We get our skates on for spring
It feels quite spring-like at the moment – the sun shining, the skies blue.
Lapwings swoop and dive overhead and snowdrops have peeped through in what we optimistically describe as the garden.
Drifts of snow remain in the shadows of the drystone walls – but wrap up warm and it’s an absolute delight to be working outside.
As days lengthen, the children now get home from school and disappear off outside.
The snowboard has reverted to skateboard – the wheels reattached.
But the whole urban teen thing is difficult on the farm when there’s no concrete, or anything that vaguely resembles a skatepark. We’re not thinking it’s spring yet though – we’ve 15 tons of fodder beets on order, as winter looks like coming back with a vengeance.
Midweek all the sheep had ultrasound scans to see how many lambs we can expect. It’s not going to be a bumper crop, with the majority of our yows having one each.
Swaledales do not tend to have multiple pregnancies and this is good as, to rear a lamb successfully, the mum needs to make milk from the nutritionally poor grazing at the moor.
There is just one anomaly this year.
Spot, my favourite, was geld last year, which means she didn’t have a lamb. She should have been sold, but we always reckon a geld yow will make up for it by being stronger at tupping time.
And Spot certainly made up for her year off – she’s expecting triplets.