I heard a bleating noise the other week, and wandered outside to find these woolly menaces hanging around on the drive. They'd obviously found their way over a bit of fallen down wall, so once they'd returned to their own field, we patched up the wall and figured that was the end of it. A few days later, we heard bleating again. Fourteen sheep this time, in the front garden, munching on the flowers. Three sheep in a field is cute. Fourteen sheep in your front garden is not. Have you ever tried to make sheep do something specific? I hadn't, and I can tell you it's not as easy as those sheepdogs make it look. There wasn't much point fixing the wall again until the sheep were back on their own side of it, but that meant that over several days more found their way in, until we had almost thirty happily grazing their way through our fields. I quite like sheep. In fact, we both prefer them to cows, and I don't in principle have an issue with sharing our grass with a few hungry sheep. However, we have an agreement with the local dairy farmer to use our fields for his pregnant cows, who seemed rather bemused by the sudden addition of a flock of sheep. The advantage of the cows is that they come with a responsible farmer in tow. He checks them daily, and if we notice something wrong, we can ring, and he will check again. With the sheep it's different. Ringing the farmer elicited no response (not even when we found one ill just over the wall into his field), and I eventually had to find out where he lived and go round. Of course, by the time they made it over here, the sheep had hopped back into their own field (after over a week in ours), ruining the wall in the process. So now we have several sections of wall to repair, and that's still not the issue solved, as I've watched several just jump clean over the wall without even touching it. Clearly the grass is actually greener on this side of the wall.
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Hello!Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Jenni, and I write here about our new foray into country living, which includes growing food, knitting, baking, wandering around the fields, and seeing which local cafe serves the best cake. Categories
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February 2024
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