25/08/2026
Do you know what you are looking at, miles and miles away from our lived reality? What we see, walk beside, work with, try and build.
The screen protects us from so much, except conjecture, guessing, and anonymous blather written by the same hands.
Continue forward only if words do not easily hurt you, as the description is likely to pierce tender hearts.
This little, high-fenced field is next to our nearest feedlot. It is the only patch of ground between one building, where supplies are bought for the living, and the other one, which all the sheep are listening to- which turns the living into the dead.
The slaughterhouse.
All their heads are turned to hear the macabre and be on alert - their future. Nothing they want or need is in that building, yet here they are, no fault of their own, waiting, most trembling.
As we watch, lorry after lorry passes, full to the brim of others, who, if we could, we would buy sacks of food for and give hope and safety.
We can't help everyone.
The mantra that chokes our souls.
And at times like these, we feel utter crushing despair. Seeing how they shake, hearing a little they are capable of. Their woolly flanks trembling. Tiny legs holding up fattened bodies shaking.
Make it all go away, make it all stop.
Just for a little while.
Let the clamouring desist.
No, we cannot help.
So we turn, focus on the donated sacks of grain, and drive through the big doors to load bedding chips.
Pushing away the stain of remembering. Pretending it doesn't exist.
Going through the names, waiting at home for us.
Driving out the loading doors brings us side by side with the field.
Determinedly not looking, but the smell and sounds pass through the open window.
Please, to anyone listening, please make it quick, let them know the least fear and pain. Let their trembling be done with.
And that's it; that's all we can do, as our guts roll and we feel like accomplices, driving away. Turning left, we go straight past the new Cancer research facility and the new pharmaceutical research and testing laboratory.
More to die, more to tremble.
These are not just words and background buildings; these are the proverbial gulags of despair, where animals go to be turned into something else.
So we drive, grateful for our full boot of supplies to get through another day.
Drive.
Away.
Remembering, seeing those quivering flanks and ears held alert.
We get home to empty the bedding chips among little legs that stand firm and inquisitive, whose sides tremble not. We bury our faces in their damp wool, plastered recently by rain and freshened by breeze.
And know.
It was just a slip of fate that they stand this side of the fence and not the other.
We have seen more suffering than our minds have room for; our dreams are laced with all those we have seen and heard, and couldn't change any outcome. The care we give is based on those real sights, those aromas, the close calls and visits with death—the trembling and fear-filled eyes.
Yet we are judged and held wanting by internet sponges for those who have passed away in our care. Those who lived for years and years, succumbing to old age or the lifespan, the neglect before our care, denoted. Expecting us to hold back the inevitable somehow and become miracle workers instead of just humans. By sofa sitters who profess to know our work, our path, or have been here for a few moments to hold a lamb, not seeing one field, barn or stall, yet now uninvited are spitting and blithering. Or those with pet farms to make holiday rentals more appealing, while stalls lay in need, and are incapable of giving basic medications, turn because we said no to a further adoption. Or who pile plates high with those we try to help, or sit bottoms on animals for entertainment. Not one with the gumption to go where we go, see what we do, help who we try to.
Can anyone with any heart or soul, who has lost a loved one, conceivably guess what it is like over and over, through the years, saying goodbye to dearest beings who we have poured all we are into making their lives better? When we know we have taken on little beings drenched in diarrhoea, scabs, swollen bellies, infections, to hold back the reaper for as long as we can, only to fail.
We find it so painful not to succeed, to sit with emptiness and loss. It is life's most painful lesson and journey. It takes a certain low type to get entertainment from those losses and profess to understand all and everything, when they have no compassion for even the basics of life. Who clamour to obsess and concoct, how small, pointless, and unhealthy.
No judges between our yesterdays or our tomorrows could ever instil in us a better code of practice. We have walked that foul path and those sheds, not just read about them or guessed at them. Or hidden from them. We've seen the bodies; they're etched in our minds forever.
We only want to make a small difference; it will likely not be witnessed by many, and that is ok; that was never the goal. This account was only to help us achieve that small difference. We are judged most severely by ourselves, and will be on the day our hearts stop beating. Every false prophet in between is just noise and interference trying to stop us in our vocation.
Postscript. A heart-sent thank you to everyone who has supported us. Our admin team, those who write, call every day, video chat, answer messages, have visited, and have planned visits in the near future. To our core support who have a sense of truth and fairness, and who reach out with constant kindness. To our recent visitors, what a breath of fresh air, and to our visitors to come in September. The sanctuary is changing direction; we are excited that our support network has shifted more toward genuine altruism, as that is the type of humans we have always wanted to build with and be around. A sense of spirit and togetherness takes genuine characters to build. We are thankful that recent events have opened our minds to a clear path- letting things fall away as they must, and being more forgiving of ourselves and listening to others who care about us as the caregivers.
Thank you
