I can see the light!

As I was feeding the pigs tonight Rita our best ever Ryeland ewe, best as she is the friendliest and best Mum despite encountering the ugly stick when she was younger, gave birth to Barry, a very healthy ram lamb. Yes that's Barry White, above, and Joan Jet, below, in the same stall at the moment. All our animals have names, it helps identify them in the freezer.

Anyway, there is now light at the end of the tunnel now as we only have our biggest, fattest worst mother Ryeland Easter left to give birth and it will all be over for another year. I was beginning to get irrationally cross (caused by our lack of sleep) with the sheep due to their lateness of production of potential lamb chops. Its goes something like put the ram to the ewe on November 5th and you get lambs April fools day. We put ours to the ram a whole month earlier, start of October but nothing arrived on time and Crispen our ram had obviously missed his mark because Meg gave birth 16 days ago so he missed a complete cycle. Lucky hes so good natured otherwise he might have been shepherd's pie the way I have been feeling towards him and his wives.

So now we have our goat kids, our puppies and most of our lambs. There is light at the end of the tunnel, and for once its not a freight train!

Express Delivery

Tonight amongst all the jobs, taking the Technohermit his dinner and showing the Stable Sprite the selection of puppies, Tracey and I found time to give Rosie a helping hand and deliver Joan our latest Ryeland lamb. Rosie was having a spot of bother squeezing Joan out as she was the wrong way around and stuck. Hanging out was one hoof and a bit of tail. Poor Rosie had to put up with the indignity of me fishing around inside her pushing limbs into the right order so she could drop Joan on the straw.

Joan is bigger than Levi(short for Leviathan) and a very different colour to Mum and Dad. Rosie hasn't strayed, Crispen, the Dad, carries the coloured gene, so Jet is his and going to be good company for Ebony, our other coloured Ryeland.

We are getting a steady stream of visitors to view the new arrivals, when they are as cute as these two its hardly surprising! The Stable Sprite called today and managed to turn his gleaming white chariot around in the yard without demolishing the feed store and breaking any more rear lights.

More rain in Paradise

Another day where we dodged the downpours and fretted about wasting the weekend. Working full time limits the amount of time spent working on the farm so being unable to tackle any of the projects currently underway is intensely frustrating.

The rain was so hard the workshop flooded again. This a going to be problem to solve as the water seems to be getting in through a breeze block at floor level just above the damp course. Access to the outside of the wall is impossible as there is an old garage building we us as a junk store, well not exactly junk, more like treasured items store. Things I cant throw away like a broken pressure washer and old car parts for a car I sold over ten years ago. So important are the contents of this building they have been moved at least three times since we moved in. First they were dumped unceremoniously in the ruins of the barn. When that was repaired the priceless artifacts were transferred to the static caravan. When that was dismantled and scrapped they were carefully put into the garage. Its all vital stuff and may come in handy one day, you never know when you will need a steering rack gaiter for a Triumph TR7, or need the parts off one of seven old bikes, you are bound to put to good use a broken squash racket or half a fishing rod so its all best kept on the just in case principle.

So unless I take down the garage and rehouse yet again the collection of future antiquities I don't see how the flooding problem can be solved. Perhaps further research in the "How to build houses" book followed by a crash course in "How to demolish garages" is required.

We did have a visitor, a nice lady who came and bought two chickens for a whole twenty pounds! This means that the advert cost has been covered but we haven't made enough to retire just yet. She lives a few miles away and is plagued by foxes just like us. She also repeated the rumour that well meaning people are trapping urban foxes and releasing them on the common. I don't know the accuracy of this statement but more and more people now repeat it as fact.

The day had its plus side though, the video clip was one of them, Katy is a fine specimen of sheep and is still treated to a bottle feed a day just to maintain the sheep shepherd link. She doesn't quite come when her name is called but she does come running if she thinks there is the possibility of a free feed. Daffodil is the same, they are going to replace the breeding ewes Roxy, Rita and Rosie in two years so they have to be very tame to lead the flock back to Rock HQ when we call as we don't have a sheep dog to round them up off the 500 hundred acres of common that we are lucky enough to live on.

