Strawberry Moon Solstice or The Honey Moon Buzz

It's been a long day, 16 hours 51 minutes 30 seconds to be precise.

An awful lot has happened so the day deserves a blog post all to itself.

Allegedly the first day of summer too, though nobody told the weather gods.

Sunrise was 4.36am today. I didn't get up to see it, though I was up about an hour later. However, it wasn't till the afternoon that the sun finally put in an appearance after a thoroughly damp morning.

There's a full moon tonight too, a June full moon being known as a Strawberry moon. It's a nice name for a moon which is supposed to coincide with the start of strawberry picking season... if you are an Algonquin Indian in North America, which is where the name comes from.
Here my strawberries aren't quite ready yet, though I've been offered the chance to pick all that I want from next door this year.

One newspaper article described a June full moon coinciding with summer solstice as a "once in a life time" occurrence. They clearly don't understand statistics. As full moons come round every 28 days, surely you'd be unlucky if there was only one in your life time!

When I checked, the last time this occurred was 22 June 1967 - when I was almost one year of age. If I live to nearly 96 I'll see it again on June 21st 2062.

First Red Duke of Yorks
So with the strawberries stubbornly refusing to ripen I went for the next best thing and dug up my first outdoor grown new potatoes of the year. I could have waited longer and got bigger tubers, but there will be enough and the first potatoes of the year always feel special. I love the deep red colour of Red Duke of York and I love the fact that this early variety is so floury and makes excellent chips. For the classic new potato taste, though, I've grown Dunluce outside this year and Arran Pilot in the polytunnel, the last of which we have just consumed.

Two new lambs
First smallholding business of the day was to drop by in Upwell to pick up a bone saw and a few other bits and pieces. I don't do much butchery but it was going second hand and always handy to have.
Then on to Church Farm Rare Breeds Centre in Stow Bardolph to pick up two lambs. These are just  for fattening up - the farm buys in orphan lambs as this is their main attraction and income during the spring. Luckily for me, it means they have a supply of ready weaned, tame sheep all ready to go just as the grass is getting long. They'll join the Shetlands for five months before going off to slaughter, so I won't be giving them names or getting too attached to them.

Arthur and the turkeys
The turkey poults stayed in this morning. With the weather being cold and damp I thought it best to play safe. One of them jumped the stable wall with mum though and spent the day having some quality one to one time with her. The weather brightened up for the afternoon and the rest of the poults came out. Arthur joined them, He gets on well with the turkey family.

There's a but of a buzz round here
I'd been up for about eight hours and still there was half the day to go. Now another name for the Strawberry Moon is the Honey Moon, which turned out to be a far more appropriate name for today.
After a little early afternoon nap (it was, after all, a very, very long day), I took the dogs out to check on the sheep and turkeys. But something was amiss. There was a buzz in the air. And I mean a BUZZ.
Thousands and thousands of bees were swarming around hive number one. The cloud of bees stretched over toward the veg patch. There must be a swarm somewhere but I just couldn't get close enough to see. I gingerly skirted round, taking a very wide berth, until I eventually came across this.

Incoming!

The bees always swarm when Sue is not at home, so muggins here gets to don the bee suit and collect them up. While I was getting ready, the bees settled onto a wooden fence post. Not the ideal swarm location. There would be no shaking them into a box or simply cutting off the end of a branch. Swarm bees are not supposed to be aggressive and they did in fact allow very close approach. But there are limits to their patience and when you scoop them into a box by the glove full, there are some who suspect you of trying to hurt their queen who is somewhere at the centre of things )or hopefully by now in the box).

A solstice chick
Remember I said it was a long day. Well there was more. For when I came in from recapturing the bees one of the Ixworth chicks had hatched and several more were pipping. By tomorrow there could be eighteen of them to look after!



And so I sit here watching the first episode of the new Top Gear I've managed to catch up with before I turn over for the start of the England Match. It's now a beautiful evening to be watching the beautiful game.
When the sun sets at 21.28 I'll go and put the chickens away and hopefully get to admire the Strawberry Honey Moon.

In between Unst and Uist

Finally back from Unst, Shetland, two days after seeing the Green Warbler

I missed basket weaving at the weekend but

Sue made this lovely fish to hang over the veg patch pond.

You can see too the reflection of one of the

willow dragonflies she made.

17th May
Mangetout picked again. Growing it in the polytunnel has been brilliant. We get a basket full every other day. I've underplanted it with sweetcorn and squash now, so once those get bigger it'll be whipped out just in time to continue harvesting from the outdoor plants.

I separated the last two lambs from their mums this morning. Weaning the lambs is a big step for them but they all seem to be doing ok on their own, there's just quite a lot of loud bleating at the moment! The one looking up at the camera is Rameses. He's given up asking us for his bottle feed now.

