Ultra sound ultra-sound

A moment of lamb-free peace and quiet has descended on the farm, although you'd be hard pressed to appreciate it given the howling gales and driving rain (which quickly disappears, to be replaced by blue sky, hail, drizzle, then snow in a seemingly never-ending cycle to ensure you are never dressed appropriately).  The remaining lambs from last year have gone off to the other farm for a final fattening-up before taking the express trailer to the abattoir at Launceston.  [Don't you just love that word – abattoir?  Direct from yer real French for "to knock down"…sounds so much nicer than slaughter house (apologies to the squeamish, but where did you think your chop came from?)] 

Today's main job was to have the ewes scanned to find out what lurks inside – and the good news is that we're doing better than last year:  67 singles, 220 doubles and 33 triples (with 13 no-shows who need to buck their ideas up for next year, otherwise it's mutton curry all round).  So 182% lambing – potentially a maximum of 606 running around by the end of the season (plus similar at the other farm).  Our Exmoors are doing ok, and my little black-face lamb from two years ago who had a completely black brother is having twins … my very own black-sheep-of-the-family breeding programme.

Mike who does the scanning whips through hundreds of sheep at an amazing pace – ewe goes into crush, scanner rubbed underneath, contents noted and sheep marked (blue = single, green = triple, orange = empty), sheep released – and repeat 333 times.  And it's a cold day in Hell when Mike makes a mistake (although to me it looks like something out of an Alien movie seen through fog).

On the home front, the greenhouse has decided that it prefers next-door's garden and is piece-by-piece moving itself across the hedge.