Up close and personal

Unlike farms, who have lots of space, smallholding is as the name suggests, small, consequently smallholders live on top of their stock. Unlike days gone by where people literally did this, the animals on the lower floor, the humans on the upper floor benefiting from the heat generated by the beasts below, smallholders tend to have their animals up close and personal.
So day to day we see them almost all day, see their moods, their games, their constant quest for calories. For some time we have been worried about our sheep looking miserable, covered in mud, stood in the rain, drenched, sodden, mucky sorry looking creatures.
If only there was something we could do for them we would say, hand feeding them chips of sugar beet, the poor little things. Perhaps we should release them from the lower pig pen and let them roam the hill, away from the mud.
Except they don't, they congregate in the yard and mug anything that remotely resembles a bucket carrier. In order to lessen the chances of my beautiful and oh so patient wife, Tracey, being harassed whilst pregnant by woolly savages they have been contained in the pig pen. Where they have got really muddy.
Its worth pointing out that they have access to the barn, where, should they choose, they can stand in the dry, out of the prevailing wind and lie on straw instead of mud. I did wonder whether it was because we live so close to them that we worry so much.
Farm animals are quite away from the farm house (usually) so they don't draw attention to themselves so much. Fast forward to a windswept walk around the bonsai mountain with the Berners. A large farm, acres of pasture, acres and acres of green for sheep to do their favourite thing in, and what are they doing?
All hundred or so are stood in one corner, in the mud, knee deep, looking sodden, wet, soaked, drenched, sorry for them self. Now I am not so worried about ours, I understand now that sheep are just stupid.