A new arrival and non working machinery

We went to look at a Pedigree Wiltshire Horn ram that was for sale by one of the North Yorkshire Smallholders Society members, they live not too far away. So the small trailer was hitch to the back of Denise's 4x4 Fiat Panda. They had two rams for sale, Clifford and Charlie, but Clifford had already been sold when we got there. Having had a good look at Charlie, we decided to buy him, he took a little bit of effort to get him into the trailer, having horns is a big help, something to grab hold of. Once in the trailer, Charlie just stood as placid as every, which is good for a ram.
Once we got him home and put him in the isolation paddock, we realised that he would need a mate, so we put Cecil in with him. After a bit of chasing around the paddock, the two boys seem to have settled down. The idea is that Charlie will be used for the Wiltshire Ewes we are getting in August, but we also think we will use him on the Corridale X Shetland ewes and Masham ewe so we will have more lambs for meat. We will use Hector on all the Shetland ewes and our two Hebridian X Shetland ewes. Should be an interesting lambing next year.

With the threat of severe weather for today, we decided to crack on with a couple of jobs that need fine weather. Tim went to clear out one of the ditches that had started to get filled in due to the sheep walking on the ditch sides and pushing the soil into the bottom of the ditches. He'd not got far, when the tractor decided to stall, so he had to switch the digger from the Nuffield tractor onto the International. He managed to finish the job before the rain cam down too heavily. But bringing the Nuffield back into the barn, he got it parked up and walked round the front of the tractor to discover that the radiator had started to leak!!!!!
Denise meanwhile was cutting the grass in the woodland, when the ground clearer spluttered and stopped. It did need a new spark plug, so Denise left the machine for a while, filled it up with petrol and tried to start it again. After a while it started, but after a couple of minutes, it spluttered and stopped again. Once the spark plug and air filter were cleaned, it started and Denise was able to finish the job, despite the ground clearer being very erratic.
The rain arrived at lunch time, so there was nothing more to do but watch the Tour de France, which Denise did, Tim went out into the barn to see how bad the Nuffield's radiator was!!!!!!
Next weekend see the arrival of THE NEPHEWS. They are coming for a long weekend, Friday night through to Sunday. It will be a LONG weekend, Tim has started to twitch!!!!