A Gentleman Farmer's Farm

Spring is Lambing Season!

The lambs are SO cute, bounding around in every rock-walled field throughout the Dales. A friend of ours lives out in one of the smaller villages and has a gentleman farmer friend who let several folks, including Bill and I, visit during lambing season.

We got to see a lamb who was only a few hours old. I wanted to hold the super young lamb, but the farmer thrust that wee lamb into our friend's arms... and I was immediately glad, as I realized the wet umbilical cord was a'danglin' and the lamb promptly pooped on her sweater. Whew, dodged a bullet, there! And 5 minutes later the mom proceded to deliver the afterbirth right in front of us. Yup, this was a real, working farm all right!

We saw lots & lots of moms with their newborn lambs. The farmers spray paint #1 on the first mom & lamb pair, then #2 on the second pair and so on so that they know who belongs to whom. 

I eventually got to hold an adorable 3-day old black sheep, who was super sweet. Almost made me want to give up eating lamb. Almost.

Once the newborns are feeding well and doing well, they get to go out into the fields. We hiked around in the fields and got to see a lot more sheep and slightly older lambs. We also got to see a horse and her week-old foal. They only stuck around for a minute, so this is the best picture we took.

 

And finally, no farm is complete without a rooster! 

PS Driving home from the farm we spotted a wee lamb who had bounded over its rock-wall fence and was in the road. All of his/her little lamb friends were bleating on the other side of the fence, but this little lamb just couldn't figure out how to make it back over. We stopped our car on this small two-lane road and Bill hopped out, grabbed the lamb and plopped it on the other side of the fence. The wee lamb and all its buddies happily bounded away, and the other drivers who had to stop for us smiled and nodded a quick thanks before we all drove our separate ways. Bill's a rock star!! :-)