Sorry for the delay :(

I realise that it's been some time since my last post - but December was a rather horrible month! 

So...here's December...

The boys (RIP) were taken to the abattoir the seaside right at the beginning of the month and we got them back (in bits) the following week. I must admit that I was very sad to see them go, especially when one of them was reluctant to get into the trailer. I was dreading getting the meat back, thinking I'd be in floods of tears, but it was surprisingly not too distressing seeing all the meat on the table. Out of the eight halves we sold five to friends and kept the other three. Unfortunately, what we weren't aware of, it being our first year of keeping sheep, was that ram lambs (as opposed to castrated lambs) start to lose condition towards winter, as they stop eating so much and start competing with one another - as well as standing around near the fence hoping to woo some women. Consequently, our lambs weren't as fat as we'd hoped but that's a lesson learnt for next time. We've already ordered castrated males for this year! This will also mean that we can keep the boys and girls together, and therefore rotate our paddocks through the spring and summer. 

Speaking of the paddocks - they are like lakes at the moment - despite the fact that they are on a slope! This never-ending rain is not good for sheep at all and I'm having to keep a careful eye on the girls to make sure that they don't get foot rot/rain scald/liver fluke/break a leg in the slippery mud...I was really quite worried about the fluke, as the snails that cause it are so prevalent in wet and (relatively) warm conditions. So many people have lost sheep because of it last year. So, I decided that I needed to treat the girls just to make sure. As fluke has been such a problem, the usual drenches were about as rare as hen's teeth and I couldn't get hold of any, not even from the vet! This meant drastic measures and so I asked the vet to come and show me how to inject the girls with an injectable treatment instead. It was fairly straightforward, mainly because our girls are so very tame. I did manage to stab myself with the first one, but luckily didn't depress the plunger and inject myself! 

I've also taken to bringing the girls up to the garden every few days, so that they have somewhere dry to stand (on the drive) and some better grass to eat. This has the added benefit of keeping the lawn down during the winter, with some self-spreading manure ;) The children have had great fun playing with the sheep outside! Here's a couple of pics...

As you can see, the playhouse in the background of the last photo is coming along nicely. Just the stairs and the veranda to go!

Other things that happened in December - On the day we sent the ram lambs off, I had a phone call from the hospital telling me that I had severe dyskaryosis/dysplasia on my cervix and so I had to go in urgently to have a colposcopy. That was really horrid, as they decided to do a LEEP/LLETZ procedure at the same time. I'm still waiting on the biopsy results but hopefully everything will be fine.

Bed is a-calling now so the things I made last month will have to wait for a new post tomorrow :) 

Hamlet time...

It's very almost time for our ram lambs to take their trip to 'the seaside' (wink, wink). I've been struggling to find a local abattoir slaughterhouse 'beach' to take them to but I think I may now have found one. It's such a shame that so many have had to close because of all the red tape and legislation. It means much longer journeys, more stress and quite often a much less personal service because mostly it's the bigger, more commercial ones that have been able to remain open. Our nearest one is an hour away now and, as this is our first year of sheep husbandry, I've been a little late in setting the wheels in motion. It seems that our sheep will not be able to be 'attended to' until January. I guess that means no roast lamb for Christmas dinner - so the boys can put their Hamlet cigars away (for now).

If you are not in the UK, and not of a certain age, then the Hamlet reference will make no sense to you at all, so here's a link to the YouTube video of the 1989 Hamlet cigar advert:

Hamlet Cigars - Christmas turkey ad

On the plus side,as we are having to wait a little longer before enjoying the rewards, it means we will get more meat for our money. Zwartbles sheep are a large breed and not very inclined to running to fat. This means that the longer we leave them, the more meat - and not fat - we will gain.  The breeders we bought them from just told us that one of their lambs weighed in at over 38kgs (it's usually more like 23 kgs!) at the butcher's. Good news indeed, and even more so for those family and friends that have requested a half-lamb!

I think we deserve some reward for having to rescue one or more of the boys from the fence (they just don't seem to realise that their heads shouldn't go through the mesh) almost daily since we got them! Dave has been the worst offender - I don't think he's the brightest of sheep! Someone once told me that it is the aim of every sheep to meet its Maker as soon as possible and it is the aim of every shepherd to delay this for as long as possible!

Here's a quick pic of the sheep, as I don't think I've actually put one up yet :)

The boys are the ones closest to the camera. That's Dave, centre back, nuzzling Suzy through the gate. Ellie came down to the field with me because she wanted to make a 'sheep book' for Show and Tell at school. Naturally she wanted to pose with the sheep for one of the photos!

Well, here it is! The inaugural blog post!

I have absolutely no idea if anyone will ever stumble across my humble little blog but it will, nonetheless, provide an outlet for my incoherent ramblings thoughts. I hope to write about the children, progress on our house renovations/works, sewing (possibly some tutorials) and perhaps the odd bit of recipe sharing! First and foremost I want to share real life. I'm not a Stepford wife or Nigella Lawson and doubt I ever will be. My house is cleaned and tidied fairly regularly (particularly in those frantic 10 minutes before a guest arrives) but isn't immaculate. It used to be a lot better pre-kids but with all three of them at home at the moment it's a thankless task trying to keep it show-home pristine, much as my husband wishes it was. The kids do drive me to distraction on occasion and I do admit to resorting to cBeebies once in a while, in order to give me a break whilst the baby is sleeping!

I guess the first thing to do is to introduce myself:

I am a thirty(something) year old harrassed mother of three little darlings, un-domestic goddess/wife of a hard-working husband, sewist extraordinaire (not really, but I do have a teeny tiny sewing business - www.facebook.com/byebabybunting - that provides me with a pathetic modest income) and more recently an accidental smallholder.
The latter sounds more grand than it actually is - we actually only have eight sheep (Zwartbles breed) at the moment and they'll be reduced to four come November (shhhhhh, don't tell them that!!). We may have chickens and ponies by next year but as we are also saving for a much needed extension - that came in at quite a lot more than we were expecting - then the other livestock may have to go on hold for a little while!

As for the little darlings themselves...First we have Ellie, the eldest at the grand old age of nearly five. She is the peacemaker of the family; a lover of animals, food and books. She's about to start school and is desperately excited about it.
Tabby comes next. She's three and a half and suffers from that terrible affliction, Middle Child Syndrome! She has three main aims in life: to have hair as long as Rapunzel (a rather ambitious wish as she currently still has very little hair!), to beat her big sister in a running race and to eat as much porridge each day as she possibly can.
Jasper is our last, and most definitely final, child. He's almost 10 months and a complete menace joy. He's been crawling (in a Platoon extra, shot in the legs manner) for three months now and we are thinking of hiring him out to building firms due to his uncanny ability to locate even the most hidden wires/cables in a room. He is a generally chilled out, happy, smiley baby but if he is remotely hungry or tired then the whole world is quickly apprised of his situation.

My husband is a metrology engineer. Ever heard of one of those? Nope, me neither. It means he gets to go and visit places like F1 factories, aerospace and military installations and measure stuff for them/sell them stuff to measure their stuff. It's all terribly exciting and glamorous. Actually, it really isn't, but he's a bit of a geek so he loves it :D
In his spare time, my darling hubby is a bit addicted to building sheds. We currently have three in the garden and he has just designed a playhouse for the girls that will be being built soon (he assures me). He's also just in the throes of designing a shelter for our sheep. No doubt it will be bigger and better than they actually need but he'll have fun doing it, which is the main thing.

I think that's probably plenty of writing for a first post, particularly one that doesn't actually have any readers yet! Further posts to follow hopefully...