Finally we have a third gosling. I don't get goose nest sitting strategy. Unlike other birds, they seem to lay in each others' nests, all sit on each others' eggs, sometimes two on one nest and the eggs seem to hatch one at a time and very unpredictably. I did find one egg rolled away from the nest which had a full grown chick inside. There always seems to be a major issue for goslings cracking their way out.

18th May
I don't often moan, but today was a really crappy day. Work things. Best forgotten about. Maybe if the government set an example and valued teachers (not to mention doctors, nurses...) then parents might too. At least I've got things like this to come home to.

and this...

19th May
Lawns mowed, flower mixes sown.
The hen we put on ten chicken eggs a while back has done a hopeless job of sitting. Today I found her with yolk on her feathers and when I looked in the broody coop there are now only five eggs! What's more, they seem to have rolled all over the place so I'll be surprised if we get any hatch at all.
We'll start collecting the Ixworth eggs and try out the new incubator we bought a while back. It's more intensive for us but should give a bit better result.
20th May
I really struggle to grow sunflowers. Occasionally they spring up randomly round the garden, which I like, but when I sow them straight in the ground they either don't germinate or get eaten before they get a chance to get going. So instead I plant them in modules and plant them out when they're about a foot tall. I planted some at the back end of last week in amongst the mangel wurzels, where I also planted my sweetcorn today. But something ate most of them! To be honest, I suspect the peacock, as I know last year I had to protect my sweetcorn plants from the girl.
Anyway, it's a slower process but I've put tree protectors round the sunflowers and then netted the whole bed until everything gets growing really well.

On a different note, I'm pretty sure we have Ash dieback on the farm. It'll hopefully take a long time to impact on the old trees but some of the young saplings have completely died. Others though, are shooting healthy branches from the base again, so we'll see what happens with that one. I'm currently planting lots of quick growing trees and shrubs such as elder and willow as well as allowing hawthorns to self seed.

21st May
Sue was busy with her bees most of the day. She had to check if the rape honey they've collected had begun to set, as if you leave it too long it turns concrete. In the afternoon she attended another of the West Norfolk group's excellent training courses.
I meantime had a big day in the veg garden, only interrupted several times by the odd one of Sue's angry bees. Mostly I just got pestered but I did endure one sting to the head. I knew this one was going to sting by the buzzing which was more than just inquisitive. Hopefully next month Sue will be able to change the queens and passify the buy little Amazonians!

Back to the veg. I sowed all my climbing beans in pots - Borlotti, Armstrong, Gigantes, Kentucky Wonder Wax, Cobra and Pea Bean. I prefer climbing beans as they use vertical space and give form to the garden. They are also easier to pick, don't hang on the ground getting dirty and chewed by slugs, and crop over a longer period. They also dry better at the end of the season.

My carrot bed had completely disappeared beneath emerging marigold seedlings! But once I did some careful hoeing, there was actually a visible line of carrots and one of spring onions. Carrots seem to be extremely unpredictable so ay crop will be deemed a success. I've got them growing in a fleece frame this year so hopefully I'll get to enjoy my crop rather than simple feeding carrot fly larvae. The unpredictability of carrots is summed up by the fact that the line of Atomic Red I planted outside seem to have failed yet in the polytunnel the same seeds have all come through. It can't be that conditions outside are terrible as the other variety has come well. I just don't understand it.
Anyway, I have optimistically sowed more line of carrots and more lettuces to keep the succession going.

While I had the hoe out I uncovered the turnip and kohl rabi bed. It is apparent that all the seedling have been munched by flea beetles. The two plants which had got past them I decided to hoe up so I could start over. Maybe sowing later will have better luck, but just in case I'm sowing I modules tto so I can transplant when the plants are large enough to outgrow the chewing little insects.
I've also interplanted the rows with tagetes seedlings (French marigolds) as this has worked in the past. These pretty flowers smell strongly and are avoided by most creepy crawlies. Unfortunately they are tender, so I raise trays of them in the polytunnel to plant out about now when we should be frost free. This does mean that they can't protect early sowings though.

And lastly, I've taken my first harvest of new potatoes from the polytunnel. Here is the product of just one plant in the basket I made last week. They're not as small as they look - it's a big basket!

We literally stopped using the stored potatoes last week - they have started to soften and to sprout a lot. This means that our potatoes now last us right through the year.

Coming next: Going Completely Cuckoo on North Uist

Chasing Crazy Birds - A Pelican, A Green Warbler and A Bearded Vulture.

