Johnnie Holcomb stood in the backside of his 5-acre lot just outside Justin city limits. The soil was mottled with sheep droppings and uneven patches of grass. A flock of roughly two dozen brown lambs, ewes and rams approached within a few yards and milled about before retreating to their pen as subtly as they’d come. The wind gusted and birds chattered and the occasional car buzzed past on the street beyond his southern fenceline, but the rest was silent.
“I told my son, there are only two people who are going to move me, and that’s either the coroner or him,” Holcomb said. “My goal is to be walking across that pasture, one of these pastures, and fall over dead.”
Holcomb, 78, and his wife moved to rural Denton County in 2005, having grown dissatisfied with the cramped surroundings and nosy neighbors of their suburban life in Haltom City…