Lambing drama at Stroud

During the weekend of my second week at Stroud Paul, Sarah and Becky went away overnight to a friend’s birthday party and to visit Sarah’s daughter who had just had a baby. This meant that I had to be on hand to check on the sheep, so Jeni came over on Saturday and stayed overnight and I also had two friends from Draycott come over for the evening – Grainne was coming from Draycott and her daughter Siobhan and her boyfriend were coming from north of Oxford where they now live. We’d decided to perhaps get pizza and share a bottle of wine and catch up on each other’s lives as we had not met up for nearly a year. We’d planned that it would be a lovely and relaxing evening.

I’ve realised that you should never plan anything as Fate has a way of coming along and scuppering any plans you might have thought you had! Jeni and I went up to do evening feeding and noticed that ‘Blackberry’ the sheep was in the early stages of labour. We couldn’t coax her into a pen on her own so we went out to the field to feed the ewes and lambs out there. While we were there Siobhan rang to say they had just arrived, so we told them where to find us and headed back to the lambing shed. As we greeted them I realised that Blackberry was sniffing at something lying very still on the ground, so I leapt over the barrier and ran to her to find that she had had a lamb but the amniotic sac was still over its head. I quickly pulled it off, tickled its nose and then swung it by its hind legs for good measure to drain any fluid from its lungs. It sneezed, shook its head and spluttered a bit and Blackberry took over the mothering duties, licking it all over and bleating quietly to it. When it looked like a ‘goer’, Jeni and I carefully lured Blackberry into a pen. Siobhan then went off to buy pizza, as her mum was due to arrive at any moment. While she was gone I realised that it was some time since the ewe had had the first lamb, but she still didn’t look comfortable, so I decided to check to see if there was another lamb – there was, but it had one leg above its head and was effectively stuck, so I realigned the leg and out it came, spluttering and sneezing as it lay on the straw, so mum carefully licked that one, too. Jeni and I were sitting on a straw bale congratulating ourselves on a job well done when Jeni said ‘Can’t I see another hoof protruding from under her tail?’ The light was beginning to fade by then so I couldn’t be sure, but just in case I checked again and there was another lamb – this time he had one leg bent back behind him and was again effectively stuck, so I had to try and flick the bent leg up and straight so that he could emerge like a diver with his head between his front legs.

By this time Grainne had arrived too and Siobhan and her boyfriend had returned with the pizza, but I was concerned that the lambs would get chilled so we needed to get them into the pen where the heat lamp was and this involved moving another ewe and her twins (the ones I mentioned in my last blog). Everyone mucked in, deconstructing and reconstructing pens and ushering the confused ewes and their offspring into the appropriate ones. At last, we had achieved that aim and decided to go into the house, eat pizza and drink wine and then check that all the lambs were up and had fed afterwards. The pizzas were great, the wine was good and we did manage to have a bit of a catch up but the majority of the conversation centred around the triplets and what should be done next! Siobhan and her chap had both been to agricultural college and had worked with sheep so I was really pleased that they had come over, although Jeni said it felt strange that three out of the five of us had helped ewes give birth before! We went back up a little later and I stressed a lot about whether all the lambs had fed – probably more so than I would have done if they had been my own sheep – and decided, in the end, to ‘tube’ them i.e. put a stomach tube down their throats and pour some milk down. By this time it was gone 11.00pm and everyone had to go – hardly the lovely, relaxing evening it should have been, but strangely satisfying anyway. I know that Grainne and Siobhan read this blog so I would like to take this opportunity to thank them once again for a) coming to see me in the first place and b) being so supportive with the sheep! I am also pleased to report that mum and babes are all doing really well!

I left Stroud on a Thursday evening have renewed friendships, not only with Paul and Sarah, but also with the market gardeners who come on Tuesdays and Thursdays to grow their own organic vegetables and with whom I worked in October and again this last couple of weeks. I drove the fifteen miles or so to Cheltenham to spend four days with my Mum before she went off on a short break and Jeni and I repacked the Peugeot to start our joint WWOOFing adventure, beginning in Oswestry, Shropshire where I was last June.

Surfing the Spring

My last two weeks at Launceston rushed by as we battled to get the bungalow as finished as possible while still not being able to complete the bathroom, cloakroom and kitchen because of work that the plumber had to do. He couldn’t complete anything in the bathroom as the bath had not been sent with its handles (or they’d been accidentally thrown out with the packaging) and the suppliers did not seem to have the same sense of urgency as we did about supplying a new set. Without the handles, which are fixed on from the underside of the bath, the bath could not be plumbed in, the loo and wash basin could not be sited accurately and the tiling couldn’t be done. Jo and I busied ourselves with ironing and lining new curtains and then with revamping some old slub silk curtains to make new curtains for the dining room.