10th May
4.30am Lands End car park
As the first hint of light creeps into the morning sky, it becomes obvious that the furthest south-west peninsula of Britain is shrouded in a thick mist. There are several other vehicles in the car park. I grab a short power nap after the overnight drive.

8.30am
I've been awake for a few hours now. The weather hasn't improved much but it is now properly light. I have at least seen a Serin feeding on the ground, a bird which I have only seen a handful of times in this country.
Neil and I decide to check elsewhere, for the Dalmatian Pelican has not appeared in the sky. It was last seen heading this way at 6.30pm yesterday evening.

9.56am
Neil and I have unsuccessfully checked the pools at Skewjack - they are quite simply inaccessible. If the Pelican is sitting on there, it could stay there all day. There is certainly nothing about the weather to encourage it into the air. This is frustrating.
We've now headed over to Sennen and are just about to walk a track in search of Brew Pool. Yesterday the pelican spent most of the afternoon searching for somewhere to settle, moving between tiny inadequate pools, occasionally even just flopping down into fields. Brew Pool was one of the places it had visited and, being unviewable from any road, we felt it was worth a try.
Then a phone call. The Dalmatian Pelican's at Marazion Marsh!
A quick dash back to the car and we were heading off in a whacky races convoy back towards Penzance. There was a buzz in the air, but it quickly subsided when it became apparent the bird was not actually sitting on the marsh but had been reported flying over it and heading east. General consensus was to head past Penzance towards Helston in the hope that the expanse of water known as Looe Pool might have attracted it.
It's not easy to drive fast through the narrow roads of Cornwall, though we did our best, but with each snippet of further information it was becoming apparent that the 9.56am news was old and slightly questionable. The Marazion flyover had been some 45 minutes before that message.
In a fit of desperate optimism we plonked ourselves on the low cliffs near Helston, just hoping that the bird may have rested on the sea and would possibly soar past.

11.33am
DALMATIAN PELICAN again over Lands End.
We had moved on dodgy news and the gamble had not paid off. All those who had sat still were now watching the bird. The drive all the way back through Penzance and out onto the peninsula was frustrating and just a little bit scary (and I was the one driving!). All the while we were receiving updates that the pelican was still soaring in the air.
Eventually we pulled up just outside the small village of Sennen -where we had been at 9.56am - only to be told the bird had just disappeared from view.
More hair-raising driving down narrow country lanes in pursuit. Back to the area we had been checking this morning. Nothing. 10 minutes. Still nothing. This was incredibly frustrating. Then the call. "COMING THIS WAY". I scanned the sky and it didn't take long to see the target bird. It was the size of a flying boat!

Photo nabbed from Facebook. Alan Whitehead, I hope you don't mind! Fantastic photo.

It soared right over us before disappearing a couple of times, each time only to come back over our heads. It really was a monster of a bird, eclipsing the local gulls and buzzards.
By the time we left there were maybe 20+ car loads of birders all relieved to have finally caught up with this potential first for Britain and celebrating. It was good to catch up with friends, some who I'd not seen for a good couple of years.

There was just time to drop in on a dapper Woodchat Shrike back at Marazion Marsh (cruelly ignored by us on our first fleeting visit) before embarking on the long drive back to Lincolnshire. 870 miles later I pulled back onto the farm. Nice to be home.

(ed. The tale of the pelican is not finished yet. It turns out that a park in France keeps them and that individuals from there have been tracked as far as Poland. So whether this bird is wild or not we will maybe never know. It probably won't end up as my 507th tick as the committee which decides these things is pretty conservative in its judgements. Not to worry. It was still an amazing bird to see and it certainly felt like the best kind of twitch - overnight drive, no sign, whacky races along country lanes and eventual relief and euphoria. There's not been much to excite us twitching-wise this year.)

11th May
A gentle day of recovery after yesterday's exertions. Elvis has hatched ten little ducklings. I moved them from the high-rise coop as I thought they may not make it back up the ramp, but incredibly they squeezed through the bars of the run I put them in. I looked up and they were all waddling around outside with Elvis bemused on the inside. A few quick alterations soon fixed the problem.

By contrast, the hen who was sitting on ten Ixworth eggs has only managed to have one healthy youngster. Another two chicks were dead in the nest, a couple of the eggs had just failed to hatch, though fully developed inside, a couple had been fertile but stopped growing early on and one was completely rancid inside. Don't ask me how I know - cracking open unhatched eggs is never a nice job.

Meanwhile, Rameses has gone down to one bottle feed a day in preparation for weaning. When I go down to the field I shout his name and he comes running over. He is making very good friends with the dogs. Boris is scared of him but Arthur loves to play.

