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Recently purchased 8 new sheep for the farm. 

The three in the foreground are our Suffolk sheep and the slightly camera shy brown and white sheep are the new Jacob sheep, known for their lovely fleeces. Will try to take some close up pictures.

Our new arrivals: Lutikka – the beautiful black hen very kindly given to us by some of our campers. We’ve learnt that you should never introduce just one hen to a group… they are cruel! Think “hen pecked”, “pecking order”…. all friends now but it took a good few days before they let her out of the house.

Then a couple of weeks ago, a family in Wookey gave us their 4 hens and 2 ducks as they are moving away. We built a new pen for them but as you can see one of the white ones thought she’d go off for a day trip…. in come the scissors to clip the wings. Sorry hen but there are far too many dogs and foxes lurking about! The ducks are a bit camera shy so its very hard to get a good picture of them. They’re great fun to watch waddling about the pen and dipping in the little duck pond.

Egg laying – so you may think that with 10 hens we’d be over-flowing with eggs? Well not quite – they all decided to go off laying. Apparently its perfectly normal at this time of year – they’re just doing their autumn moult thing. I’m getting 3 or 4 a day now so hopefully they are getting back on track.

A fab weekend – still recovering! For Saturday night we had guitars, keyboard, drums and a sax all jamming away in the music tent with words on the screen so we could sing along. We also had campfire songs and junk percussion around the campfire. Torrential rain didn’t dampen the spirits, just the fire so we moved in under the music tent to carry on the fun.

After a slowish start to the day on Sunday, we were back with the music in the evening. More guitars, drums, singing and enthusiastic campers. I only got a few pictures so if anyone has any, please do email them to me and I can add them to the website.

Thank you Shaun for organising the music and projector. Thank you Tasha and Ben for the campfire songs.

We’ve just spent a fun afternoon, along with campers, building two tyre rope swings. These are in the field next to the campsite, along the river walk. Ian is doing the final test on the swing and making a monkey of himself – more pictures in the photo gallery.

I woke to a very strange sight the other day. Here’s how the story goes…

…no not a UFO, but a feed bin. Some strange characters knocking about though.

Chloe is a first year vet student at Liverpool Uni and spent three days with us at the end of June. She was keen to learn all about goats and get as much experience as possible. Here she is giving one of the kids a clostridial vaccination. She also helped with the foot trimming, vaccinating all the other goats, milking, general health as well as all the everyday chores. On the final afternoon we arranged to visit one of the larger commercial herds near Shepton mallet where they are milking 700 goats! Thanks Chloe – you were a fantastic help.
I think her hair might be being nibbled!

The goats are out! We have made a paddock at the front of the building and 21 goats and 3 sheep are all happily settled in. They took a fair bit of coaxing out of the old shed and it took several trips shaking a bucket of feed to get them all across. They seem to be enjoying their new paddock now, dancing about in the sun.

Goats kidding everyday – lost count of how many kids! Very cute – lots of frolicking in the hay and even some goat acrobatics. Just wish they would stay still long enough for me to get a picture.