Catching up

Oops a few days seem to have sped by, in my defence friday was a bit of a blur after the late night before.

Mumford and Sons were fantastic, the best gig I've been to in a while, they were very enthusiastic and rather sweet about how many people were there, before this tour they were playing pubs so the Manchester Academy 1 must have seemed huge.

As expected there were lots of students there, I got my hand kissed for helping one young man find his very drunk girlfriend in the crowd....... it must be the parent in me as I find it hard to pass by on the other side.

We had to move our small flock of sheep before the weekend as the parkland they are on is needed for a Farmers Market the first sat of the month, we got our friend Murphy (the local slaughterman) and his dog Moll to come and help us and she did the job in a few minutes, she loves to work that dog and would rather have spent the rest of the day sorting them into different groups, height order, colour, length of ears, anything rather than get back in the truck and go home! Still I'm sure we will need her help again soon.

We have just bought a mobile sheep handling system, which is a load of hurdles, gates, handles and the like that sit on a trailer or can be set out as pens and races to group sheep so you can sort them and do any jobs like foot trimming.

R set the whole thing out on the yard yesterday, well not all the hurdles, and the children played at being sheep, they particularly liked the guillotine gate, but managed not to trap any heads in it. We have about 20 sheep back here in a small paddock for remedial foot care and they are getting a bit less jumpy around us, helped by extra feed! but strangely none volunteered to try out their new play equipment.

We have also got some of the ploughing done that didnt make it last autumn, most of it is being sown with Triticale, which is similar to a cross between rye and barley and does well on an organic system. It seems very spring like to have the plough going under a lovely blue sky till you look and the hedges which have no signs of growth and the grass which is dry and shrivelled, even the cows are not interested yet.