Rural Life | Summer 2020 | Page 25

What’s Happening on The Farm now? As I’m writing this, 21st of April, Were in the middle of lambing or as its sometime known the most stressful and tiring time of the year. All though our flock is a small one compared to some its still as busy as ever. Another thing with lambing time, particularly with pedigree flocks like ours is the testing of the new tups or tup in our case. You’ve spent big on a tup that you think is going to improve your flock and you cant find out if its done any good until its first crop of lambs have arrived ( although some people say you cant judge a tup until you’ve sold ewes buy it) well the tup we bought last October, its lambs have started to arrive and sweet relief there looking quite good, well so far anyway. One thing that’s on our side this year is the weather, and while some of you lot reading this article can’t get outside because of these confusing and scary times, the farmers (and the animals) have been enjoying the weather. One thing my grandfather says is that one of the most important thing in lambing is the weather. It makes it or breaks it and this time its made it. Lambs have been popping out left right and centre with not many problems occurring apart from a few dopey lambs that refuse to suck for some daft reason but Lambing has been fairly seamless up till now! We have about 120 sheep left to lamb so it’ll soon be time to start marking, dosing tagging and putting lambs on the fell until clipping time! Which is probably when you’ll next be reading one of these when we’re clipping, hay timing and sorting out the draft ewes for the backend sales, until then give my YouTube a watch if you’ve got a spare minute! YouTube: The Swaley Man https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq_KnO3i2KdXYxHmOJDAvwg Instagram: the_swaley_man https://www.instagram.com/the_swaley_man/ Facebook: The swaley man https://www.facebook.com/TheSwaleyManoffical/ Rural Life | 25