It’s a week of keepers ... & finders
THIS week we have gathered the moor, the pastures and allotments.
I’d like to think we have had every single sheep belonging to Ravenseat through the pens but that’s unlikely.
It is speaning (weaning) time, when the lambs need to come off their mothers.
It has to be done now to give the yows time to recover in preparation for the breeding season.
Also the tup (male) lambs are now mature enough to be frisky so need to be separated.
The gimmer (female) lambs are split into two groups, the “keepers” and the “shots”.
The keepers will stay at Ravenseat while the shots will be sold to other farmers to replenish their flocks.
The tup lambs are also split into keepers, ones that are good enough to sell as breeding rams, and sale stock which will go to market for meat.
The cows are now nearly due to calve and when Clive and I went to check on them there was one missing.
We set off around the allotment to see where she had gone but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack – so many dips, bumps and hollows in which to hide. Maybe a drone would help.
One thing we did find was a gap in the wall and we had no choice but to put it back up right away.
We had just laid the final top stones on the newly-repaired wall when we found our missing cow and her newborn calf... over on the other side!