Masterclass

On Saturday we had a great masterclass with thirteen people from all over the country attending. We covered topics from DEFRA legal requirements to ear tagging and turning over a sheep and a hot mutton tagine revived us at lunchtime! Being immersed in lambing gave the course extra atmosphere.

It was lovely to meet new enthusiasts and I hope they enjoyed their day as much as I did meeting all of them.

Lambing is drawing to a close now and we have been able to turn our attention to other pressing activities such as moving sheep from different fields which will be put down for hay and moving them onto summer grazing. The whole flock, ewes and new lambs, is in the away fields and are very contented roaming through the fields with good clean grass.

We have also been weighing and marketing our year lamb who look absolutely wonderful and are ready to go to customers as whole or half lambs.

A perfect matched batch of lambs all healthy and weighing up well, they are a joy to look at and it is very rewarding to see a great end product. A number of those have now gone off the farm to customers. We are able to offer an all year round supply now which is very pleasing as I have been working towards this end since I started some years ago.

Nothing has been bought in, the flock has grown each year by retaining as many ewe lambs as possible. This keeps infection out and keeps the flock healthy and is called a closed flock as we breed all our own flock replacements.

So I will be kept busy from now on being in touch with customers and I hope anyone will contact me for lamb now as they are in prime condition.The school visits have slowed down as it is the holidays but various people drift in and out looking at the lambs and the rams and see Trim the sheepdog bringing the ewe lambs up the hill to see everyone. She loves working and I use her everyday to do something. She is a super dog with a loving temperament and I would find life very difficult without her help with the sheep.