Ouessant ram arrives!..........known as Derek he is very small, black with an impressive amount of both horn and wool for his size! I am now waiting for some sunshine to take his picture and post it on the blog..........!
Meanwhile as autumn continues to be rather warm I have just collected some veg from the plot. It looked so nice I thought you may like to see it, and theres plenty more despite the polytunnel looking a bit bedraglled nowand the beans having seen better days! We grow a lot despite being nearly 1000ft up on a north facing scarp! Also in the picture are todays eggs and some of the incredible amount of Apple and Blackberry jam and apple chutney we made, all with free fruit!
Yeaterday the rams were issued with raddle harnesses, (the big rams that is not little Derek) and now Stan the Shetland has a red crayon on his chest, Henry the senior Dorset Down a Blue and Harold the Junior Dorset Down a green. They have now been released with their respective hareems! The idea of the harness is that I can tell who has been served and when, I write this down and in 3 weeks time (the ewes oestrus cycle is 3 weeks) I change colours and wait to see if the ewes have held to the first service or have returned in season.After another 3 weeks I then change colour again and anyone with 3 colours on their bum is probably not fertile and will probably be culled. The rams stay in with the ewes for 10 weeks and then go back to their batchelor pad behind the local Suzuki garage!
Last Saturday we had a pegloom rug course here and some lovely items were started and either finished or taken away to finish at home. We have some super courses coming up so check out the Woolly Shepherd website for details!