Goodbye schopp sheep!

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It's all GO GO GO at the farm at the moment! So its prime seeding time.. which means these next few weeks are about crushing rocks, boom spraying the paddocks with some sort of poison and then of course planting the seeds with a hugeeeeeeeee seeding machine. So aside from that, the past weekend was all about the sheep. They were sheared a few weeks ago and their wool was sent off last week some time, but now mr farmer has been fattening them all up with grain because it's time for them to go and become someones dinner. Quite sad really! We rounded all the sheep up which is quite a slow process as you have to drive around the fields and collect the sheep which basically means scaring them into walking towards the pens. Whichever way we go.. they go the other. Plus we have to drive at the same pace as the sheep because if we make them run, they lose a few kilos which is what mr farmer does NOT want. So eventually after huddling them all in the pens they get drafted.. between the fatsos and the skinnies, then the next day a fella called James comes round to weigh them. Each one gets bundled into a little crate and it worked out that any 53 kilos and over were fat enough to be slaughtered. Dave helped push the sheep and got his foot pissed on, it was tres amusing 😊 (for me anyway). So the fat ones had some blue spray put on their heads so we could tell which ones were to be sent off and which ones need to be kept here to be fed more.

The truck arrived to collect on Sunday. I honestly was quite upset.. all these lambs have NO idea what's gonna happen. The truck was already packed with loads of lambs from other farmers, all as clueless as each other. So he set loose these 2 dogs, they were immense! They weren't sheep dogs but they might as well be, they got straight to work. The guy gave out commands and they would do them straight away, they put poor little Jack (the dog here) to shame. He's out of control! I can tell Mr farmer doesn't particuarly like using dogs to control the lambs as he kept telling the guy to let him move them himself. So I know they don't do much except eat, but the lambs walking onto this truck and I'm thinking.. you're gonna DIE. It's really horrible! I guess that's the way of farm life. Poor little buggers.. Me and Dave got a few snapshots of the moment and then said goodbye as they were carted away.

So the ewe's are due to have their babies soon so they've been put in a seperate paddock to let them give birth, the baby lambs are SO adorable!! Dave ran one over with the stone roller the other day, it wasn't a pretty sight. Also right, he lost his glasses in the other farm the other week as he stupidly put them on top of the roller and then drove off so they were crushed into the ground, so he decided he wanted to go back and try and find them. So we set off with some rakes and dig the hell out of the field to where he 'thinks' he dropped them and there were all these ewes with these baby lambs in the field, some guy rents it out to put his sheep on while Kevin isn't using it. So we decide we want a picture holding one of the babies. We drive around chasing them and by accident we seperate one of the babies from their mums and they run off in opposite directions.. holy shit we have never felt so guilty! The little lamb kept bleating and crying out for his mummy and we couldn't help it because whenever we went near it ran away. It just wandered around aimlessly with all the other sheep but was being left behind crying. So eventually the mum comes nearby again and we can see she is searching for her baby, and then the lamb sees her.. and I have never seen a baby lamb sprint so fast across a field.. it was a heart-melting moment!! Me and Dave both went 'AWWWWWWW' at the same time and I nearly felt like crying because it was so sweet!! The lamb and its mum just cuddled up to each other relieved to be reunited. So that was the highlight of my day..

Oh and we never found his lost glasses, shocker eh?

Chow xxxx

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