Feeling a little territorial, are we?

Our delightful swallows have a dark side. 

Every day a somewhat irritating recently-fledged male sparrowling sits on the chimney of our BBQ and cheeps to his parents. On and on, relentless, from 5am. Mr Swallow is clearly as bugged by this as I am, and has taken to launching himself off his perch, physically knocking the fledgling to the ground, and taking up watch again. I'm conflicted - slightly sorry for the sparrow, slightly grateful to the swallow, and slightly shocked that I love watching it happen. But only slightly.

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. 

Mad dogs and English men

I love a warm day, but why we decide to drench and mark lambs while the fields are sizzling I will never know. However, all three dogs came to help and did an excellent job - working together for the first time and (almost) in a coordinated way. While they could then cool off in the scant water that is around, unfortunately we had to make do with the meagre breeze.

Where did Ned go?

Ah, there he is.

Harry decided that the stream would be cooler ...

...but girls will be girls. 

Scout. Tut.

...and a few baa-lated pictures

How to combine dinner and a nap.

Kate (she's the blond one).

Kyle, also blond under the hat.

A perfect family.

Taking liberties with mum.

Quads!

There's always one...

Born on the same day.

This is what it's all about.

Neddy springs into action!

Mixed stocking can lead to some confusion.

Our version of the Joe Wicks work-out...

...although I'm not sure Irene was particularly impressed.

A rare quiet moment.

"Yeah, I'm pregnant. What of it?"

Some of the new calves, temporarily borrowed for tagging.

Physiotherapy for the "small" calf.

Scout, doing her best to get an extra treat.

Finally it's all too much.

Cheers to all - keep safe and well!

Baa-lated greetings from the farm...

Lambing started only a few days before we were expecting it to, and fortunately Kate and Kyle appeared very shortly after. Kate’s now an old hand at the process, but her boyfriend Kyle was somewhat thrown in at the deep end … lambing only having a cursory similarity to dealing with humans on hospital wards. For a start, no-one is allowed to shove a hand anywhere uninvited when working for the NHS (I can’t speak for private medicine). He soon picked things up, and proved to be particularly handy at mucking out and scrubbing water troughs (grin). No PPE needed, other than waterproof trousers.

The daily routine: 1am Leah drops in to check for action and top-up any hungry looking lambs. 4am I drag my corpse-like self out of bed and do the next shift. On a good day, a quick shufty around, feeding a few lambs, and back for a nap on the sofa. On most days, chasing ewes around the barn to try and pen them with their lambs, intervening when something is not presented right and a wee  bit of help is needed, and more than once trying to match several lambs to several disinterested ewes. After breakfast, everyone heads down to the sheds to feed up, ring and number, and check stock in the fields.  The Lambing Express takes the previous day’s doubles and singles out to the fields after tea and cake at elevenses, or after lunch if we are having a zig-zag day (Kate’s great expression for a day where you start doing something, get side-tracked, and again, and again). Afternoon tasks include merging sheep in the fields in preparation for moving on (either to the other farm or up the hill to higher fields), cleaning cow sheds, and numerous other odds and ends. Late afternoon there is another feed and water top-up, at which point I dip out and start thinking about dinner. Another drop-in early evening, then Farmer Ian does his late-night check and final quench of lambs in need of succour.

After a week, Irene joined us and a few days later Kate and Kyle went back east to lock-down. As Kate is going to vet school, she’ll hopefully come back again for a placement next year or the year after. Irene was supposed to stay for ten days or so, and ended up being with us for three lovely weeks. As things calmed down, I had the luxury of getting up at 4:30, then 5:00 and finally reached the heady goal of sleeping until 6am – bliss! Most memorable bit this year? Finding a triple ewe with two lambs and a small pair of hooves sticking out of her back end. After pulling off the third, the ewe gave an almighty fart and out popped a fourth! All fine and well.

Now that lambing is done, spring calving has started. Usually this happens over with Farmer Rob, but we’ve had a bit of a change around. It has benefits (seeing the calves outside the window frolicking around on a nice spring day), and disadvantages (helping to haul out a particularly large calf and getting covered head to foot in very sticky goop). We had one little chap who was struggling to walk at first and we needed to tube then bottle feed him. However, after some physiotherapy and patience, he’s out there with the others having a great time charging about.

