Rebekah Housden: Starting lambing as a ‘rare-breed’ farmer

With January out of the way, we are on the home straight hurtling towards the start of lambing.

All the winter jobs filled the start of the year: patching fences, putting new gateways in, fixing feeders, catching moles – the list is endless.

With chapped hands from the wintery East wind, we manage to find some contentment in completing these (arguably better in summer) jobs while there’s time, knowing that we will thank ourselves for the foresight in the next couple of weeks.

See also: Rebekah Housden – beer-related therapy (in moderation) can help

About the author

Rebekah Housden

Rebekah Housden is based at Roadhead in Cumbria, and has worked on a farm with 600 ewes for 11 years. She also shares a smallholding of 90 ewes. She is a first-responder, a parish clerk, runs a community bar and caters for rural weddings. 

Read more articles by Rebekah Housden

In between the housekeeping tasks, the ewes have been munching their way through the silage pit, turning us from hoping they eat it all to hoping there is enough – I’m pretty sure we wonder this every year.

January sailed by for the sheep and they are looking well – bagging up and ready to pop, but always with the Sword of Damocles hanging over the morning checks.

Will they all run out of the shed? What chaos have they arranged?

Like expectant parents reluctant to bring the pram into the house, we carefully prepare the lambing pens, trying to remember what we vowed 12 months ago – to definitely do or not do.

Every adjustment is discussed over a minimum of three cups of coffee to ensure that we have considered every aspect, and we aim (along with every other sheep farmer) to keep losses to a minimum.

The sheep will perform the same and deliver the same outcome regardless of the market, but still at breakfast each day we check the prices from the day before, locally and nationwide – not that you should ever count your chickens.

We can only hope that poor scanning reports in areas which suffered drought will help to boost the early lamb prices.

Or that the protests which have been held contribute to improved food security and that standards for imported meat might be raised to match our own.

With another block of farmland just half a mile up the road scheduled to be commercially tree planted, us sheep farmers are turning into a rare breed.