Bleats and Blogs

The celebration of life is very much part of farming. For me, the joy comes during lambing and from the amount of media attention this annual event receives, many who may not be directly associated with a farm, take part with me, albeit from a distance. What is less...

Maremmas, Italian mountain dogs, are a working breed, going out with the sheep in Italy for days at time and in the absence of any human intervention, looking after the flocks on their own. They don’t herd like a Border Collie. They just protect against predators....

Southdown wool duvets are flame retardant and are formally certified as such. But the test results were not the first time I came across this amazing physical property in wool. Nothing like a hands on experience to bring the message home. It all happened 8 years ago...

No – in fact, shearing is such an essential element of good animal husbandry, if you don’t do it, the sheep will die a miserable, painful death. Sheep grow thick wool fleeces – fact. These fleeces attract blow flies especially in summer – another unavoidable fact....

My household uses a lot of milk. I drink a lot of tea as do all the folk who help me here on the farm. My dogs love milk and I claim to make the most delicious milk tart in Devon – a richly satisfying teatime treat considered a South African national treasure. But...

“Is there anything about farming you cannot stand?” I asked Robert, my new neighbour 12 years ago, sitting around his farm house kitchen table. I had just bought the farm next door and suddenly the reality of what I had rather rashly taken on was dawning on me. Robert...

I came to this country in 1983 and one of the things that struck me most about it, apart from the inevitable weather conversation with everyone from family through to total stranger, and the vast variety of potatoes, was how much the British love their dogs. The good...

It has taken me 10 years to realise that I am more a wool producer than I am a sheep farmer. For the typical commercial sheep farmer, the animals they raise annually are the core of their business as they send them off to market when they come to condition or sell...

Every lambing year brings something different. One year, I faced toxoplasmosis which resulted in weak, feeble lambs. Another year I met Schmallenberg and had to deal with deformed and dying lambs. Last year we had a myriad of mal-presentations, so much so that I gave...

Storm Gareth be damned, I am preparing for a tempest of my own. We are about a fortnight off lambing. The ewes have been given their boluses (to ensure correct absorption of much-needed minerals and trace elements), inoculated, wormed and scanned. I am bringing them...