I *will* catch up!

And to today 🙂

Caz and Bid arrived at 10am to collect the sofabed that has been in our playroom. We got it way back last year or maybe even the year before from freecycle on the basis that it might encourage the kids to use the playroom more and would be a spare bed. But all that has happened is it gets used to dump stuff on, it takes up a large area in the playroom and all of the friends who come to stay here are campers who could bring a camping mat to sleep on anyway. It just hasn’t earnt it’s large space in our small house. So when Caz and Bid were moving into a new flat with zero furniture it seemed an ideal chance to pass it on to someone who would use it :).

They stayed for a drink and a chat before Ady and Bid loaded the sofa into their car and they headed off. We breakfasted and got dressed and then went off out too. The sheep farm where I did my Lookerer training is lambing and had invited lookerers to come for a visit after several people had offered to help with lambing or just asked to come and visit. We finally found the right turn off (I’d not been driving when we went on the course and had been chatting rather than paying much attention to how we got there) and went in. I recognised a couple of people from my course. There were about 30 ewes in pens with one, two or three lambs each with some oddities. The first was a lamb wearing another fleece over his own – he had been a third lamb to a ewe and as ewe’s only have two teats triplets always pose a problem, the ewe he was in with had lost her lamb but had plenty of milk so they fleeced the dead lamb, made a little jacket of the fleece for this lamb and the ewe accepted it and was feeding it as her own. There was a very ill ewe who had had two dead lambs yesterday and was being left to see whether she would pull through. There was a black ewe with one black and one white lamb which apparently she has had for the last 4 years running. She has also killed off the white lamb every year so they were keeping a close eye on her and her white lamb this year. There was a ewe seperated from her lamb by a bar which prevented her turning around but allowed the lamb to feed as she was rejecting it but they were hoping if it carried on feeding it might come through. There were two lambs without ewes which had either been rejected, triplets or their mother had died so they were being bottle fed and were available to cuddle.

They leave their ewes to give birth out in the field and then bring them to the barn once they’ve been born. While we were there two ewes came down that had just given birth along with twins and triplets. The twins had been born just minutes before and so we watched them take their very first wobbly moves to standing and then first steps 🙂

Their cords were dipped with idoine and they were sexed – both girls. We chatted to Sam, the shepherd and his girlfriend for ages about various things to do with the sheep and lambs and then after cuddling the lambs once more we headed off leaving them to their incredibly busy weekend. The kids made friends with the sheepdog and once again we all had a yearning for a different lifestyle.

Home via the garden centre for more chicken food and the supermarket for some bits to go with dinner. A very late lunch and then we watched Aliens in the Attic and the first Disney Alice in Wonderland. Ady cooked roast beef and we watched Countryfile and looked at pictures of us in 2004 on Hadrian’s Wall (a feature on Countryfile about lighting up the wall next weekend, all 73 miles of it at 250metre intervals – if we lived closer I’d definitely go and see that).

Dinner eaten, we had the sorbet that didn’t get eaten last night and then having seen it advertised on Countryfile and with it being particularly relevant given our morning we all watched Lambing Live on BBC2. Once again I was surprised at how much knowledge about animals the children, particularly Scarlett retain. She knew loads about the tupping, enjoyed learning about how they chose rams and how auctions work, laughed like a drain at the ewes chasing the rams when they were first introduced and then went all gooey over the lambs, particularly when one was called ‘Scarlett’ :).

There, all caught up. A crazy few days with loads of fab things happening but barely room to be sleeping, let alone blogging! Next week is looking just as madly busy.