The Day We Bought Two Sheep in Four Hours

Some days on a farm unfold slowly, the way honey slides off a spoon, with the mist lifting at its own unhurried pace and the hens wandering out whenever they see fit, and nothing much happening at all until the kettle has boiled at least twice.

This was not one of those days.

This was the day I left the house to do a little light paperwork and came home, before dinnertime, the owner of two sheep I had never met, bought from a stranger on the internet and delivered by another stranger from the internet, with a combined age of twenty-six years and, as it turned out, a brand-new neighbor thrown in for good measure.

Let me explain.

The responsible thing

We’d been on the farm for barely a week, and the house was still a maze of cardboard that the children had taken to navigating like explorers, calling out their routes to one another as they climbed over boxes of lamps and squeezed past towers of books. Every surface was covered in something that didn’t belong there, and I had not seen my hairbrush in days.

But I had a list, and at the very top of that list, in my most responsible handwriting, were the words check farm paperwork.

If you’ve ever bought land in Spain, you’ll know that the paperwork is its own kind of weather. It rolls in when you least expect it, hangs around far longer than seems reasonable, and has a way of soaking you right through just when you thought you’d found shelter. We learned that the hard way in Málaga, so this time I was determined to get ahead of it. I wanted to be sure our licencia de explotación ganadera, the license that lets you legally keep livestock on your land, was active and in order, and that nothing was lurking in a drawer somewhere, quietly waiting to trip us up.

So on a bright Friday morning I put on actual clothes, found my folder of documents, and drove into town to the agricultural office, feeling, for perhaps the first time since the move, very much like a capable grown-up who had things under control.

I’d like to point out that I was, at this stage, extremely pleased with myself.

Three hundred and sixty-three days

The office was cool and quiet and had that particular smell that government offices seem to share no matter which country you’re in, a mixture of paper and coffee and long-suffering patience. I took a number and waited, rehearsing my Spanish under my breath, and when my turn finally came I sat down across from the vet who handles the livestock licenses, slid my folder across the desk, and explained who we were and what we’d bought.

He was not, I think it’s fair to say, a man who smiled very often. He listened with the expression of someone who has heard every possible version of every possible story and has yet to be impressed by a single one of them, and then he typed, and frowned, and typed some more, before finally looking up at me over his glasses.

There is a rule, he explained, in a voice as flat as the desk between us. If a farm goes a full year without any registered animals on it, its license expires, and you have to start the whole application again from the very beginning, with all the forms and inspections and months of waiting that entails.

“Okay,” I said. “And how long has the farm been without animals?”

He checked the screen.

“Three hundred and sixty-three days.”

I did the math, and then I did it again more slowly, because surely I’d made a mistake somewhere. I had not made a mistake.

“So it expires…”

“On Sunday.”

It was Friday morning.

You’re going to do what?

He laid out my options with all the warmth of a parking ticket. Either there were registered animals on that farm before the license expired, or there weren’t, and if there weren’t, we’d be starting again from zero.

And then, because I am who I am, I heard myself say, “Fine. I’ll find something. Anything. I’ll have animals there by tonight.”

He looked at me for a long moment, and I watched him decide, quite clearly and without any particular emotion, that I was out of my mind.

But here’s the thing about that unsmiling man: he helped me anyway. He told me exactly what I’d need to bring back and exactly what had to happen for the animals to count, without sugarcoating any of it or pretending for a moment that it was a sensible plan. He just quietly, coolly made it possible.

Then he told me the part that really mattered, which was that all of it had to be done today. If you’ve ever tried to get anything official done in Spain on a weekend, you’ll already know how that goes. The office would close that afternoon, the weekend would roll in like a tide, and by the time anyone opened a file again on Monday morning, our license would be gone.

I thanked him, gathered up my folder, and walked very calmly out of the office and very calmly across the parking lot. Then I got into the car, closed the door, and said a word I will not be printing here.

Mil Anuncios, my old friend

If you don’t live in Spain, allow me to introduce you to Mil Anuncios, the Spanish cousin of Craigslist, a gloriously chaotic online marketplace where you can find anything from a secondhand stroller to a tractor to a slightly haunted-looking wardrobe and, crucially for me that morning, livestock.

I sat in that car with the engine off and the windows slowly fogging up, and I scrolled as though my life depended on it, past animals that were too far away and animals that were too expensive and animals that wouldn’t be available until next week, until finally, there they were: two sheep, not far away, available today.

I called the number before I could talk myself out of it and launched into my most breathless Spanish, which I imagine sounded something like hello, good morning, I would like your sheep, today please, it’s an emergency, the government, a farm, Sunday. There was a pause on the other end of the line, during which I can only assume he was wondering what sort of emergency requires sheep. But we agreed on a price right there on the phone, and just like that, I owned two sheep I had never laid eyes on.

Which was wonderful, except for one small detail. I had absolutely no way of getting them home.

The transport problem

We do not own a trailer, or a livestock box, or anything with more than a few square feet of space that isn’t already crammed with moving boxes, and you cannot, I’m fairly sure, put two sheep in the back of a family car. (I did consider it, briefly. I’m not proud.)

