Lambing
I have finally managed to bring myself to type more than a sentence! As i said in my last post, I was on night duty on sunday. The boss hadn't had a night off since lambing and I thought as i would only be sitting watching crap TV or on FW and MSN I volunteered. Surprisingly, it went quite well. The first few hours flew by, I mucked out, went over had a check on the pigs and then sat out in the yard, watched the sun go down. It was a good night actually, a lovely red sky!
Then darkness fell so head lamp on, ipod on. I was praying the pig would farrow and a few lambs would be born (just to keep me busy) but the pig didn't and i only had a delivery at 9 pm and then again at around 3am. It went well, however last night (mon night) was the first time i had any sleep till saturday night as I kept getting distracted yesterday - note - always turn mobile off, and stick a notice on the door that says make a noise and you will get shot! As you will gather, i was a miserable ****!
However, lambs are doing well, as are ewes, we have had a few losses on the lamb front but they will go off to the hunt and there werent many that died - a couple had to be dispatched for various reasons though. The orphaned lambs are on a auto feeder but i still bottle fed one - while another tried to eat my rigger boot
.
But now lambings just about over (only about 8 left) I must say although a bit tiring, it was very good! At 4 in the morning trying to get a ewe into a pen you wonder why you do it but the satisfaction of seeing the lambs with ewes out in the field and see your hard work pay off- you relise why. So, now i have got a permanent job there, its fencing next! But I now have a lambing shed song - its ''somewhere over the rainbow'' - thats the song that was on when i delivered my first lamb (so sweet i hear you say - i drink pints you know - I'm no sentimental, I'm a real man!
) And, no, of course I am not listening to it as i write this! 
Farm Diversification
Also, as the normal teenager that I am, i read them magazines - yes you know what i mean - the ones you get free from sainsburys! It had a great article in there about something that has been introduced in the UK. It is from the same man who brought centre parks to the UK. What it is, is farmers can sort of diversify if you like, and you get this company in, they put a base and a tent up etc etc and people can come to you on holiday - its a farm holiday. It sounds really good and its not to easy to say in a short blog post (well trying to keep it relatively short) but they come on the farm, look at cows etc, live outside, no hot water and no heating and its aimed for city dwellers and they stay for say a week/weekend and you get paid for it - it looks really good, give me a shout if anyone wants a look at the article - I'm going to try and find it on t'internet. It looks ideal if you are a stock farmer and can spare a little land (I dont think it even needs to be fenced off but to avoid a bit insurance claim its probz best)!
Shoot
Works busy on the shoot (grandad is away at mo so i like to think i am in charge
) so just feeders to take down (due to the massive amount the last shoot had up - we took it over just this year after dropping our last one) and the pond to sort out due to the leakyness of it. Apart from that were pretty much sorted - apart from the new pen to build for next year!
I also managed to plant some spuds last week so hopefully they will be good - they want to be i was knackered after!