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Lambs in waiting

4/19/2016

Hello All
We have entered a slightly calmer period in the life of the farm as the main lambing has finished and we are just dealing with the general upkeep of 250ish babies and the entourage of mummy sheep. Oh yes and any stragglers that are still waiting to give birth. Thank goodness the grass is growing so there is less silage to dig and cart around in buckets.
We moved the flock from one field to another this week, which meant using the trailer, a first for all of the lambs. If I hadn't had my hands full chasing lambs up and down the field with Gavin, Patrick and Number 3 then you would have had some rather hysterical shots of 4 people, 2 dogs and 100 or so naughty lambs running in every direction conceivable, except the right one which was through the gate and down to the tunnel. I have no doubt that all passing traffic on the D730 that day was doubled up laughing at our antics. In fact I was quite surprised that there were no collisions.
I wonder if you can be prosecuted for being too much of a distraction at the side of the road?

The up side was I spent the whole day outside for the first time in ages, I am usually inside the butchery in the cold looking out at the sunshine, and even managed to get sunburnt arms. And the other up side (as I can't think of a down side) was that I did some exercise and vitamin D manufacture. Ah yes the downside is that with the arrival of the sunshine means the arrival of the insects. Watch out for ticks this year as our little pup Dyson has just had tick bite fever, he is fully recovered now. I imagine that it has not been cold enough to kill off the dormant population.
Don't you just love those ears. I am wondering if they sold us a labrador....floppy ears, loves eating, big paws, loves eating, likes to sleep, loves eating, chews shoes and loves eating.
See you soon
Helen

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April 08th, 2016

4/8/2016

5 Comments

Hello All
I have decided I am just not tech savvy enough for modern life. I may revert to mud pictures on the wall as quite frankly that looks like all I can manage. I have just written this entire blog and then I pressed the delete button so it all disapeared. Clever hey. But that is not the end of my ignorance, I discovered a funny picture next to the google bar on my smart phone last night and wondered what it was, so clicked on it. To my horror a list of titles of windows I had open on google appeared. It was an epic quantity and took me some time to delete. On completion of this task the little picture on the google bar became a number one. And then incredibly I managed to download meteo France in a record amount of time. So having fessed up to the kids, who rolled around on the floor laughing (ROTFL, I believe), I am completely humiliated.....again! Welcome to parenthood.

So back to life down on the farm. 78 births since last Saturday we are definitely lambing, and as usual a week earlier than anticipated. I wonder if Gavins adding up is as bad as my use of tech. We have about 130 lambs in total now including the ones from earlier on in the year and in the picture is Patricks pretty sheep from last year who had to have an asissted birth courtesy of the aforementioned shepherd Patrick. It has been a very busy week, helped along by me deciding to do a third market in Saint Astier. And also a huge thank you to the sausage stuffer, which officially contributed to 1 and a half days of time lost going backwards and forwards to Perigueux in search of a machine that had enough power to actually produce a sausage worthy of eating. This was a very stressful, finance draining experience for all of us, and I hope one not to be repeated in the near future. I cannot thank enough our industrial kitchen utensils man in Perigueux for being eminently accommodating about the useless, couldn't stuff a turkey, first purchase and finding us, hopefully, as

yet to be tested, as it needs three phase, second attempt. Fear not, sausage construction services have returned to normal at House of Franklin.

Oh yes we also got some new pigs last Sunday (rest day? what is that), who are being employed as excavators in the shed to dig up the manure making it easier for us to shovel out at the end of the seaon. They are having a wonderful time and Gavin is enjoying his new challenge. We now have 11 pigs.
I was going to take a photo of my 2 sleeping boys but that felt a bit mean. The work load is quite exhausting this month.
See you all soon
Helenx

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Lambs in waiting

April 08th, 2016

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Helen Franklin