A busy week

Why is it that when we are desperate for rain, none arrives, and the day we have shearing, rain is predicted? Not that we are complaining now that some much-needed water is here - the fields have been parched, and we’re still feeding the cattle our last bales of silage to keep them topped up. On Common field next to the moor, the springs have almost dried up, and we’ve had to water the trees in the garden regularly as they are not yet fully established. I fear that several of the small beeches in the hedge have not made it.

This week started with a day of preparing the sheds for shearing – finishing the post-lambing tidy and planning the sheep chess that needed to happen so that all of the animals would be in the right place at the right time, and dry. Tuesday those chess moves were carried out, including Farmer Ian and I bringing sheep down from Raceground, halfway up the hill, and then Ann joining us for the trek down from Common. Ned was a star getting them into the pen at the start, although two ornery buggers and their lambs refused to come up the field and will have to suffer their fleeces for a little longer. We may need to lasso them somehow next time – once they start being difficult, they continue being difficult. The rest of the girls were somewhat reluctant to go on a long walk south, and we didn’t get dinner until after 9pm …  which turned out to be the trend for the week. However, we did end up with all of the sheep under cover for the night, albeit a tad cosy in their accommodations. Unfortunately, one lamb was in the wrong shed – and he and his mum spent the night calling to each other, which kept me awake or, when finally asleep, dreaming of sheep.

Wednesday the shearers arrived at 11am, and we kept at it until 8pm. Each and every one of the 341 sheep decided that they did not want to cooperate in getting into the big pen, then the smaller pen, then the funnel, and finally the shearing crate. We must have manhandled each at least twice, so by the end of the day we were not only greasy with lanolin and crap, but also aching all over. Worst of all, in each batch the compliant come first, while the most recalcitrant are always in the last batch as they’ve avoided capture, so it only gets harder. Add to this dealing with the lambs (funnelling them out of the shed behind the shearing crate), and we were done in. Farmer Ian went off to do a quick round of checking while I ran myself a hot bath to ease aching limbs, throwing the disgusting clothes in the washer on the way. Having just lowered myself into glorious waters, the phone rang … “One of the cows is calving, it’s backwards, can you come and give me a hand?”. Bugger. A lukewarm bath after a successful delivery (and another set of clothes straight in the washer) does not quite cut the mustard!

Ned, very pleased with himself.

Scout eyes up the flock.

Lambs waiting for mums to reappear, beach-ready.

Glad that's all over!

Thursday, we marked ewes and sprayed lamb bums to stave off flies, then walked the two lots of sheep back up the hill. On the way to Common, the group was extremely slow and Ann had to walk in the middle to push them forwards. While the whole block of us moved painstakingly forwards, ewes and lambs were running back and forth between us, stopping to chow down on tasty vegetation, with the occasional lamb escaping past me, realising what it had done and panicking, before a headlong dash back past man and dog, bleating all the way. Dawdling along at the back, I looked up to see no front group and no Ann! Someone had left open a gate and they’d ended up in a neighbour’s field, Ann looking a tad miffed. Scout did an excellent job of rounding them up and out, albeit with an injudicious long wee half-way through that had me worrying that the sheep would get away. 

During the day straw had arrived, so Farmer Ian spent the evening until after 10 tractoring bales down to the sheds before the next bout of wet weather.

I suppose simply pushing them off the lorry is one way to unload bales...

Then on Friday, it was over to the other farm to help Farmer Rob with the shearing of the remainder. We had a well-deserved takeaway in the evening and a glass or two of wine.

Not the most dignified of poses.

Elsewhere, the smell of slurry from the neighbouring dairy farm has been replaced (fortunately) by the scent of honeysuckle in the hedges. We were delighted to find that barn owls have inhabited our nesting box in Gratton Silage Pit and come nightly to fly around the rough patches in the garden. We’ve also seen a kestrel hunting there, which is great as they are few and far between in this area. A bank vole lives by our deck and has so far avoided them, entertaining us with his sneaking back and forth for bird seed, while the swallows have finally nested and happily chat to us when we are sitting out. The morning chorus is almost deafening – swallows, wrens, blackbird, sparrows – but it’s such a delight that I simply roll over and go back to sleep.