Lambing

There really isn't anything sweeter than a small lamb cuddled up against its great woolly mum! With an improvement in the weather i.e no rain for a couple of days, and it has got much colder the Farmer has been able to put the lambs out and they are happily running around in a field with their ever watchful mothers. Rain is the problem for lambs but they cope with cold without too much problem...a big thickly-fleeced mother certainly helps. This morning it is very much colder than it has been recently and although when I was out walking my little dog at about 7 o'clock it was clear and dry with glimmers of blue skies, now it grey and very gloomy and we have had hail & sleet showers. Who knows what the rest of the day will bring?! In Wales we have a new First Minister leading our Labour government as of this week, though whether this will signify a change in government policy especially regarding the agriculural sector we wait to see. With a cabinet reshuffle we now also have a new Minister for Rural Affairs and we are all waiting to see how he will deal the farmers objections to the proposed Sustainable Farming Scheme that has caused us to protest so vocally in the past few weeks. Easter is coming up and so I am expecting several guests to the holiday cottage over the next couple of weeks. Booking are slow, but this seems to be general trend and people book holidays much more last minute. So long as I get 24 hours notice of an arrival it works well though keeping up with the laundry can be bit of a challenge. On the farm work picks up apace with the improvement in the weather and the land beginning to dry out. The cows are still in but we would not expect to put them out to grass until about 10th April, but muck spreading should be starting soon as soon as we can get tractors onto the fields without making too much mess. We had the vet come in this week to check the cows to see how many are in calf and it seems that only one is not, which is a very good result. Calving will not start until the end of the summer. While lambing is pretty easy nowadays as we have only 20 ewes, calving time is always busy with just under a hundred cows all due in the space of a few weeks, but that is a good while off yet.