Does a shepherd go home for dinner?

April 2007, Sheep-shearing Festival
Gore Place, Waltham, MA

Wikipedia ("shepherd"): A shepherd (pronounced /ˈʃɛpərd/) is a person who tends, feeds or guards flocks of sheep.

Recently I have been thinking about the shepherd and his other duties.  Do the shepherds have specific roles or duties?  Do they work as a team?  Do they go home to sleep in a house, or do they sleep in the field with their flocks?  And what about their families?  Would the family be out and about with the shepherd?  Would the shepherd  have someone to back him up if he needed to run home for family prayers or something?  

More from Wikipedia:

Shepherding is one of the oldest occupations, beginning some 6,000 years ago in Asia Minor. Sheep were kept for their milk, meat and especially their wool. Over the next millennia, sheep and shepherding spread throughout Eurasia.
Some sheep were integrated in the family farm along with other animals such as chickens and pigs. To maintain a large flock, however, the sheep must be able to move from pasture to pasture; this required the development of an occupation separate from that of the farmer. The duty of shepherds was to keep their flock intact and protect it from wolves and other predators. The shepherd was also to supervise the migration of the flock and ensured they made it to market areas in time for shearing. 

via Wikipedia.

Okay, so that makes sense.  Tough to be a shepherd and a farmer, as they require completely different lifestyles.  Some of the questions in my head have been circulating because of my duties at church-- we are a lay ministry, so in some sense we've got to find time to be the shepherd and the farmer.  I completely understand how some churches employ a pastor to make it a full time job. Here's more:

Shepherds were often wage earners, being paid to watch the sheep of others. Shepherds also lived apart from society, being largely nomadic. It was mainly a job of solitary males without children, and new shepherds thus needed to be recruited externally. Shepherds were most often the younger sons of farming peasants who did not inherit any land. Still in other societies, each family would have a family member to shepherd its flock, often a child, youth or an elder who couldn't help much with harder work; these shepherds were fully integrated in society.  

Shepherds would normally work in groups either looking after one large flock, or each bringing their own and merging their responsibilities. They would live in small cabins, often shared with their sheep and would buy food from local communities. Less often shepherds lived in covered wagons that traveled with their flocks.

Noteworthy Biblical sheperds: Abraham, Jacob, 12 Tribes, Moses, King David, Jesus.  Bishops have pastoral responsibilities, as pastor is rooted in Latin for shepherd.

“I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.  But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep.” (John 10:11-12.)” 

There were two kinds of sheepfolds in Jesus’time. One, a large building with beams covered with tree branches andstraw, was used in the winter for the sheep. In the summer and spring thesheep for an entire town were kept in a large enclosure open to the skybut with walls high enough to keep predators out. At night all theindividual family shepherds brought their flocks to the large fold and one man stood guard through the night instead of all the shepherds.  (H. S. Ellsworth Thoughts on the Good Shepherd, Dec 1985) 

The Lord is My Shepherd, by Simon Dewey.

Article on Jesus our Shepherd
"The tendency of humans to put themselves into danger's way and their inability to guide and take care of themselves apart from the direct power and leading of God is also reinforced with the metaphor of sheep in need of a shepherd."


So I haven't had time to fully pontificate on the subject of shepherd and sheep.   But the direction I'm hoping to understand more fully here is this:  Where is the balance between caring for my family and tending the "flock" allocated to me elsewhere?  Perhaps climbing a high mountain will help.