A well-earned rest for the rams

This weekend, the rams were brought back to Ann's splat for a well-earned rest after doing their duty...and the ewes are each sporting a red, blue or green patch of fleece (the colour-coding showing us when they are likely to lamb).

 Beginning of April!

Who you lookin' at?

The weather has been reasonably kind this year, and there has been good quality grass for longer than 2013.  But the time has come to give extra silage, and move the sheep into smaller groups and lower fields.

One man and his (over-excited) dog....

...who is the reason we always have to wear leggings.

Rob came down for a weekend and finally plucked up courage to drive the quad across Big Field.  Or perhaps it was just a handy way to ensure that Ian did all of the heavy lifting?

When the rain let off for a while, Ian and Ian were seen to be sporting the latest in farming chic from the stylish House of Stattersfield - scarves knitted from our own wool.  It's amazing how I can put a dirty fleece into an old cake bag, and a few months later it re-appears as clothing...thanks Ali!

Fresh legs

"I've only been born five minutes, and they want me to get up!  I wonder how these leg things work?"

Nature provides (for those with big buckets)

We seem to have gone a bit mad on the "nature's harvest" front this year…it started innocuously, with a few ripe blackberries scoffed on the way down the lane.  But there were so many…and it seemed a shame to waste them…blackberry vodka followed (along with a nice cherry vodka), 9 litres of blackberry wine (last year's is drinking very nicely, thank you), pies, jams, and fools, with bagfuls going to neighbours…almost as bad as the runner bean glut that happens every summer.  And it's not just berries – field mushrooms on toast, in stew, preserved in oil – puff-ball fried with lashings of butter - green tomato/chilli/ginger marmalade - herbs and garlic in virgin Kalamata – chilli adobo – blanched beans (runner, French, climbing and yellow) in the freezer – and still the squashes take over the garden, climbing into the hedges.

Other than eating, and preparing stuff to eat, there are logs to chop for the winter, and now we have clipped past 1^st of September, the next round of hedging can get underway.  Today Gavin came to shear the black-faced ewe lambs (who will stay as breeding stock) and middling sized meat lambs (not so lucky!)  The big bruisers are ready to go (and going weekly), while the piddly little widgets would just get cold if shorn, so keep their fleeces…and are enjoying their daily cake to fatten them up.  Five autumn calvers are keeping us in suspense…we have one with tight udders, so should be any day now. 

The season has definitely changed, and the days are often beautiful in that winding-down autumn way.  Walking the dogs, I pass the bales of silage – wafts of caramel anticipate the wonderful smells of winter farming.

I wonder how our girls' cousins are doing in Dumfries and Galloway, where Liz and Hesky have a lovely small flock of Hebrideans that we met a few weeks ago?

A quick update

All that hedge-laying paid off...

...the hay and silage are packed away or in the shed...

...and the lambs are now weaned (thanks Ali, Joe and Sarah!)

Normal service will resume after a holiday in Scotland...although I doubt it will be livestock-free, with county shows and a visit to Liz and Hesky on their farm in Dumfries on the cards.  We'd get withdrawal symptoms otherwise.

Much Ado About Nothing?

Scene: A barn, somewhere in Devon.

The players:
Sonny "Sunshine" Jim (a spiffingly good hound)

Joseph Ffairfach Nathan Jones (a dog of humble origin, with a high opinion of himself)

Cody Alexander Timberlake (the Grant Mitchell of the canine world)

Freddy Dingo (a very 'special' dog)

Farmer Ian (bit player, off stage)

Sonny:   I say chaps, awfully keen to get this show on the road.

Joey (sotto voce):   Awfully keen an awful amount of the time in my humble opinion.

Sonny:    What?  Oh, amusing.  Now, I got a sneaky look at the blog recently, and my Auntie Lorna in Scotland is right!  Gosh darn it, there's not nearly enough about collies and their adventures.  It should be collie-tastic!

Cody:   Grrrrrrrr!

Sonny:   Of course, sorry old bean, collies AND huskies. 

Fred:   Wot's Scotland?

Joey:   Somewhere a long way away, my noodle-headed friend.  Past Somerset at least.  The dogs there have different accents, would you believe!*

Fred:   Cor, miles then.  More than wot I can walk.

Cody:   Waddle you mean, tubby.

Sonny:   Oh, not nice.  Bad show Cody. 

Joey:   Frederick, please.  Can licking that particular appendage not wait until we are not quite so en famille?

Fred:   Eh?

Cody:   Leave yer todger alone for five minutes, plonker!

Fred:   But I've got a itch!

Joey:   An itch.

Fred:   One of them too.

Sonny:   Fred's parts aside, and Fred, do please be a sport and tidy yourself up later, what are we going to do?