The sun came out late afternoon so we were able to pick more blackcurrants. This led to us collecting some rhubarb and the accidental discovery of a meals worth of new potatoes that had self seeded in the compost heap. The rain came back so we resigned to the fact that a long and leisurely Sunday roast of our own lamb with the free spuds and a rhubarb crumble for afters was all we could do for the rest of the day.

Life's so tough sometimes.

Wheres my sheepdog!

There are times I wish I had another dog.

Yes we have the magnificent seven, the Rock pack, the gang, the gits, and I love them to bits, even Pip the psychotic collie, but yesterday I wished we had another dog. A clever one, a well trained one, one that could help out, I'm talking about a sheepdog. Our current collection are as much use around sheep as a Burmese General is at delivering food aid.

We did a lot of work with the sheep last night, our little flock of Ryelands needed injecting with medicine to give them immunity against seven horrible diseases which include mange and bolus and all sorts of horrific sounding parasitic borne illnesses which will affect them if they don't have the injections. Now when we first bought Rita, Roxy, Rosie and Crispy I had no idea that within a very short time I would be trimming their feet, cleaning their bottoms, shearing them and administering medicines, basically waiting on them hand and foot. In fact the only thought I had put into it was that these four would produce me an unlimited supply of lamb chops.

I didn't really envisage that to get these lamb chops I would have to learn a vast array of new skills, learn a new language to discuss with other shepherds the pro's and con's of shearlings and whethers, and re read James Herriot to appreciate the complexities involved when you stick your hand inside a sheep's insides and pull out your potential dinners.

Our flock has grown considerably, we now have Easter and Springtime who are both massive Ryeland Ewes and excellent pedigree examples and we have the rogue sheep, two Suffolks April and Molly, plus a Suffolk Cross, Meg and Bill a whether, also a Suffolk who is M.I.A. on the common hopefully avoiding the piemakers. We also have a shearling from last year, Ebony a lovely little black Ryeland produced by Roxy.

Shrek, April and Ivory, last years lambs have all been introduced to Mr Whirlpool in the workshop and bits of them make periodic appearances on the dinner table at Rock HQ.

All the Ryeland Ewes have given birth this year, so Hercules, Bonny, Maude and Sandy have been out on Oak Bank with their Mums. Katy an orphan lamb is on the lawn along with Daffodil the Ryeland lamb abandoned by Easter at birth. Yesterday was the day for immunisations and separating from their Mothers, an easy task as our sheep are so tame they run towards you when they see you with a bucket.

Usually.

Sensing something was wrong last night they gave me a wide berth. Eventually I managed to coax them all to the food trough and inject them as they gorged on sheep nuts. I checked them all for maggots, a hands on messy job but necessary. They were clear. Now came the task of separating them. This went well until we got to Hercules. The first three we were able just to pick up from the trough and put in the goat house. Not so for Hercules, once jabbed twice shy he was off running as fast as his woolly legs would carry him aided and abetted by Ebony.

We needed to get all the sheep off Oak Bank, to let the grass grow back but also to break the parasite, egg, worm cycle, the ground needs to be left for 28 days to let the eggs die, otherwise the sheep just eat them up off the grass, the eggs hatch, the parasite infects the sheep, the sheep takes a dump passing more eggs onto to the grass and the cycle repeats.

We managed to get all the sheep out of the field except for Ebony and Hercules. It took ages to get them back into the bottom corner of Oak Bank where they would hopefully go through the gate and Tracey would intercept Hercules. He was quicker than she was and shot through reuniting himself with his Mum. Fifteen minutes running around later and after much sweating, swearing, threats and wishing for a sheepdog to round them up for me I managed to rugby tackle him to the ground and carry him to the others in the goat house. Taking the lambs from their Mums might seem harsh but it will allow the Mums to gain all the condition they lost in giving birth and producing milk. They have lost over a third of their body weight and look in a poor state.

Final task of the evening was to inject Daffodil and Katy. This was going to be so simple as they are hand raised and overly friendly. As they are more used to me carrying a bottle of milk rather than a hypodermic and responded as such. Jostling me, jumping over each other and pushing to get attention. This didn't matter, not until Daffodil hit my right hand as I tried to insert the needle into Katy's back left leg.

I injected my left index finger, despite the pain I consoled myself that at least I wouldn't get mange for the next twelve months.