Sunday 6 April 2008

Snowstorm

Out bleary-eyed at 6.30am to find small polystyrene pellets clinging to my hair. I find a beautiful pair of big ewe lambs have been born since the last check, the first birth I think that has gone unattended; the ewe must have gone from nought to sixty swiftly and easily.
I feed and water everything accompanied by excitable bleating. Now the majority of the ewes have lambed and are outside, they bellow at me to get a move on as I walk through them to the feed troughs. They try to get their noses into the bucket as I move fast to avoid being tripped up by their eagerness. I iodine the new lambs, feed the llama, let out the geese and the ducks and fill a haynet for the ram. The polystyrene balls are turning to flakes, thick and heavy, and start to settle. I grab my camera and as the sun comes out to melt the snow, take a record of the morning's chilly beauty.

9 comments:

James Higham said...

Oh what I wouldn't give for polystyrene pellets in the hair? Cause that would mean I had hair.

mountainear said...

The snow lying on the fleece shows what a good insulant wool is doesn't it? Perhaps we should make more use of it in insulating our homes - from memory it's pretty slow to burn too.On second thoughts perhaps it would be too much of a moth magnet.

Swearing Mother said...

What a start to such a snowy morning. Hope you had your thermals on Mopsa.

Anonymous said...

lovely looking lambs. the snow came and was gone in no time here.

KAZ said...

Toally irrelevant pieces of information no 27:
Iodine is das Jod in German - the only element with a different symbol (J not I)
Sorry about that - do you use it as a marker?
Those pictures are lovely.

Mopsa said...

Goodness, Bretwalda, I can't keep up with your extraordinary name changes. Have some of mine(hair) I have plenty to spare.

M'ear - but if they ate the insulation perhaps they'd leave the sweaters alone?

No thermals SM, just the usual 2 pairs of trousers!

CIG - ditto - but it's come and gone 3 mornings in a row now.

Kaz, I was always hopeless at chemistry. The iodine is to dip their umbilical cord/navel into - it dries the cord up quickly and stops infection entering in through that very vulnerable point. Have a google for navel-ill if you want to know more!

Anonymous said...

Ace pictures !

However, have you :-

A/ Obtained the lambs permission ?

B/ Negotiated with them over payment for their 'image rights' ?

Until you have done these, perhaps you ought to 'pixellate' them - we don't want to be getting 'sewed', now do we.. ?

Anonymous said...

Ace picture also of mopsa's tail wagging so quickly the picture is blurry ! Can you tell us where you live so we can all come down and move in and live in a hippy love commune kinda way ? You should know before acceding to this request that I am absolutely hopeless at farming [which is why I moved from the country] and my willy is rather small in this very cold weather - but I am hoping that it will warm up shortly..

Mopsa said...

Anon, I had full written permission from the owner - me. And my friends are welcome but this is no commune. Suggest you hunt closer to Totnes for the alternative lifestyle.