the end of lambing

I often say that the best lambs of the year are the first and the last, the rest just seem to disappear into a complete blur. It’s been a pretty good lambing season this year, mainly because of the amazing weather. Our first lambs were born in the last week in March, these lambs are now six weeks old and have hardly felt rain on their backs!  Lamb numbers have been quite good too. We’ll never produce as many lambs from our Romney ewes as you can from other breeds of sheep, but as much of the farm is of  poor grazing, I still believe that we are best off aiming to produce an average of one and a half lambs from each ewe. It’s not just the weather that makes for a  good lambing, the flock was in excellent condition this year, which meant that they lambed with plenty of milk and produced good sized lambs.

So all in all it’s been a good year and has set us on course for a successful 2011. But when you are a farmer you always need something to worry (moan) about and at the moment it’s the lack of rain. It has hardly rained at Borough Farm since February and the ponds are already dry. So we are either in for the worst drought ever, or else (and more likely) it’s going to start raining and not stop all summer! So we’d better make the most of  this dry weather while it lasts.