Sheep milk

We have started to milk some ewes, those with only one lamb and plenty of milk. The lambs will stay with their mothers till they weight +/- 12 - 15 kg. It is no rocked science like deciding who to milk and how much but the strongest boys and girls will be weaned first.

Lamb care

New life deserves a decent welcome. Our ewes are left in or close to the herd to lamb so they wont get extra stress. After that it is: clip - dip - strip - sip
- clip long umbilical cords (if necessary)
- dip them in iodine
- strip the wax plug out of the ewe's teats
- and be sure that the lamb sips some colostrum as soon as possible if necessary with some assistance
Then mother and baby go to our lambing stable where they often receive a warm welcome from the other mothers. For the records all lambs are weighted as well. Now six pens in the stable are occupied, soon some sheep will move back to the herd.

Farm girl

With mild weather it is again a pleasure to have Katinka around when working outside. She loves to jump in the mud, visit the baby-sheep, feed the chickens (and run after them) and look with great interest when mum is milking.

Pests and plagues

Pictures taken this morning through our kitchen window - breakfast with a view!

If you farm you always have undesired species feeding on your crops, growing on your fields or contaminating your livestock. Most are just called pest, plagues or weeds. We enjoy all kinds of wildlife roaming on our fields. Big herds of different kind of deer, wild pigs, foxes and pheasants. A great experience for us and also for our campsite guests. When food becomes rare they start attacking the winter feed from our sheep, goats and horse. Electric fencing has failed to keep deer away ... they broke it down and finally even carried it away. In the snow you can see that many tracks go in the direction of our alfalfa silage. We now leave the lesser quality for our hungry wild friends - cheaper than renewing fences ever second day.

Boys boys boys

First four lambs are born .... all of them boys!

Snow

Friends have parked their car on our farm, I both hope they will collect it but also that they don't do it now!