So back to Mil Anuncios I went, this time searching for anyone, anywhere, with a trailer and a free Friday afternoon. And somehow, miraculously, I found him: a man who did local animal transport, who answered his phone, listened patiently to my increasingly frantic story, and said he could do it that very afternoon.

I could have wept with relief, and I may have, a little.

Four hours

I won’t pretend I did my due diligence. I didn’t ask about their health or their temperament, their breed or their dietary preferences, and I certainly didn’t check their teeth, which, as any experienced shepherd will tell you, is how you find out how old a sheep really is.

I asked one question, and one question only: can I have them today?

The answer was yes. And so, about four hours after I’d walked into that agricultural office as a calm, organized woman with a folder, two sheep were loaded into a stranger’s trailer and rattling down the country lanes toward our farm. They regarded me through the slats with the cool, unimpressed gaze of two women who have seen a great many people come and go in their lives and expect very little from any of them.

I liked them immediately.

“You’ve been conned”

We pulled up at the farm in the late afternoon light. The transport man had brought his son along for the ride, a boy of about nine with sharp eyes and the complete lack of filter that only a nine-year-old can manage, and he hopped out of the truck, walked around to the back of the trailer, took one long, considered look at my two brand-new sheep, and turned to me.

“You’ve been conned,” he said. “Those two are ancient.”

I laughed, assuming he was joking, and glanced at his father, fully expecting him to tell the boy off for being rude. Instead, his father leaned over the side of the trailer, studied the ladies with a practiced eye, and nodded slowly.

“Yeah,” he said. “You’ll be lucky if that one makes it through the night.”

I stood there in the driveway in the golden light, clutching the paperwork that was supposed to save our farm license, and realized I had absolutely no idea how old my sheep were.

It turned out they were twelve and fourteen. For a bit of context, that’s a very respectable age for a sheep, somewhere in human terms around “retired, still sharp, takes absolutely no nonsense, and has strong opinions about your cooking.” In my panic, I had bought the woolly equivalent of two great-aunts.

And then the transport man pointed across the fields to a house just down the road and said, “That’s us, over there.”

He wasn’t just a man with a trailer from the internet. He was our new neighbor. So that’s how we met our first neighbor here, standing in the driveway with two elderly sheep in his trailer while his nine-year-old cheerfully informed me I’d been robbed, and honestly, I can’t imagine a better introduction.

Meet the ladies

Of course they became the ladies. There was never really any other option, because two sheep with that much dignity, that many years behind them and that particular way of looking at you down their noses simply cannot be called anything else.

The girls were enchanted. They lined up along the fence that first evening, the littlest on my hip, and watched the ladies explore their new field with the slow, deliberate air of two dowagers inspecting a vacation rental they suspected might be beneath them. After a long, thoughtful silence, the middle one tugged on my sleeve.

“Mummy,” she whispered, “are they ours? Like, really ours? Forever?”

“Yes,” I told her. “They’re ours.”

She considered this with great seriousness, and then turned back to the fence and said, very softly, so only the sheep could hear, “Hello, you’re ours now.”

And that first night, after our new neighbor’s cheerful prediction, I’ll admit I lay awake for a while listening to the dark. When I crept out at first light with my coat thrown over my pajamas, both ladies were standing in the field, chewing steadily, looking at me as though I were the one who’d had the rough night.

She made it, of course. She had no intention of giving a nine-year-old the satisfaction.

What I’d tell you, friend to friend

I’m sharing all this partly because it still makes me laugh, and partly because it might just save one of you from a frantic Friday of your own.

If you’re buying a farm in Spain, check the status of the livestock license, the licencia de explotación ganadera, as early as you possibly can. Ask how long it’s been since there were registered animals on the land, and because the rules and timelines can vary from region to region, ask your local agricultural office directly rather than relying on what the seller or the real estate agent tells you. We found out with two days to spare, and only because I happened to go in that particular Friday. One more week of putting off my paperwork list, and we’d have been starting over from scratch.

And remember that nothing official happens on the weekend, so if something needs doing, it needs doing before Friday afternoon.

Oh, and if you do end up buying animals in a hurry, please learn from me and at least ask how old they are. It won’t change your answer, but it might spare you a nine-year-old’s verdict in your own driveway.

Weeks later

The ladies have settled in beautifully, perhaps a little too beautifully, and they’ve made it perfectly clear that they consider the whole farm theirs and the rest of us, at best, staff. They’ve escaped once already, into the vineyard and at the worst possible moment, but that’s a whole other story. Every morning they greet me with the same expression, patient and faintly disappointed and only mildly curious about whatever I’ve brought them.

I didn’t plan to have sheep this soon, and I certainly didn’t plan for them to be twelve and fourteen, and I never imagined our first real conversation with a neighbor would begin with “you’ve been conned.” But I’m learning, all over again, that the best things on a farm rarely arrive the way you planned. Sometimes they turn up on a Friday afternoon, from a stranger on the internet, in another stranger’s trailer, with a combined age of twenty-six years and not the slightest interest in your plans.

And sometimes those strangers turn out to live just down the road.

With love (and a little bow to the ladies, and to our neighbors),

Milly x

P.S. What’s the most impulsive animal purchase you’ve ever made? Tell me in the comments. I need to know there are others out there.