Joey:   We could affect a revolution, just like in George Pawell's Animal Farm!  The masters were overthrown, and the pigs took over.

Cody:   Pigs? You are flipping kidding me, right?  I ain't taking no orders from no pigs.  And where you gonna find pigs round 'ere?  See these teeth?  These aren't for eating veggies, no.  They're for eating pigs and other such juicy…

Joey:   Oh God, not this one again!  Lord have mercy on us.  It's a metaphor you uneducated wolf.

Cody:   Well, I've seen you eatin blackberries and sloes off the bush.  Barely evolved past fox you did, you fluffy-eared dandy.

Joey:   Well, there's no need to be quite so pejorative about it!

Fred (aside to Cody):   What's he talking about?  Perjitive what?

Cody:   No bloody idea.  The bugger always talks like he has a dictionary shoved up his jacksie.  But you know what they say…owners and their dogs and all that.

Fred:   But I have the same master.

Cody:   Yeah, but you must admit, our master does also have right dense moments.

Fred (laughing):    Yeah, he do….hey, wait a minute!!

Sonny:   Oh come on chaps, let's not have a bish-bosh over this.

Cody:   OK Biggles, what're we gonna do?

Sonny:   Maybe no revolution.  I'm frightfully worried that with no opposable thumb we won't be able to use the can opener, and I do rather like my treats.

Cody:   And strokes.  That bit right behind the ear, blimey how good is that?

Joey:   Hmm.  I can give or take it.  I prefer not to be anyone's lapdog.

Cody:   You what?  Any bleeding chance you get, up on the sofa and all doe-eyed.

Joey (spluttering):   That's, that's neither here nor there!

Fred (dreamily):   Oooooo, the sofa.  I luv the sofa.

Farmer Ian (calling from off-stage):   Sonny, let's go!

Sonny:   Sheep!  Sheep, sheep, sheep!  Oh, oh, oh…sheep!
[Sonny exits right, at speed]

Cody:   Positively piddling himself with excitement, the daft spanner.  Sheep are for eating.  Look at these teeth.

Joey (gritting his):   Yes, you say that, but it is frowned upon to eat the stock!

Fred:   The sofa, ahhhh.

Joey:   Well, we might as well make a move.  Action Pup won't be back for a while, and if I have to listen to another breathless commentary on how he took them this way, then that, through the gate and over the bloody hill, I'll throw myself under the dung-spreader.

Cody:   Yeah, me too.

Joey:   What do you say we mosey on down the lane, have a little snack of rabbit currants on the way, and roll in the pile of dung by the gate?

Cody:   Pukka idea!  Let's vamoose.

[Exeunt stage left]

Joey (from off stage):   For the love of God, Freddy leave your unmentionables alone!  Now get a move on!

Fred:   Did someone say rabbit currants?

[Rapid exit stage left]

[Editor's comments]

* It's true about dog accents!  Even cows have regional accents!

From the edge of … Seneghe

The gentle jangle of bells in the morning heralds a flock of sheep in the lane, hooves raising dust as they meander by.   An idle thought bubbles to the surface of my mind – maybe we should put bells round the necks of our ewes – but it is rapidly dismissed given the  clamour 600 would make in comparison with the 20 or so passing by the farmstead in Sardinia where Ian's sister lives.  Kat and Nanni, with help from 1 year old Rowan, are converting a barn on the outskirts of Seneghe, and putting into practice permaculture techniques to live more sustainably than most.

Milking ewes rest as the day warms up.

Spending the longest period of my life in East Anglia (so far), I thought that the fields in Devon were small (and small is, of course, beautiful).  But the plots in this part of Sardinia are sometimes tiny, separated by drystone walls, and surprisingly often containing an ancient tomb or Bronze Age nuraghe (from the vegetable garden I can see one tomb and four nuraghi).

A nuraghe.

Kestrels are common here, and a little owl spends the day perched on an exposed rock.  Sardinian warblers call from the bushes, while spotless starlings feed around the feet of the beautiful local cattle (bue rosso), which seem not to notice the heat. 

Non parlo inglese, mi dispiace.

Lizards scuttle up and down the walls outside, while geckos sneak out from behind the fittings to clear away any flies that make it inside.  The insect life is abundant compared to home – crickets and grasshoppers, dangerous-looking ichneumon wasps, and everywhere trails of ants carry seed-heads from grasses back to their nests.  Meanwhile, the harvest here is of a different scale entirely to what we are used to with our hundreds of massive bales of silage.  

No tractor needed to shift these.

Many thanks to Kat, Nanni and Rowan for hosting us (and Ginella la bella, hound-in-residence).   And Grazie mille to Tore for all the wine!

One farmer...one potential farmer?