Friday 18 May 2012

New season lamb, yum!


Another favourite time of year for us is when our our new season lamb starts. We sold our first 2 lambs at Wallingford farmers market last week although the temperature was more like a November market! Extraordinary weather. New season lamb is a lot paler in colour to our lambs which were born last March. Our favourite new season cuts are chops and cutlets which will literally melt in your mouth and take minutes to cook, yum! Even Belle is licking her lips in this picture!

As I write now we have glorious sunshine which is so lovely to see, we have missed it. It is only now that it is easier to see the benefits of the last few weeks of rain as everything looks so green and the grass looks fantastic. The lambs will just be starting to eat the grass and take less milk off their Mum's so they will be really benefiting.

Before we know it we will be haymaking and thinking about winter again!

We are at Henley farmers market this Thursday and Wantage on Saturday, come and see us!

Camilla, Roly, Molly, Boris and Belle

Thursday 3 May 2012

Green, green grass!

We must be one of the few people who have had smiles on our faces over the last few days. The rain has made us very happy, we have needed it for a long time to help the grass grow to feed our flock over the summer and winter months as well. We have already shut the hay meadow gates to keep the sheep out and let the grasses grow for their winter forage. We feel so grateful we had the warm weather while we were lambing in March, the sheep don’t look too amused right now but the lambs are strong and able to put up with the wet, although we have moved some sheep off the meadows next to the River Thames onto higher ground, as they are not good swimmers! Roly took some great photos yesterday when out and about, I love the one with the ducks next to the sheep and such a treat to see a roe deer so close poking its head out of the oilseed rape! I had a call from Roly as he was driving into Oxford this morning on his way to the farmers market to say the river was really high so I took Molly to check the sheep and thankfully the field they are in is still managing to keep them dry. The river is flowing so fast and is definitely swollen and has spread to the riverbanks and over in some places. It was really exciting standing and watching the water racing past. Molly thought the puddles in the fields were great fun! The sheep seem pretty unfazed by it all but will be very happy when it dries out and they can shake the extra weight of the water off their fleeces. We have a 10% discount offer on our 1/4 and 1/2 lamb packs at the moment. Drop us an email if you would like to place an order, first come first served! More soon Camilla, Roly, Molly, Boris and Belle