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Our blog
Monday 21st April
Lambing has now come to an end with no problems or casualties
and the weather has been reasonable despite blizzards at the
start of lambing and bitter winds at the close of lambing.
We moved a bunch of beautiful ewe replacements to the other
end of the village where they will spend the summer, before
going into the flock at tupping time in November. They are in
a most picturesque setting beside the Church and the School
and can be seen from the village playground.
The week has passed quickly keeping an eye on the last lambs
born and on the ones which are being kept here due to having
unconcientious mothers so that they need more care. They are
all grazing around the pond and the lambs love racing around
the ditches and the pond edge.
The main flock are contentedly grazing the young grasses and
clover and the lambs are already growing apace, playing together.
It takes quite a time checking on them all and walking around
all the fields, coming across dark puddles of brown lambs hidden
in the grass, sleeping! It is a very pleasant duty and time
has to be allowed to do it properly and to watch a while to
see that all is well.
I have been setting up the next masterclass here for Spinning
which we hope to run at the end of May. I need a few more bookings
so let me know if anyone would like to learn how to spin wool,
such an ancient craft. The tutor is going to bring a 40"
diameter spinning wheel, real sleeping beauty fairytale stuff!
Monday 14th April
On Saturday we had a great masterclass with thirteen people
from all over the country attending. We covered topics from
DEFRA legal requirements to ear tagging and turning over a sheep
and a hot mutton tagine revived us at lunchtime! Being immersed
in lambing gave the course extra atmosphere.
It was lovely to meet new enthusiasts and I hope they enjoyed
their day as much as I did meeting all of them.
Lambing is drawing to a close now and we have been able to turn
our attention to other pressing activities such as moving sheep
from different fields which will be put down for hay and moving
them onto summer grazing. The whole flock, ewes and new lambs,
is in the away fields and are very contented roaming through
the fields with good clean grass.
We have also been weighing and marketing our year lamb who look
absolutely wonderful and are ready to go to customers as whole
or half lambs.
A perfect matched batch of lambs all healthy and weighing up
well, they are a joy to look at and it is very rewarding to
see a great end product. A number of those have now gone off
the farm to customers. We are able to offer an all year round
supply now which is very pleasing as I have been working towards
this end since I started some years ago.
Nothing has been bought in, the flock has grown each year by
retaining as many ewe lambs as possible. This keeps infection
out and keeps the flock healthy and is called a closed flock
as we breed all our own flock replacements.
So I will be kept busy from now on being in touch with customers
and I hope anyone will contact me for lamb now as they are in
prime condition.
The school visits have slowed down as
it is the holidays but various people drift in and out looking
at the lambs and the rams and see Trim the sheepdog bringing
the ewe lambs up the hill to see everyone. She loves working
and I use her everyday to do something. She is a super dog with
a loving temperament and I would find life very difficult without
her help with the sheep.
3rd April 2008
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It has been such a very busy week with lambing full
on. Wonderful healthy lambs!
We have a number of new, first time mothers and it is
not easy to get them to follow their lambs into the
mothering up pens - they rush about all over the place
and get in a panic and then don't seem to recognise
their lambs. We leave them quietly in the field for
a while and then calmly walk them towards the lambing
barn whilst the rest of the flock are either in the
yard being fed or are further away from the new mother.
It all takes time and patience. The older mothers who
have lambed before take it all in their stride and follow
along and know the routine.
We have also had two schools a day for educational visits
and some schools have spent the whole day here and had
lunch in the barn on the hay bales. Some students have
had hands on practical experience with the sheep and
they have been shown our lamb management and seen other
sheep in different fields being rounded up by Trim the
sheepdog.
One school took their practical land management examination
here and they all seemed to enjoy their time here.
We are having a Sheep Husbandry Workshop or Master Class
here on Saturday and we are looking forward to that
and to meeting everyone coming on the course.
The weather has been beautiful and the ewes have taken
full advantage of the sunshine and been producing lambs
and keeping us busy!
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15th March 2008
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Checked flock early in the
morning, an overcast but dry and still morning, to find
a beautiful black bleating little lamb with an attentive
mother. This was a lovely surprise as I was expecting
a flurry of lambs towards the end of the week to herald
the start of lambing.
All was well and I put the mother and lamb in a pen in
the lambing barn which is all ready – disinfected,
beautifully clean with clean hurdles all set up with lambing/mothering
up pens, well bedded down with straw. Stacks of clean
water buckets and feed trays await them, complete with
a trolley of iodine, tags and veterinary medications if
required.
We then moved the last of the replacement ewes and some
muttons back to the home fields here – and then the
heavens opened and it rained heavily for the next twenty
four hours, rather like in January.