12th May
On my way to feed the chickens I spotted a Short-eared Owl perched up on one of the wooden posts near the bottom of the sheep field. I only had my phone with me but it allowed me to approach incredibly close. I've had several sightings recently. Could it be that they are breeding somewhere in the area?



13th May
The polytunnel is officially full. There are baby plants everywhere. I've been itching to get the tomato plants into the ground (not the outside ones, the polytunnel ones) but you're supposed to wait for the first flowers. Well, I just about managed to spot the first developing flowers on one of my little plants and that was enough. Tomatoes, basil, sweetcorn, minipop sweetcorn and celeriac all duly moved into the polytunnel beds. In my experience, once plants have a free root run they generally flourish.

14th May
Dentist!!! Not too bad in the end. My phobia is getting better.
Morrisons - a rare trip to the supermarket, interrupted by news that a Greenish Warbler on Shetland may actually be a Green Warbler. More on this later, but it has me distracted from the shopping and instead tapping away on my phone looking for news and how to get there.
FOX! In the garden. Not good news. I let the dogs out and make lots of news. Much as I like foxes and think they're amazing animals, they're not welcome round here. This may well have been the one that killed Terry the Turkey. I put the geese and goslings away for the afternoon and made sure the door to the turkey stable was closed over.


Something's eaten my cauliflower seedlings too, despite the fortress defences. I suspect either a rabbit has pushed under the netting or invaders from underground (slugs).
I check under the cabbage collars to find half of them sheltering slugs. I liberally sprinkle some organic slug pellets and secure the netting with more pegs just in case.
Next year I think I'll need to grow my brassicas in an underground concrete bunker with artificial lights, razor wire and an intruder alert system. There seems to be no way of protecting them from everything that wants to eat them.

Meanwhile, news on the Green Warbler has firmed up. There are no planes available (at a reasonable price) and Shetland is a long, long way. I give up on the bird and spend the rest of the day in a resigned tetchy mood.
15th - 17th May

At 1 o'clock in the morning I crumbled and booked two flights from Edinburgh airport to Sumburgh. I had six and a half hours to get there. I would be picking up Sam from his digs in Newcastle along the way.

The Tyne Bridge at 4.50am

A word about Green Warbler. The capital G is important, for that indicates it's a species and not just a warbler that's green! Though it mostly is! It's pretty much like a Greenish Warbler, but those 3 letters missing off the end mean that instead of being a scarce migrant visiting this country's migration hotspots a handful of times every year, it is instead a MEGA which has only occurred once before in 1980something, before Sam was born and before I was twitching.These missing three letters were what had me desperately phoning around late evening. I'd pretty much given up on getting to see the bird. Charters were prohibitively expensive and impossible to get on and the Aberdeen flight was not at a good time of day. There was however an Edinburgh flight but the return fare was a Flybe special £466!!! There was a cheaper way back, the ferry to Aberdeen for just £34 (but taking over 13 hours). But we were flying from Edinburgh. One word on a Facebook group made my mind up (thanks Dan). Train.
So a plan was hatched to fly from Edinburgh, get a lift up through Shetland with two other mad souls (thanks Adrian and Paul) and to return on the ferry before catching a train back to the car in Edinburgh. It was going to be an epic twitch! 

As we sat in Edinburgh airport we received the dreaded pager message NO SIGN OF GREEN WARBLER. Too late now. We were going. Besides, Unst is the most northerly of the British Isles and there wouldn't be many people looking. This Green Warbler had been a bugger to locate on previous days, so there was still hope, slim hope.

On our way!

As we came in to land our glumness turned to optimism as news came in that the bird was still present. News also came in that the ferry over to Unst had broken down!!!! Could it be that after travelling the best part of 700 miles we would finally be scuppered just 8 miles and one short ferry crossing short?
We continued North. The hour and a half wait for the first ferry seemed interminable, but at least we had otters to watch and Sam was chasing after Arctic Terns and Zetlandicus Starlings - he'd never been to Shetland before.
It was while we were waiting for this ferry that we heard the second ferry was now fixed, at least enough to limp back and forth for the rest of the day.

As you can see, we made it to the ferry onto Unst. Not only that, but we made it to the Setters Hill Estate where we saw this green warbler, or should that be GREEN WARBLER.

Green Warbler. photo courtesy of Sam Viles.

The story is not quite finished though. For, as we waited for that first ferry, news filtered through of a Lammergeir (aka Bearded Vulture) being videoed by a non birder last Thursday. This was an outrageous record but seemed perfectly genuine. This was on a par with the Yellow-nosed Albatross which crossed the country a few years back without being seen by a single birder.

We put it to the back of our minds.

