HURRAY, IT’S been raining. We have really needed the rain and although it means that I will be cutting the lawns around the house more often, we are desperate for the grass to be growing out in the paddocks.
With some grass getting low, I’ve just come in from moving sheep around to greener pastures. It’s like musical paddocks out there with moving ‘Torridon’ the ram out and into the race and then moving the rest of the sheep through several paddocks into their new home.
It sounds on paper like that should all run smoothly but yet again my patience was tested. The biggest challenge with moving them all about is always with the lambs. They don’t generally follow their mothers but stay together as a gang of lambs, so in the end I was left with just one stubborn lamb who refused to go through the gates. I couldn’t let the ram through into his new home until all the lambs were accounted for in their new pasture, as he does have a tendency to bully them if he gets a chance.
Unlike the other lambs who had either gone through the gates or under or through the fencing, this little fella was having none of it. In the pouring rain, I was fast running out of both ideas and energy. I had other things to be doing instead of chasing this little mite about.
Anyway, he had clearly just been winding me up because as soon as his mother called, he was under that fence in a flash. I just wish it hadn’t taken almost an hour for her to notice he wasn’t around. Anyway, at long last I could then release ‘Torridon’ from his holding cell and through into his new home too.
We decided some time ago that we would endeavour to get our two pygmy goats pregnant and so early this year we brought in a lovely billy goat. Well, he is still with us and very soon we expect kids to be born. Stacey, the more gentle natured of the two goats, looks like she is about to explode, so we are keeping a very keen eye on them as once again this will be our first experience of goats giving birth.
So, what else has been going on this last week? Well, we were given the final piece of our planning jigsaw, after Highways gave us the go ahead for our new driveways. It may sound boring but this will enable us to commence with the farm shop build and we can lay the new access track up to where our new holiday accommodation will be situated.
It appears that we have had a new family move into the farm recently. It’s the Moorhen family and although I’ve only seen them a couple of times, they are more than welcome to stay. The more the merrier, that’s what we say.
We were able to attend our first smallholders meeting on Thursday, which ‘Wicstuns’ our local vets had arranged. We really enjoyed the evening and learned some things we didn’t know about keeping chickens and spent some time exchanging ideas and getting to know other local smallholders.
In conclusion this week, I wanted to mention how quite amazed I am, on many a morning, by the dawn chorus. It is so beautiful to just stand and listen to literally hundreds of birds calling, singing and welcoming in the new day.
I have wondered many times, “What on earth are they saying?” but I’m sure that is just something that I will never know.