Now the fields are very waterlogged and the flock is stomping
along doggedly through the rain, along with their shepherd!
I hope that the weather clears and is settled and dry
by the end of the week so that lambing gets under way
in the dry.
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26th February 2008
Back from holiday, haven't been away for a month, unfortunately!!
Just been in slow mode! It seems to take ages to get back into
racing around and multi-skilling again.
The ram hoggets are getting quite above themselves and are trying
to have team leader interviews ie head butting and more head
butting to see who is in charge of the field. We are moving
them next Friday to new pastures and that will sort them out
and give them something to think about. The sun is shining wonderfully
and I have seen some lovely butterflies, a tortoiseshell and
a red admiral. I think they have been woken up by the sun and
wonder how long they will last. Our resident pair of Canada
Geese are noisily enjoying the pond - the other day it was very
frosty and the pond was frozen and the geese were very perplexed
as to how to land on the water!! They kept flying around and
around and swooping down and then thinking they couldn't land
so would swoop up in the air again!!
28th January 2008
Big feed delivery today. The lorry is huge and can only just
squeeze in the through the gate - we need new gates and a
wider entrance so if it knocks it down at least it will hasten
the decision! The ewes are having a small amount of organic
feed now to help them with their growing lambs inside them.
It wards off problems like twin lamb disease, staggers, and
weakly lambs through lack of colostrums. Organic feed has
dramatically risen in price and is quite a shock. This is
because there is such a shortage in organic feed. The ewes
are delighted with the feed though and are queuing up at the
gate and seem to recognise the lorry!
We are going away for two weeks holiday, hurray, as it doesn't
often happen. This is supposed to be a quiet time of year
- supposed! Instead of thinking holiday I have been getting
extra hurdles, iodine, straw etc in readiness for lambing
in case more early ones decide that now is the time.
21st January 2008
Starting to sort out everything for lambing, gradually.
Hay has been collected by hay merchants to go to Windsor for
elegant and smart polo ponies. This has cleared a whole barn
in readiness for the school visits which will happen over
lambing between mid March and Mid April - this is our proper
lambing time, not the unexpected time in January! Those lambs
are doing well and jumping about looking delightful. They
have to be double tagged now - well, it is easier to double
tag them now because from this Spring anything which loses
a tag has to have an identical tag number inserted. If it
is double tagged and looses one then a red tag can be inserted
with a different number. So that option is the one more easily
managed. Of course everything is then cross referenced in
the appropriate book. So the little lambs are jumping around
looking really lovely with two yellow tags, one in each ear
like earrings. At least their ears now look equal, before
they had only one tag and one ear weighed down and one looking
like it was sticking up!! The school visits use the cleared
barn to sit on arranged hay bales and have their drinks and
biscuits and to look at the sheepskins, fleeces and wool and
other things all sheep related.
11th January 2008
Big Day! Soil Association inspection day and all is ready
- all paperwork has to be in place and all files laid out
for inspection. The weather is awful and rain is pouring and
pouring, a biblical type of weather day when building an ark
would seem reasonable. The inspector arrives and as the weather
is so bad we decide to check some paperwork before inspecting
the farm. In comes Faye, my wonderful and experienced stockperson
- she is an expert on pigs and now an expert on sheep - and
asked to see me. She then dropped a bombshell - there was
a lamb in the field, in January!! Unheard of for a primitive
rare breed I thought. And today of all days, being inspected,
which is a very big deal, and the rain. We agreed there was
nothing for it but to move the flock as the water was rising
from the stream, now a river and two foxes were in the field
eyeing up the lamb. Our hurried and almost whispered conversation
was overheard by the inspector who was wonderful and asked
what he could do to help! So there we were, in the rain, moving
sheep. I carried the lamb across the field to the waiting
trailer which was up to its wheels in water. I thought the
new mother would not swim to follow the lamb into a half submerged
trailer but she did and I was so proud of her, it was wonderful.
The sheepdog was swimming along and I asked the inspector
if he could take a picture on his phone as I, naturally in
the general panic, but not put my camera in my pocket, but
he had not put his phone in either! It would have made such
a good picture for the blog! But you will just have to believe
me. Anyway the whole flock was moved to dry land, near the
house, and eight ewes lambed much to our complete amazement.
It was due to the movement restrictions with the Foot and
Mouth in August and we were not able to wean the lambs and
they were all in the same field. It did occur to me that we
might have a forward ram lamb but had thought that ewes would
not be in season in August. But then August was so cold and
miserable that I think they thought it was Autumn and the
time to be in season!!
It was a day to remember!!
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