished. I turned my attention to Haley, who had settled down on the far side of the pen, not acknowledging my presence. Maybe she wouldn’t notice if I were to… I began to stand in as understated of a movement as possible, but she beat me to it. She was on her feet in an instant, poised in baaing position. Alright, alright, you win. I settled back down and continued with my annotations.

Although I never would have admitted it at the time, the Del Mar Fair couldn’t have come soon enough. We packed Haley off to the livestock barn and I spent two weeks taking care of her, passing out flyers and talking to potential buyers and the general public that came to visit the livestock exhibit. The showing was fun, I learning how to brace her and show off her muscles to the judges. I spent my free time exploring the fair with friends.  It was all a great deal of fun, a wonderful experience, but nothing compared to the moment she was finally sold at auction to H&H Feed and I was rid of the nuisance for good. No, the life of a farmer was definitely not the life for me and it was an enormous relief to have come to this realization as early as I had. The tail of Haley’s Comet receded into space leaving me at peace; satisfied to have caught a glimpse, but content with the idea of never seeing it again.