A mans gotta do....

...what a mans gotta do. And as the jobs list is getting even more massive than normal for the time of year and the bracken regaining a foothold (read blanket coverage) on last years battlefield I knew that even with the increased firepower of the posh blue strimmer I was going to lose this latest skirmish unless time could be devoted to exterminating the green menace.

Introducing Steve the Assassin, who boldly went with the posh blue ( I let him use my new toy rather than old yeller, not everyone manages his quirky temperament and the electric shocks) and decimated a huge area while I sat in the sun watching. Not really, much as I would rather risk death by wasps (see sunday) and a covering of green mush I was off site doing Red Kite Fostering stuff. I did get back in time to offer encouraging words and a coffee and cookies. During the interval the Ryelands, keen to make the best of any opportunity for calorific consumption, explored pastures new and made his task more interesting by lurking in the greenery and leaving fresh lamb mines to tread in.

It's a hard life

So to expand the theme of things you get used to, as per previous posting, I suppose I would find it hard to explain why there are three hardy hill sheep sat on the sofa after eating their dinners watching me type this. Having said never to the idea of having a house sheep I find Jess the white faced lamb on the right following me around the house watching me prepare her meals, in fact watching me cook dinner, one of her relatives in all honesty but she seems to cope.

Every time we put them out, where they are supposed to be, amongst the buttercups and daisies of the grassy bank that makes up part of the garden they race back to the sanctuary of the sofa.

Threatened with banishment to the goat house, now empty of ewes waiting to lamb, one of them feigns illness. Jess is the current faker, and she is without doubt a right little faker. Off her food for three days, only eating if Tracey feeds her, they do seem to have bonded, bless, she started losing weight. Instead of gutsing down a litre of milk a day she's been on 200ml a day. Not enough to grow big and strong and not enough it would seem to allow her to go and endure the inclement April weather, and as they are a family group they have all got to stay indoors. Enjoying comforts such as the sofa, the cat blanket in front of the rayburn and the dog beds by the radiator.

I am used to spotting and avoiding lamb mines and mopping up their little widdles, no point in house training them as they are not staying long. Are they?

For some inexplicable reason the central heating has been put on for them, the central heating hasn't been used since we moved in, whatever the weather we refused to use it, part of our economy drive and greener lifestyle, yet somehow the pretty likkle lambs have persuaded it on.

We breed em hard up at the Rock.