... until 12.57 on Monday afternoon. Sam and I were wasting away the day watching daytime TV in our Lerwick hostel when news of the Lammergeier came through again, this time in capitals. LAMMERGEIER! Dartmoor. 11.35am.

Shetland with no car was not a great place to be! We could be there by about 7 tomorrow evening if we hurried.

Despite the efforts of many birders that day and the next, the Lammergeier was only reliably seen once more by just one birder. Other reports came from non-birders seizing on the news. Several referred to a drone which was being used in the area. One confident report came from Derbyshire not long after the Dartmoor sighting!

And so we boarded the ferry at 4.30pm bound for Aberdeen. We passed Fair Isle (The Isle of birding dreams) late evening before crashing for the night on the seats in the restaurant.

At 7 in the morning the huge ferry was inching in to Aberdeen docks. We had been offered a lift back to our car by another birder and his wife who had twitched up the slow way for the Green Warbler.

Talk on the journey home centred mainly around the Lammergeier, which was probably born to parents which were possibly part of the reintroduction scheme in The Alps.
Even if we could somehow get to see it, would the committee let us have it as a tick? Doubtful. It's the pelican all over again.
I'll still go to see it though.

ed. Friday 20th May. The Lammergeier has been seen again this morning, about 20 miles north of Dartmoor. It's going to be impossible to twitch.

Baby animals everywhere I turn

29th April


The first of our goslings was born this morning. We deliberately took most of the eggs off the geese this year so when they started sitting they weren't on many eggs. Of course it's more complicated than that, as there are currently 4+ nests on the go and the white geese seem happy to share eggs and nests. Anyway, for a while yet entering the stables will be a rather tricky manoeuvre.



30th April

Victory to me!!!I managed to get all the lawns mowed. This Herculean task is most satisfying when it goes well, but at this time of year it'll need doing again in a few days time. Fortunately the geese help with some of it, though they do make a bit of a mess sometimes.
The turkey chicks have started to hatch right on time. We'll give it a day to allow all the chicks to escape their little calcium caccoons before moving mum and chicks to the safety of a stable. This will protect them from the mishaps (getting lost, falling into ponds, encounters with angry geese... the possible list goes on and on), the elements and the unwelcome attentions of predators.

Meanwhile the first Ixworth chicks we hatched are now two weeks old and doing well.












In the evening I meandered through the young woodland I planted when we moved here. I was searching for self-seeded hawthorns. These little plants are amazing, avoiding the ravages of rabbits and hares and refusing to be outcompeted by the swards of grass. They are filling in the spaces nicely. This is natural succession happening right here. In all I managed to find and mark over 60 saplings!


1st May
And so into May. Today we returned to the Green Back Yard in Peterborough for the first of a three day basket-making course. The weather was gorgeous and I could have got plenty done back on the farm but occasionally it is important to have a bit of time out so the farm work never becomes a chore. I'd forgotten everything I ever knew about basket weaving but fortunately some of it came back to me. Progress was slow as Renee's attention was richly in demand, but by the end of a few hours I had completed the base, put in the side rods and started coming up the sides. I brought some willow home with me to do some homework ready for next weekend.

When we got home we decided it was time to move the turkey hen and her new family. While I gently picked her up, Sue scooped up all the babies - 11 in all! One egg had been dislodged from the nest halfway through incubation and one egg hadn't yet hatched. Apart from that we had 100% success. (The unhatched egg chick never did make it out of he shell, but when I opened it up there was a fully grown chick inside). Such a shame that Terry was not around to cherish his new family.
All settled well into the stable I'd reserved for them.


Unfortunately for Rameses our bottle-fed lamb this meant that there was no longer to be a stable for him at night.
The two ewes had been letting him into the shed with them during the day so I was confident he would be warm and protected at night.

Continuing with the baby animals theme, the gosling had its first excursion outside. This single yellow ball of fluff had a security entourage of three white geese. The other two have stayed on their nests.

Happiness mixed with a tinge of sadness

Sunday Afternoon
The sun is shining and it's one of those beautiful spring days. Skylark song fills the air, trees are breaking into leaf. Everything is, as they say, perfick! Sue is creosoting the new shed and I am earthing up the newly planted early potatoes while the dogs chase each other round and round the veg plot. A few chickens know how to hop the fence and are pecking around and our turkey stag is in constant attendance, still all fluffed up and chest pumping - he inflates himself and then lets the air out all at once with an oomph! In the stables, the newborn lambs are doing well despite the constant protestations of the geese, two of whom have decided to sit on their nests all day long.
These are simple pleasures which make Sue and I very happy indeed.

But there's always a but! We have worked hard for this and there have been some difficult times too. Smallholding has a habit of throwing up the biggest challenges when you least expect them. We weren't brought up on farms and have had to learn quickly, for we are now responsible for many lives.