On one of my days off I took myself to Tavistock and had a look around – I met a lovely lady who ran the local crystals shop and obviously believes that everything happens for a reason. I was in there for ages and then only bought a card! She did say, however, that I should visit Brentor which is just outside Tavistock and is sited on the crossing point of two ancient and important ley lines – the Michael and Mary lines. I visited the Pannier Market which is very similar in function to the one in Barnstaple, in that it has a variety of markets on different days of the week – the day that I was there was a General Market and there was a mixture of craft stalls, ‘tat’ stalls, pet food stalls, etc. Again, I stopped for a chat with a lady who was demonstrating the art (craft?) of rag rug making. This is something I would quite like to try at some point – I can still remember the rag rugs in my Gran’s cottage next to the Bluebell Railway line in Kent. The lady says that she makes them out of old T-shirts and sweat shirts as well as other fabrics and some of them are almost like memory quilts in that she is reminded of some of her children’s outgrown clothes when she looks at them.

I eventually left Tavistock and drove the few miles to Brentor; the church of St Michael is the highest still-functioning church in England and has a service every Sunday evening from Easter to September. I clambered up the tor to the top and would have had far-reaching views across Dartmoor in one direction and towards Bodmin in the other if there had not been a heat haze (in March?). It has a similar feel to Glastonbury Tor but is a natural rock outcrop and quite craggy – I think Glastonbury is man-made as it is very symmetrical. When I told Jo and James about my visit they told me that the Michael line runs through their parish of Lezant and that, at one time, the church there was dedicated to St Michael too. Apparently it stretches for miles across southern England.

On my last Friday at Launceston we all went to the Wine and Wisdom quiz evening at the local school. It was teams of four but we had two extras, so Jo and I ended up partnering two poor, unsuspecting men who had come to spend a quiet weekend with their friends, who happened to be the quizmasters! We made a lucky choice though as these guys were pretty knowledgeable and we managed to win, much to Jo’s delight as we beat James and his team into a cocked hat! I had no idea she was so competitive – quite scary, really! Our prize was a bottle of Cava each and then, guess what? – I won a raffle prize – again! It’s beginning to get a bit embarrassing. They’ll ban me from the area soon.

The day before I left Jo and James treated me to lunch at a farm near Launceston. The wife diversified, during the Foot and Mouth outbreak, into patchwork craft workshops and now holds many courses in purpose-built work rooms, has a shop dedicated to patchwork fabrics and all manner of sewing items and also has a cafe which serves delicious lunches. It is called Cowslip Workshops and was recently featured in a magazine that my Mum had sent me just before I went to Launceston. One day it might be good to go back and do a course there.

Having spent quite a few days doing ‘inside’ jobs, it suddenly struck me that in the space of a week Spring had really taken off. When I arrived there were a few daffodils, and then a few grape hyacinths and camellias; by the time I left there were primroses everywhere, wood anemones, celandines, tulips, apple blossom, may blossom and leaves were breaking out of their dormant buds and filling my eyes with every shade of green you could imagine, and as I drove through Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and then into Gloucestershire I felt as if I was surfing on a rolling wave of green that was surging ever northwards, driving the winter before it.

I am now back in the Slad Valley near Stroud at a farm I visited back in October and it is lambing time. Most of the sheep have already lambed but there are still six to go. One lambed the other morning before I went out and had had just one lamb and Paul had put her in a pen on her own. I went out to do the feeding and, literally while my back was turned, she popped out another one! It is very tiny and is currently sporting a very snazzy woollen jumper to help keep it warm, but it is feeding well and should be OK. One of my jobs is to ‘top up’ the triplets i.e. offer them a bottle of powdered milk in case they are still hungry, and I have quite a following who mug me every time I climb in the pen, or go out to the orchard where the older lambs are. The weather has been fantastic but the lack of rain is beginning to be a worry for the farmers as it is time for all the stock that has been indoors during the winter to go back outside, but the grass is not growing fast enough to provide a continuous supply for hungry beasts so they can’t be turned out yet. Fodder prices are at an all time premium, because of the dry spring/early summer last year so it is a careful juggling act between putting the animals out too early and risk not having enough grass or keeping them in for a bit longer and risk running out of hay/silage.

Finally, I have to tell you that Jeni arrived back in the UK on April 4th (Dave’s birthday) and is currently staying at my Mum’s about twenty minutes away. Dave and I went over to welcome her home and completely overwhelmed her! I may have a WWOOFing partner for the next couple of months, if she feels like it, which will seem quite strange after being alone for nearly a year – I’m really looking forward to it.