Lambing live was a great success for Mathew Cole

We had our second year of lambing live at Greenwell this week, and once again it has been a fantastic success, with more than 300 members of the general public and numerous schools and children’s groups attending. Mum worked really hard pulling it all together and it has once again been very well received.

We had about 50 a night and gave them a guided tour of our lambing shed, including a breakdown of what we do on a modern beef and sheep hill farm. They then got the opportunity to wander around the shed, where they could observe the lambing and lambed ewes and chat about what was happening.

The children loved our orphan lambs and on most nights we managed to see live births. We had several volunteers who gave up their time to help, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all. Dartmoor Farmers did the catering and I was very pleased to be eating beef every night last week. I am not sure Gemma approved however.

While all this was going on, lambing started with a flurry, both at Greenwell and the Prison, with good lambs so far at both farms. Dave is off work with a bad leg for a few weeks, so labour is being spread thin just at the wrong time and poor Mark is running between both farms while we are a man down. However, the cavalry arrive this weekend in the form of our Bristol vet students, who can take up some of the lambing slack.

Matthew Cole and