Góðan dag frá Íslandi!

Shearing over, and a pause for breath - so a perfect time to take a week out and travel to Iceland.  While here is not the place to wax lyrical about how wonderful the scenery was, how awesome the glaciers and volcanic geology, and...ooop, just did...this is a farm blog.

The Icelandic sheep were ubiquitous - small and hardy, seemingly as happy to be grazing beside a road as on a cliff face or the volcanic beaches.  Lambing was well over, and each mum had two rapidly growing charges.

While there were cattle, mostly dairy as far as we could tell, another staple of the Icelandic diet (look away now if you are squeamish) is horse (along with various other things foreign to our palate, such as whale and reindeer).  I can categorically state that we most probably did not eat horse burger (and I am most definitely lying - when in Rome...).

We were probably the only two tourists who stopped to watch haymaking (coming soon back at home) and looked longingly at the über-cool combined baling and wrapping rig that the local bóndi (that's yer real Icelandic for farmer, that is) was using to store away his winter feed.

However, some of the tractors were a bit small.

The official line is that we did not flirt with other sheepdogs (please, please don't tell Sonny!)

The bird life was amazing, and each field had territories of redshank, whimbrel, snipe, plover, godwit, redwing - the dawn chorus was the space-invader sound that snipe wings make as they fly about, with a background of wader calls and skylark singing.  I say dawn chorus - given it was light all night, a 5-6am peak in activity was probaby just habit.

Black-tailed godwit, long-tailed duck, red-necked phalarope, Slavonian grebe, whimbrel, black guillemot

An eider mother and her chicks

Mutch Ado about Shearing

Shearing has been and gone, and was exhausting as usual.  This year we were surprised to have Gavin Mutch come along with our regular Gavin to shear the sheep - nice to know a World Champion is on hand when you need to work your way through 365 ewes, ewe lambs and rams before mid-afternoon.  And the pun belongs to Sue O'Dowd who wrote the article - don't blame me!

On the build front, we now have electric, a damp-proof course, and a concrete pad - ready for the build on the 4th of July.

In the evening, it's nice to sit with a beer as the sun goes down...but always under the watchful eyes from the other side of the garden fence...

Waiting for his master to come home from Cambridge...

Time honoured traditions

Recently Ian and I were moving ewes and their lambs up from the lower fields to Raceground, and as I was ambling up the lane, I became aware of a car purring along behind me.  When I turned, I realised that the woman in the passenger seat was taking photographs of us - the bucolic time-honoured tradition of a man walking his sheep up to higher ground, crook in hand, sun on his back.  I guess I spoilt it all by being on the mobile phone at the time - sigh!

These girls were the last batch, and dear Sonny has been missing out on his herding while we are lodging on Flossie's patch.  He was a little overexcited and bit his tongue - I can now see where the myth of the Exmoor Werecollie comes from...

Meanwhile the flowers are bursting forth after a late start, and this year seems particularly good for early purple orchids - great patches of them along the roadsides.  The ferns are sprouting, and now that the insects are hatching, the martins and swallows swoop joyfully across the valley.

Joey and orchids

Cody and ferns

And big news!  As of Thursday, Ian M will be a full-time farmer...we're taking the leap of faith!

Caught behaving unprofessionally

Finally lambing is over, and a chance for a few tales from the Edge of Exmoor.

Now the ground is dryer, the bull, his harem and their offspring are out in 13 acres, with access at night to the shed and tasty silage (which this year has been seriously good stuff).   Recently, after evening chores (ie dealing with demanding and lippy sheep), I was letting the cattle back into the yard and had a short love-in with Mrs Brown Cow...she is quite tame and likes to have her neck scratched, and of course while I had my arm round her neck and was giving her a good rub, our neighbour drove past and gave me a funny look - it's not professional to bond with the livestock.

Our nearest neighbours at the new build.

The calves bought at the end of last year are growing nicely, and have come back from their winter in Cleave Shed.  They like their new quarters, especially as they can look over the barrier and watch the to-ings and fro-ings in the sheds.  They didn't seem that impressed with birthing sheep.

Tucking into lovely calf cake.

Ian M shows off the tiniest lamb - not one of our prime specimens.

The Disney version of the classic film "Alien".

After leaving our house at the end of March, we are now officially homeless - with belongings in four different locations.  Our storage container is like a game of Jenga - and I know exactly where everything is, but it would take days to get to it.  If anything has shifted, when we unlock that door we're in for an avalanche.  Meanwhile, we do have a post-box and a set of foundations, and Mike the Digger Man came and moved a load more soil in the garden, creating the basic setup for development over the next few years...or more.

Base for sheds, veg beds and Dartmoor viewing point...that's the plan.

The site - in context.

Now lambing is over, we're be based at the other farm until we have a habitable house - so this blog probably should be renamed From Betwixt Two Moors temporarily.  It's nice to wake up to lowing cattle outside the window, and be around for spring calving - this morning I watches a gang of 5 littluns having a charge around under the watchful eye of their mums.  

Ian M becomes a full time farmer on the 26^th of May - all change down here!

Starting to make the place look less like a bomb site.

A break in the clouds

Wet sheep, wet dogs, wet fields...and then, a wonderful break in the weather.  It might only be a short respite, but it's a welcome one.  On the house front, we now have concrete in the bottom of our foundations and Mark the builder has started to brick up.  I expressed a hope that someone would move the big piles of rock that are currently obscuring the view - Ian says I am being impatient, and that instant gratification is not quick enough for me, and I have to sit in a darkened room for the next six months.

Ian M assessing progress.

View of snow-capped Dartmoor from the top of the garden.

Inside the sheds, the cattle steam away in the cold air, and the little calves snuggle together.

"Help, I'm evaporating!"

Wake me when the cake arrives.

Most of the sheep are now inside, having been scanned last week.  The weekend saw a lot of sorting going on - early lambers to go to the other farm, triples and those needing a bit more feed in one shed, doubles in another, singles and very late lambers back into the fields for a while longer, until space becomes available.

Girls in the race.  "I've got three in me!"

"Bye...see you in April."

Rob helped me put up some nest boxes for sparrows, with the intention of enticing a colony to make their home inside the sheds.  A day later, a pair was taking hay and fleece into one of the holes - if you build it, they will come!

The weather moves back in.