Monday morning
I headed out to the stable to give our orphan lamb, Rameses, his early morning feed. The sun wasn't yet up but there was a glimmer of light in the sky. As I opened the stable door I saw one of the other lambs just laying there on the straw. It wasn't moving. A wave of sadness came over me for there was clearly nothing I could do for this poor little lamb. It looked so peaceful and so perfect. It hadn't been dead too long and mum was still nuzzling it.
Young animals and birds are always at their most vulnerable in the first few days. The longer they survive, the stronger they become. We had thought the lambs were past the most dangerous period. All were feeding well and bouncing around their pens.

The dead lamb was the only girl. Mum and brother looked perfectly healthy. Spring on the smallholding is very much about new life and sometimes, just sometimes, that new life is delicate and nature takes its course. It doesn't upset us so much now as when we first encountered it, but I still have a heavy heart as I write 24 hours later. And we both felt guilty. Was our inexperience to blame for the loss of this young life? Was there something we should or shouldn't have done that would have made a difference?
My first thoughts went to our comical efforts the day before to castrate the young boys. I'll come back to this in a minute. Fair to say we didn't have much success but no lambs came to any harm. But that was my first thought. Had we inadvertently hurt one of them? But this was the girl, so it couldn't be down to that. All I could think was that she had somehow failed to get enough milk. She didn't feel particularly skinny, though a small lamb is just skin and bone anyhow. But maybe she hadn't fed and couldn't keep her body heat up during the night.
The surviving boy seemed to be feeding okay, but he was nudging mum's teats hard and more often than usual. I felt the ewe's udders. They felt really hard and a little lumpy. My thoughts went to mastitis, a not uncommon bacterial infection of the udders which can be serious for both lamb and ewe. But we had no direct experience of this. We felt the other ewes' udders and they felt softer.

Now, back to those efforts to castrate. If you're a bloke, you may want to cross your legs at this point! I know it sounds cruel but it really isn't. There's no knife involved. It simply involves stretching a small rubber ring over the lamb's scrotum and then letting it tighten. Time does the rest and the lambs really don't seem to experience any suffering. Male sheep do grow faster and bigger without this 'operation', but since we keep our sheep into a second year it would vastly complicate arrangements if all the young rams had to be kept away from their sisters and mums!
So, the rubber ring. Once it is closed, the two tiny testicles obviously need to be in the 'ballbag' on the opposite side of the rubber ring to the rest of the lamb. But that is much easier said than done, for every time we approached those little balls just kept disappearing! We tried on three different boys, but each time without success and we didn't want to stress the poor little things too much. So we aborted the operation and called for help.
A while back I started up a Facebook group for our Smallholders Club and it has been absolutely brilliant. One message from Sue and, within an hour, we had four offers of help. Otherwise it would have meant an expensive visit from the vet. Every vet call out adds about a tenner to the price of each lamb.
And so it was that yesterday afternoon a fellow smallholder with more sheep-keeping experience than us arranged to come over and show us how to do the deed. This, as it happened, was very fortuitous given the current mastitis scare.
Firstly he showed us how to apply the rings to said area. It really was quite easy. Where we had been going wrong was in sitting the lambs on our lap. They needed to be held up by their front legs (not harmful atall) so that gravity made everything fall, so to speak.
Very quickly all five boys were done.
It was then time to turn our attention to that ewe. James turned her over and felt her udders. He knew how to get milk out - this is quite tricky with sheep and needs experience to acquire the knack - but one side of the udder was very hard and virtually no milk was coming out. He too thought it looked like mastitis, so we called the vet. We have to think about our costs,  but at the end of the day the welfare of the animals comes first. Besides, losing a breeding ewe and having to bottle feed another lamb would not be cheap.

Today was not turning into a good day. The weather knew it, for yesterday's spring sunshine had been replaced by some decidedly heavy April showers. As we worked with the sheep it was, as Sue would say, stotting it down outside.
And when the vet came (a new vet who has just moved into the area, which is brilliant as our other vets are quite a distance away) it stotted it down again. Like Sue he came from the North-East and before I knew it they were talking clarts and yan tan tither - don't ask, I don't know.

The ewe, it turned out, did not have mastitis, but the vet was concerned about her hard udder and prescribed two injections of antibiotics just in case mastitis was developing. While he showed Sue how to administer this, I looked away! I don't do needles.
We showed the dead lamb to the vet and he confirmed that all looked healthy. Its stomach wasn't empty either. He informed us that deaths at three days old are quite unusual in lambs and that in all likelihood we had just been unlucky and that this was a "lie-on". You can work out what that means.

