And then there were 21.....

This is number of sheep we have left at the moment. This week we sent some "culls" and "fatties" to the mart on Monday morning and today Tim took the last of the Shearling Gimmers to the Horned Ewe sale, at which we got £74 each for them, which we are pleased with. The cheque for the sheep we sold on Monday also arrived this morning, which was a pleasant surprise.
We've only got 4 masham weathers left to go to the mart. We didn't send them with the other "fatties" on Monday despite the fact that they had reached the magic 40kgs weight as they felt too thin, so we wormed them and put them into a field that has a lot of grass and hopefully they will fill out over the next month, so we can send them to the mart at the end of October/early November. We want them away before the bad weather arrives, which if the the local farmers are to be believed, will happen before Christmas, as yet again the ewes are coming off the Moors fat and our remaining ewes are starting to pile on the pounds. So we shall see what happens.

Foraging....

Yesterday, with the pending weather warning of severe winds, we went out foraging for the wild plums/bullaces from some trees on the common land and the trees in our hedges.

This is the result of our mornings work which amounted to a staggering 43kgs of fruit. We're making some in to wine, but the rest has gone into the freezer to use up at a later date.
Now that the strong winds have arrived today, if we had not picked the fruit I doubt if much of it would have been left today.

British Wool Weekend

The British Wool Weekend was at Harrogate this weekend and as the Shetland Sheep Society were selling some of my Shetland Humbug for me, going to support the show today seemed the right thing to do. I'm glad I went, it was interesting, and I got to meet up with some old faces and talk about wool and it confirmed my decision that I should have a stand there next year, if June, the organiser decides to run the event again. I know that is was a big commitment on her behalf and it could have been publicised more, but the stallholders that went enjoyed themselves and were talking about attending again next year.

Peace and Quiet

All is peace and quiet here today, as we took our 5 Maran Cockerels to Thirsk Auction Mart this morning. It meant a 5am start to ensure we were at the Mart by 7am. Last night we put the Cockerels into their respective carrying cages to save time this morning, but it didn't stop them crowing in the car as we were driving over to Thirsk. But as Cornflakes (our Cream Leg Bar cockerel) no has no one to compete with, he's just happy quietly clucking to his ladies. I've left the 2 remaining Maran hens in their original hen coup as I suspect that one of them has a slight attack of leg mite, so I want to treat her before putting all the hens together.
The cream leg bar chicks that were in the barn have now been moved outside into the plastic Solway hen coup to run on and grow on before I sell the 2 young cockerels and create one flock of 10 hens for Cornflakes to preside over. I might put leg rings on his daughters so in the future, if I decide to raise chicks again, I will be able to remove Cornflake's daughters from the run for a couple of day so that I collect fertile eggs from unrelated stock.