This is the time of year for lambs. For the past few weeks lights have been on in the barns all night, and farmer’s families, friends and relatives have all been busy helping with lambing. Now the lambs are being brought out into the fields.

The lane by my house is quite narrow and leads up to the high fells so farmers use quad bikes and trailers to go up and down, taking hay in winter and now bringing the ewes with their lambs. The lambs are stowed in blue boxes next to the ewes to keep them comfortable in the tailer on the bumpy track.

Once released the lambs scamper away with their mums pottering along behind calling out after them “slow down, wait for me, this is a new field, stay safe!”. Before long the new lambs have got together with those already there and are chasing around in a mini-flock while the ewes graze exhaustedly. 

Meanwhile, as all this is going on around me, I’ve been making compost. A handyman in the village kindly made some compost bins for me and I’ve been moving last year’s grass cuttings and leaf sweepings from the pile in the corner of the garden to the new bins.

The plan is to convert the corner of the garden, which the previous owner used for compost, into a ‘play area’ for when (hopefully) grandchildren come to visit. So I’ve been forking half made compost into a barrow and wheeling it across the garden to the new bins, and forking it out again. 

In the Autumn the farmer left a pile of muck in the field for my neighbour to put on their garden, and they said I was welcome to some of it. Quite a bit is still left so I’ve been taking my barrow round into the field and forking muck into the barrow and forking that into the compost heap as well.

Compost heaps are a serious business and I’ve bought a compost heap thermometer to make sure I do it all scientifically. I’m resting my aching shoulders this evening as I write this and I hope all the forking is worth it! Once that thermometer starts to dial up into the green zone I’ll know my compost heap is active and it’s on the way.

As I was barrowing old compost and muck to and fro, my neighbouring farmer passed by to collect eggs from his hens. They are beautiful pale blue eggs and very delicious. He sells the excess in a Tupperware container on a wall by his farm. I try and make sure I have enough change kept handy to buy half a dozen as I walk by.

“Hello” I said as he was going into the hen house. I plucked up courage “What did you think of the wall repairs?”. Referring to the wall I’d written about in my last blog. He said “Aye” and went into the hen house to gather eggs. 

When he came out he said very kindly and in a friendly way, so there was no malice intended at all “Well, it wouldn’t win any awards”. 

Have you ever been damned by faint praise? I’m minded to take the whole wall down again and rebuild it better! Though that will need to wait as there are other jobs to do first.

Rowan on the Moor

A Moodscope member