Everything else we had done was good. The pens, the straw, the feed. That poor little lamb had just got unlucky. We still need to keep an eye on the ewe and she needs another injection in a couple of days. Her lamb now gets a little supplementary milk from the bottle every time we feed Rameses. But hopefully all has turned out not too bad. All we need do now is await the vet's bill.

Tuesday morning
I've just returned from the stables after this morning's feed and I'm glad to say that all four ewes and all five ram lambs seem in good health. Later this week they will all be able to go outside and we've even been advised to try putting Rameses outside. Hopefully he will become a stealer - learning to grab a bit of milk here and there before the ewes notice. But I've a feeling he'll still be coming for his bottle feed for a while yet.
This morning the sky is clear and the blackbirds are singing again. I've been up since half past four and I'm hoping for a good day.
Last year the swallows returned on this date. The year before it was three days later. I'm watching the skies. If they make it back in the next three days they'll share the stables, just for a while, with the lambs.

Rameses, Son of Rambo... or The Rejected Lamb

What a day Thursday was! Photos have now been added to the post.
But all wasn't finished just because I'd written my blog post. At some time about one o'clock in the morning ewe number 3 went into labour properly. I was asleep in bed when Sue shouted up the stairs that it had come out. I had already had a really long day, but by the time I made it down to the stable things had developed further.

The third lamb from ewe number 2 was being rejected by it's adoptive mum. She was butting it away from her really rather violently. We just didn't understand. She had seemed quite happy with it for several hours, licking it, feeding it alongside her own and generally being a good aunty. But now the poor little lamb was clearly at risk.

To cut a fairly stressful story short, I stayed up all night keeping an eye on that lamb and trying to get one of the ewes to accept it, but at 6 o'clock on a very crisp morning I penned him separately and, after lying awake thinking about the day and that little lamb, I finally grabbed about 20 minutes sleep.

As we will now be feeding him every 4 hours and effectively have to take over the role of his mum, we have decided to name him. He is Rameses, son of Rambo.

Come 8 o'clock yesterday morning we were heading off to buy a bag of lamblac, formula milk for lambs.

Oh, I forgot to say that ewe number 3 had another one, so that was six lambs from three ewes in just one day.

It took quite a while for these two to get strong enough to feed.

I had to reduce the size of the pen as mum was inexperienced

and wasn't making it easy for them to find her udders.

The orphan lamb is laying in the hay,

but shortly after this I had to separate it.

Sue has taken on feeding duties for the moment - she really is very good with the animals- and all lambs are now doing well. They are a delight to watch as they gaily bounce around the pen on their gangly legs... when they're not sleeping.

I've managed to get back to gardening duties, spending most of yesterday rotavating while the soil is workable. I got the broad beans sown as well as broadcast sowing a corridor of marigolds and a sunflower patch. If it works it should look stunning come summer time.
The beds are ready for the early spuds to go in today and for planting out the onion sets. The soil felt warm yesterday despite an icy start so it's all systems go.

The veg patch early this morning.

The chickens have been banished from the veg plot, but the ducks and guineafowl are free to continue picking off the pests.

Yesterday was 1st April. Last year I seem to remember mischievously writing a blog post about growing gooseberry bushes by planting gooseberries the year before!
I promise there were no such shenanigans going on yesterday. My post about raising gookeys was all true. Honest!.

Lambs!

Back in November last year, the 5th of November to be precise (so I could remember), I put Rambo in with the ewes.
In theory a 145 gestation period could result in lambs on 30th March this year (today).

However, I did the same in 2014 and the lambs mysteriously did not appear until the third week of April, which was slightly annoying as I had planned for lambing to occur during the Easter holidays and NOT just after we'd gone back to work. In the end one ewe lambed outside and a rather large lamb was sadly found dead in the morning. A second ewe had twins, but her labour took a remarkable amount of time. Our fantastic vets at Vets 1 could not have been more helpful with advice at the most ungodly hours of the night. The other two ewes failed to come up with the goods.








Now most people are very controlled about their plans and timetables for lambing. This is partially because modern breeds are too large to give birth without often needing help and intervention.
We on the other hand just put Rambo in with the ewes and leave him with them from then on. We are pretty relaxed about how many lambs we end up with each year.

We also plan to have lambs slightly later than most. This is because, being a small breed, there is no rush to get them up to weight. We have to keep them into a second year anyway so there is no point planning to have lambs at potentially the coldest time of the year.

As for the delayed lambs last year, when I read up I discovered that ewes can come into heat when a ram is put with them, but that the first cycle can be a false cycle. This would explain the lambs arriving three weeks later than we expected.

With Easter being early this year, I decided to go with the same plan as last year. "Remember Remember The Fifth Of November!"

