The numbers we counted in the fall rut supported a 75 percent mortality rate. We still have around 50 head in the park.

We're probably not looking at having a season next year. There may be a ram or two that would be in that category, but it's unlikely we would open the season with such a limited number of rams.

One of the things we wanted to do is wait and see what our residual herd looks like and let this episode go through a whole cycle and see what's going on with our lambs and lamb survival.

We know summer is the height of of being alive. We don't believe in God or the prospect of an afterlife mostly, so we know that we're only given eighty summers or so per lifetime, and each one has to be better then the last, has to encompass a trip to that arts center up at Bard, a seemingly mellow game of badminton over at some yahoo's Vermont cottage, and a cool, wet, slightly dangerous kayak trip down an unforgiving river. Otherwise, how would you know that you have lived your summertime best? What is you missed out on some morsel of shaded nirvana?

War gets people thinking about mortality even if they aren't going to be doing any fighting themselves. Now's a good time to look at whether you have the right life insurance coverage and to make sure your estate plan is in order.

War gets people thinking about mortality even if they aren't going to be doing any fighting themselves, ... Now's a good time to look at whether you have the right life insurance coverage and to make sure your estate plan is in order.