While all of this has been going on, spring happened. After non-stop rain from September to the end of February, there was non-stop sun – very nice for us, but the flowers, veg beds and grass in the fields really need some water – and the few wet days at the moment won’t redress the balance, just yet. The cheeky pregnant cows in the field outside the house have taken to leaning over the barbed wire and chewing on my garden. Along the lanes and in the hedges, the wildflowers have been amazing – another good year for bluebells and early purple orchids. The swallows are back flying around, and we are now on a barn owl’s nightly patrol – he floats silently past our living room window at dusk, then checks for little squeekers in the garden before heading back out again. We even had a lapwing in the nearest field for a few days, and wheatears in the garden.

The dogs behaved well during lambing, taking it in turns to go out and perform. However, the howling and yowling that goes on from the two who are left behind in the utility room is, quite frankly, embarrassing. Seriously chaps, collies really should not debase themselves so! The boys are especially affronted when Scouty is off without them.

Now it’s time to catch up on some other things – burning the brash from last season’s hedge-laying, setting the fields aside for growing hay, general maintenance, and before we know it, shearing.

Unpleasant pheasant

I think that our resident pheasant has totally lost the plot … although I wonder how much plot a pheasant has as the best of times? His hormones have gone crazy, and as my friend Jos pointed out, his testicles are probably currently larger than his brain. As I write he is squawking at the wind – trying to attack each gust as it comes past. He’s been a real menace, chasing me around the garden, attacking us when we attempt to go to the woodpile, and flying down the road behind cars as if he has a chance of beating them in battle. Poor confused chap … although my patience is wearing thin, and I am tempted to open the door and let Scout sort him out (don’t worry, I won’t, but it’s nice to have options). Strangely, he totally ignores the other birds as he struts back and forth, only flying into a rage if another male pheasant comes into his bailiwick.

Perhaps it’s the weather that is making him loco, as it’s having a good go with the rest of us. The constant wind is wearing. The ground is sodden, and we’re behind with hedge-laying and other outdoor pursuits. If the sun peeks out for a moment, off we go, chainsaw at the ready, although for the last few weeks that has rarely happened. More often I get started and then retreat as the hail and sleet force me to cower behind any available windbreak. Fortunately for us, the string of storms has not caused major problems, unlike those poor folks up-country. Ponds in fields where they are not supposed to be and exuberantly muddy dogs are not all that problematic. The inside sheep (first lambers) are toasty, clean and vocal. The outside sheep are dirty, wet and making a right swamp out of any field that they are in. However, lambing is in two weeks, so everyone will get a go in the sheds, the sun will come out (it will, it must) so we can let out mums and offspring, and my mood will lighten considerably.

The pooches have each been getting a run around during the day, taking it in turns to accompany Farmer Ian on his rounds to help out moving the sheep back and forth for vaccination, bum shearing, foot trimming and other assorted activities. Each dog has a different style, strengths and weaknesses.  Neddy is brilliant at moving the sheep quickly and with direction, although he does get a bit worked up and nippy at times. Once in the yard, neither he nor Scout seem to be able to sit still, whereas Harry is a very focussed boy, measured and ideal for close work. Trouble is, he’s not very forceful when it comes to shifting recalcitrant ewes. Scout is probably the most independent of them all, which leads to her disappearing on walks and coming back with her tail between her legs when yelled at. However, overall no complaints … three fine young pups. Farmer Ian has forbidden me from having any more, despite four being the perfect number of dogs for a home.

Harry, helping deliver silage to the rams...

..and with hedge-laying (although I suspect he was just having a chew).

Let snoozing dogs lie...

...until they are dry enough to come in. Harry (again!) is a bit of a hearth-hogger.

Roll on warmer weather, but in the meantime, the daffs are coming up and spring is in the air (being blown about at 50 miles an hour).

And finally, we did have one clear night and Venus was in the sky with the moon ... all looks a bit Scandinavian to me.