An annoying time with the abattoir and Mr and Mrs Resident Vandal arrive

On Monday Tim took our 6 fat lambs to an abattoir near York, who do sheep skins, only to discover that they no longer did sheep skins, despite when I booked them in, I mentioned we wanted the skins doing!!! Needless to say Tim was not impressed as it's 100mile round trip and the fleeces on the rams were in something special. Had we known I would have sheared the rams, to keep the fleeces and then sent them to the abattoir. Needless to say we are now looking for a new abattoir, nearer to home. One thing we did learn this time is that we end up getting back 1/3 of the live weight. Yet again most of our lamb meat is sold. We've purposely held back the Wiltshire Horn meat for ourselves to sample. We had a leg today, and though very tender and quite tasty, it's not as strong a flavour as the Shetlands we had last year, but they were older, so we shall see what the Wiltshire's taste like as a shearling.
Mr and Mrs Resident Vandal arrived on Wednesday, Mrs RV has been working in York, so they decided to extend their visit and spend a long weekend with us. As I type up this blog Kiera dog is crashed out on one of the sofas, Deefa on the other. All they have done for 2 days is chase one another around.
Tim and the RV have managed to get some fence post knocked in at the back of the barn, the idea being fence up to the barn so that we can create some temporary shelter in the main barn, but having spent today clearing the end of the barn, discovered that the old railway van parked at the back of the barn, the water running off it, runs into the barn, creating a very wet floor. The answer is to move the railway van, but it's full of wood and we have no more space left to store this wood undercover, so I'm not sure what we're going to do.
Now as you know the RV is so named because he usually breaks something when he's here, but this time it was Mrs RV who lived up to her name. Coming back from the pub on Saturday night she tripped/fell over 2 "imaginary" pot holes in the road!! Goodness knows what was in the 2 glasses if white wine she had with the meal in the pub!!! Today, as it was raining it was suggested that we both split the wood that was cut in the log store, after about an hour our new log splitter, that Mrs RV was using, started to make some very strange noises. Turns out it was short of hydraulic oil!!!! She said she was enjoying herself, but personally, I think it was a bit severe, to get out of splitting wood.
We put the rest of the Wiltshire Horn ewe lambs along with Davina and Demelza into Charlie the Wilthsire Horn ram's paddock. He then spent most of the morning chasing them around the field, but not much action. We will see what happens over the coming week as everyone settles down. It's fun watching an inexperienced ram trying to persuade "his ladies" that he's "the one". Hector watched from the next paddock in absolute dismay!!!!
Now that Charlie has been in with his "original ladies" for 4 weeks, and as he covered them in the 1st week, none of them have come back to him, so he's fertile, that's always a worry with a new ram.
Next weekend we're hedge laying, should be good fun.
More next week