Reindeers wrecked our roof!

We hand fed some day old lambs today. They were all the third siblings and Peter (the farmer) remarked how the mothers would visably relax once he'd taken the third babe away. Awww. isn't that sort of sad? He said they get flustered and it seemed (to him) that they could not cope. That and only having two 'milkers' I suppose. We bottle fed them raw cow milk. Isaac and Fe climbed into the pen, and were overjoyed - Felix practically lay down in the straw and let them climb all over him! The mothers were only a couple of metres away in little fenced off bits and were content and lying snoozing or letting their other lambs nurse. The thin sounding 'maaa-ing' of their 'lost' infants didn't seem to concern them. Peter said he thought their sense of smell was much stronger than their hearing. Still, it was pretty wonderful to hold them and feed them. Peter talked about the powdered lamb formula, how he thought it just the biggest scam. How once it was watered down as suggested on the bags it was just a horrid 'milk' which didn't help the lambs put on weight - then the biggest test of all, once they were switched to solids (grass) their digestive systems couldn't cope at all and many died. Terrible terrible stuff. Like human milk substitutes then I said, basically indigestable. The raw cow milk, he reckoned, was great, they hardly ever lost a lamb and they all coped brilliantly when put to pasture. He thanked us for helping him feed the six little stragglers (ahhh, I was just about to thank him) and said, come again, come again! It's funny, we hardly see him. He is always off busy busy and not seen around the yard but at lambing, he always finds time to feed the little 'triplets' :) One year he said there were sixteen of them. All survived and were healthy as butter, wooly balls. Still 20-25 ewes to lamb so we'll have more to hand feed next time I think.

This afternoon we spent in the garden. Isaac with odd clothing!
Fe playing with the hastily made sandpit 'kitchen'

The results of my afternoon of 'homely' domesticity (folded pile of line dried night- nappies and spelt, maple and coconut cookies - what I left out of the picture, further over on the worktop was my chicken stock 17 hours of simmering)

We had a roofer around later this afternoon. Isaac ran in to tell me their was a man on our roof, yeah, daddy called him to fix the tiles. Isaac ran around and introduced himself and proceeded to shout up and tell 'Nick the roofer' that the missing and broken tiles were the result of Father Christma's visit. The reindeers were pretty messy up there!

The shining sun made me feel like taking some pics of the new greenery in my teeny tiny garden. Last yrs garden shoots up some forgotten garlic
The lavender, rosemary, sage, fennel, chives, lemon balm. The beautiful apple smelling chamomile is further over with the mint. You can see how dry (er... 'well drained') the soil is, I don't water it at all but still the green :)