Springtime in Cornwall

Spring flowers

My overnight stop in Somerset extended to lunchtime on the following day as I needed to set up my new trays of seedlings, etc in the greenhouse and plant out two rows of garlic, as I had picked up a couple of garlic bulbs that were shooting from Dawn & Tony. I also planted out my potatoes that had been 'chitting' for a few weeks. I was surprised by how much growth the onion sets had put on in my absence but the veg bed is south facing with a rendered block wall behind it so the soil is very warm.

I had a good drive down to Cornwall arriving at about 4pm to be greeted by Jo and James, who were both in the lambing shed, with the words “You're too late, we've finished lambing!” Luckily, they were teasing me, but only just – in the 12 days since they had started lambing 22 of the 34 ewes had given birth! Henry must have been a very busy boy when he first went in with his girls in the autumn!

As Jo and James had both been 'full on' for the previous 12 days and nights I offered to do the late check at about 10.30pm so that they could get a reasonable night's sleep. When I first went out everything seemed quiet and settled but, as I was turning to go back in, I heard a whickering bleat from one of the ewes that was expecting twins. This little low bleat is the noise they use to bond with their lambs once they are born and is sometimes one of the first indications that labour is starting, along with restless pawing at the ground and/or a look of distant thoughtfulness! I managed to get her into a pen on her own and her first lamb was born at 11.25 with the second being born about 20 minutes later. One of the invaluable tips that I have picked up from James is that the sucking reflex is particularly strong in the lambs not long after they are born so, if you can get them to suck before they are even on their own four feet, they usually have no problems locating the teats for themselves later. It is really important that they get a good feed of colostrum in the first couple of hours as it is full of nutrients and antibodies which help protect the newborn lamb from all sorts of nasty-sounding diseases. Once I had made sure that both lambs had had a good feed and I had doused their navels with iodine (another important anti-bacterial precaution) I went to bed.

As it turned out this was one of only two births that I was to witness during my stay – all the others happened off my watch in the middle of the night or in the early morning or when I had a day off and was away from the farm! This was very disappointing as I had gone back specifically to help with the lambing, but I did help with the after care of ewes and lambs and got to spend time watching the lambs gambolling out in the field.

Number 74 - proud mum of twins

I know you are all desperate for news of Number 74! Well, I was anyway. She had been the tenth ewe to lamb (hence the large No 10 on her side in the photo) but James had kept her in the lambing shed so that I could personally congratulate her on the birth of her twins (a boy and a girl!). She condescendingly deigned to take a gift of dandelion leaves from me but did not acknowledge my presence further and was more than happy to join her friends out in the field where her twins soon joined the 'lamb gang'.

At about 8.00am each morning, Carina (a Swedish WWOOFer who was just a bit younger than me) and I went out to help with the daily round of feeding, watering and bedding up the ewes and lambs and then we started work in the vegetable garden. James had been in with the tractor and rotavator but we decided that a system of raised beds might be easier to manage so spent one day building two raised beds about 20 feet long and about 4 feet wide. During my stay I added another two beds to the total although the clay soil became increasingly difficult to dig as the weather turned hot and sunny with day after day of blue skies. I planted some broad beans, runner beans and peas in pots in the greenhouse at the beginning of my stay and they were all just emerging when I left a couple of weeks later. I also weeded the greenhouse beds and planted six tomato plants that Jo bought and a couple of rows of salad leaves. We also got some replacement glass for the two panes that got broken by the wind last year and the one pane that got broken by a stone thrown up by the rotavator – at least that should stop the cats and squirrels going in!

On the first Saturday of my stay I took Carina to the Cheesewring on the edge of Bodmin. This is a natural stack of granite boulders perched precariously one on top of the other on the side of a hill and we scrambled up the steep hillside to see it. The views from the top were far-reaching, barren and a bit hazy but well worth the scramble and the strong wind that whipped around our faces. Afterwards I took her to Looe as I felt she needed to see the sea and partake of a Cornish pasty! I decided to save my pasty until I was back in the car as I don't seem able to walk and eat at the same time, but Carina started eating hers as we walked along. Suddenly there was a flurry of huge wings and a large herring gull mugged her for a bit of pasty! Amazingly, although she gave a small scream, she did not let go of the pasty which I thought showed remarkable courage under fire! You don't realise what big birds they are until they fly into your face! Safely back in the car, we enjoyed our pasties before driving back along country lanes to the farm.

The 40 foot ash tree begins to fall

We had to move the lambs from last year (now called hoggets) to new grazing and also the other group of miscellaneous sheep, so James and I went off in the Landrover to do some chainsawing as a couple of trees had fallen in the field that they were going to. However, before James could saw up the 'fallen' trees we had to get them to fall, as they were resting on the branches of another tree. This is where the Landrover came in – it has a very strong winch on the front. First of all James notched the tree in the direction that he wanted it to fall and then attached the winch cable around the trunk before chainsawing through the rest of the trunk from the other side. At first, the winch started to pull the Landrover up the field but, eventually, after a little more alteration to the position of the strap around the trunk, the tree slowly fell to earth and was cut up for logs. My job was to cut off all the brashy branches and drag them into the wood where they will eventually rot down whilst providing food and homes for lots of invertebrates.

Whilst we were working in this field I was distracted by the sight of some enormous beetles crawling about in the grass. I tried to take some photos (which didn't come out very clearly) as I was quite certain that they were oil beetles which are growing increasingly rare and mainly occur in organically farmed areas. One of them was almost 2” long and the other two, that I saw at the same time, were about 1” long and shone a metallic blue in the sunshine. Beautiful! 

The blue/black oil beetle

As usual, the beautiful timelessness of the farm worked its magic on me and the clear, crisp morning air meant it was never a chore to get up and go outside to wonder at yet another day – the spring flowers were in abundance on all the banks and in all the hedgerows: the daffodils were still blooming in the hazel spinney but had been joined by the first bluebells and there were large primroses everywhere vying with the buttercup-yellow of the celandines, the purple of the violets and the white of the stitchwort. There was even some early pink campion pushing through in places and the pretty pale lilac of lady's smock. What a wealth of beautiful wild flowers we have in this country, if we just know where to look.

The last ewe lambed on April 18^th – 34 ewes, 55 scanned lives and 54 live lambs – a very impressive result. I extended my stay for a week so that Jo and James could go off to visit their two sons and their families, leaving me in charge of rather a lot of sheep – 168, I think. Luckily, I had the trusty quad bike at my disposal as it was a long way down the farm track to the bottom paddock where the miscellaneous flock was and I checked on them twice a day. Also, because the weather continued, for the most part, hot and dry, the hoggets ran out of grass in their paddock along the road so I had to carry bales of hay to them on two days so that they wouldn't be tempted to break out.

On Monday, 26^th April I packed up my car and drove back to Somerset so that I could spend a few days at home before my next adventure.

The 'lamb gang' exploring a fallen oak tree