Farm Reality

Stepping in the barn on Friday after school I was met with Miss Audrie (My step grand daughter) chasing the bottle baby, Lily as the lamb squeezed by me with its lead rope trailing behind.
"Look Kris I'm training my lamb, Lily"  Audrie said to me with a grin on her face.
"Yes, I see that you are doing a fine job!"  I chuckled.
Ashley looked up from her job of sorting lambs and cleaning pens preparing for our 4-H club lamb sale that we were going to have later that evening.
"Audrie really wants to keep the bottle baby but I told her that we have to put her in the sale."  Ashley explained to me. 
Just at that moment the lamb came running back in with Audrie in tow.  Then the conniving began. 
"You know I really would like to keep Lily!  Do we have to sell her?"  Audrie began. 
"Well, it's like this when you raise farm animals you can't keep them all.  You can only keep the best ewes that will make good mamas.  If someone wants to buy Lily we have to sell her."  I tried explaining the farming realities to a five year old knowing that Audrie wasn't really understanding or wasn't ready to face those realities.
"But... I think Lily is the best and I could take care of her when I come to the farm.  Please..."  Audrie begged.   
My heart was beginning to melt.  
"Well, maybe we could keep her"  I said.
With that Audrie ran out of the barn, paused to look up at her dad and Ashley.  "Kris has a good idea!  She thinks that we should keep Lily" Audrie said excitedly.
Her dad, Jake just grunted, not really thinking that it was a good idea.
Later that evening when the parents and kids began to arrive looking over lambs trying to decide which ones they liked.  They were climbing in the pens grabbing lambs up, trying to set them up.  Checking the size of their loins, stepping back and writing numbers down. 
During that whole time Audrie was in Lily's pen standing over her, protecting her, or maybe hiding her.  Above the chatter I could hear her exclaim, "If anyone tries to buy my lamb, I will talk you out of it!" 
Let's just say at the end of the sale there was a few lambs left, Lily was among them and there was one happy girl.
Well, I guess there is time to teach Audrie the realities of farming ... later. :)