Continuances and Annoyances

Warm and cloudless, it has been fairly typical weather for the season, with foggy or cloudy mornings which soon burn off. We have had no more than a spot of drizzle here and there to relieve the land.

Our turf is fairly deep and has not been disturbed much, so that the pasture has not dried up yet although the sheep are getting increasingly greedy for the greener bits. The thistles are putting a brave face on repeated beheading by scythe, and keep growing new heads which are cut off in turn. When we arrived here, nearly a year ago, the land was dominated by wild carrot which stood waist high or higher. The sheep have done us proud, and there is barely a stalk to be seen. A few years of this, and we shall have few weeds worth mention at all.

We have more ducklings hatching, which means that we are confining the barn cats to the workshop. This annoys them, but we try to make up for it in small ways. A brush rabbit corpse was used as a peace offering, and since a fair amount of it was consumed with much joy and feral glaring, we hope that the barn cats will add rabbit to their menu. Failing this, farmers can employ missile weapons to the same effect.

The lamb with the number 007 sadly lost his tag, ripping his ear in the process. We will have to retag him, with a new number. Obviously this is a hazard with ear tags, and we hope to find some other way which will meet the needs of the USDA, but we might be stuck with the problem. Fortunately he is not showing signs of much discomfort.

We may have a purchaser for some of our ewes. How this will play out remains to be seen.