So yesterday I decided we should separate Rambo from the ewes. They have been looking decidedly waddly and needed a break from Rambo's excited attention. We also planned to give them their pre-lambing deworming dose.
However, rounding up the five sheep was a lot more tricky than usual. Rambo was a complete pain, chasing the girls and doing his very best to unsettle them. The sheep have been living in the far field for a while now, their winter residence, and I generally just give them a cursory glance to check they are okay. However, once we got up close it became apparent, even to our inexperienced eyes, that the girls were a lot closer to lambing than we expected.
Because of this, we decided to bring them into the stables and to set it up for lambing in the morning.

Before I continue, I must explain that the ewe which unexpectedly gave birth to a dead lamb last year had showed no signs whatsoever of labour. You may be able to guess what's coming...

Sue went to let the geese out this morning and came upstairs with news of a lamb! 145 days exactly from the date Rambo went in with the ewes. He must have got busy straight away!
Everything seemed to have gone well. The lamb had fluffed up but mum was still licking it dry. Then mum sat down looking tired and lamb rested away from her. We had no idea whether it had yet managed to suckle. I should explain that it is very important for a lamb to suckle as soon as possible, since the ewe's first milk is known as colostrum. It contains all the antibodies from mum as well as being super rich. It is vital that the lamb takes this.
We quickly penned off the ewe and lamb and I decided to climb in and hold the lamb closer to mum. This did the trick as both sprang up into action and our little lamb at least went through the motions of straddling underneath mum's udders and headbutting them!
We left them in peace again - my favoured approach is to leave alone and try not to intervene. When we returned half an hour or so later, the lamb was busily gulping from mum's teat.

But the morning wasn't finished yet. I had someone visiting to buy some goose eggs (we are overwhelmed, despite Sue's best cake making efforts - goose eggs make the most wonderful sponges). I showed him the new lamb only to see that the fattest of the ewes, the one which had prompted us to bring them into the stables, was obviously going into labour. She at least had the courtesy to show all the expected signs. I closed over the stable door and resolved to check how things were going in about half an hour. This was the ewe which took about 48 hours from start to finish last year, so we were prepared for a long ride.
When I returned to the stables, lamb number one had already been born and was being licked dry!
I suspected there may be another one waiting to come out too, so observed for a while and then let be.

Shetlands don't give birth to twins as regularly as commercial breeds, but this ewe had twins last year and the grazing this year has been good. So good in fact that the Shetlands have survived purely on the grass this year, supplemented only with a few beet nuts I was given for free. Normally this would be unthinkable, but these are native sheep (at least to Shetland) and it has been quite an exceptional non -winter. At the vets last week  (look out for Hot-X-Bun-Gate) I was told how so many people's ewes this year are overconditioned and have been having three or even four lambs which have come out too big and caused problems.

It's been a busy day. Photos will be added later.
ed. now added, but I'm still very busy and have had next to no sleep (read my next blog post) so I've just dropped them fairly randomly into the middle of the document!

We checked that the first lamb was up and trying to feed, then let be again. Quarter of an hour later I was busy in the veg plot when Sue came through looking happy. "Another one?" I enquired. "Another two!" came the reply.
Now that's not ideal. A sheep has two teats for a reason and three lambs for one sheep is pushing it a bit. I knew that it is common practice to take one of the lambs and try to get it onto another ewe - otherwise it's a case of bottle feeding. This would be cute but not a great option once we were back at work.
So a quick call to our helpful vets and we were advised to take one of the lambs and smear it all over with its own afterbirth before presenting it to the ewe which had earlier given birth to just the one lamb. We rushed out to the stables just as mum was clearing away the various residues of birth - it's amazing how they do this by instinct. I managed to save a bit from her and set about uncleaning the little lamb. I gently held it beside it's adoptive mum and after just a few seconds she started licking it. Just a couple of minutes later and it was suckling from her. It's a good job sheep can't count to three!

So that was that. Four lambs in one eventful day. In between I'd picked my car up from the garage (the brakes had seized and it had been away for two nights), sold 10 goose eggs and a couple of turkey eggs and seen a hen harrier pass through the garden, the first for a couple of years.

Or so we thought. For it was then that ewe number three started circling restlessly, jaw stretching and pawing at the straw - all signs of first labour. This however would be a first birth for her and so, judging by last year, could take quite some time. As I sit here typing she has stopped showing any signs and the plan is to go out about midnight and then early in the morning. We gain a little more experience each year, but I still don't feel confident.
As for ewe number four, I'm not even sure she's pregnant. If she is, it's definitely not twins and they're not imminent (famous last words). If she's not, it could be bad news for her future prospects.