Lucas Farrell’s work takes two main forms: written and caramel. He oscillates between those mediums, following the rhythms of the year on Big Picture Farm in Townshend, which he owns and operates with his wife, artist Louisa Conrad. Poetry and caramels aren’t so different, suggested Farrell, 42, in an email. “They share a process of boiling down their material (milk or language) in an attempt to distill, sculpt or otherwise express the fundamental components of life — in small but sweet and wondrous form!” And, in Farrell’s case, both involve goats. Big Picture Farm’s caramels are certainly wondrous. Made from the milk of Conrad and Farrell’s free-range 50-goat herd, the creamy, gooey treats come in flavors such as sea salt-vanilla, chai, maple cream, raspberry-rhubarb, cocoa-latte and cider-honey. The couple sell more than a million per year of the delicate, decadent, individually wrapped pieces. Farrell won the inaugural Sundog Poetry Book Award in 2020 for the blue-collar sun. While that collection takes inspiration from his life on Big Picture Farm, as Seven Days reviewer Benjamin Aleshire wrote in 2021, “the book has concerns besides ruminations on ruminants.” Over the past couple of years, however, Farrell has been writing more and more about the animals in both poetry and prose. He and Conrad are entering their 13th year on the farm; some of the goats and guard dogs they started out with have passed away. “I have these pieces I think of as elegies, or meditations, on these animals that we’ve lived with that have become so interwoven in the fabric of our lives,” Farrell said in a recent phone interview. The elegies are still finding their form as a collection, he said. But seeing his essays come together with photographs from Conrad’s growing archive “illustrates how important these creatures are, at least to us.” Early December is the farm’s busiest time of year, when the couple fill holiday orders to ship around the country. Farrell took a break from wrapping caramels to speak with Seven Days about those beloved animals, when he writes and how the spheres of his life overlap. What does December look like on the farm? This time of year, I’m just trying to get through the list each day. We’re down at the shop — which is a mile and a half down the road from the farm — wrapping caramels using this Willy Wonka machine…