The Open Farm Sunday comedown!!

Phew, what a day! We absolutely loved every second and thank you so much to all of you for coming along and making it so special and to all our amazing helpers too, we couldn't have done it without you!

We woke up to rain and thought uh oh this wasn't forecast...but it soon cleared and we had the perfect weather with a bit of a breeze and then it tipped it down again at about 7pm, so we were so lucky!

There were so many highlights, in particular the sheep racing we found such fun to organise and everyone seemed to really enjoy it, they looked hilarious! Roly had bought t shirts and teddies as jockies from the charity shop and we were busy sewing them on Friday night wondering how many other farmers would be doing something similar! Henry, Amelia, Tiny and Daisy were all little stars in their own right, Amelia won every race and little Tiny and Daisy always bringing up the rear! Take a look at some of the photos above. Thank you to Sally and Helen and Victoria who did a great job taking the bets and Bethany and Melanie who were chief racers!

Roly did sheepdog demonstrations with Bel and Meg and ran the sheep through the handling system for the children to check their weight and see if they were fit for market. We wanted to have a clear farming message during the day that whilst we take the greatest care of our sheep we are a businesss and we had our lamb burgers for sale up next to the Poem Tree which everyone said were delicious! Charlotte and my amazing godmother Anthea worked so hard cooking them all, we are so grateful.

Linda from Little Wittenham was a star with her beautiful face paints, we had tigers, butterflies, sheep (of course) and bumblebees to name a few. Carol was in charge of wonderful children's activities and Christine and Bobbie chatting and handing out all the amazing resources we had been sent as part of the Open Farm Sunday resource pack from LEAF. And of course Billie, who was wonderful entertaining everyone on the trailer ride and Mikey driving the tractor around. Finally Derek and Marian for coming all the way from London to help, thank you! Derek and I then had to give a presentation the following day which was quite a challenge, switching back into work mode! Derek and I know each other through our work, me at LEAF and Derek works for the CLA, the Country Land and Business Association.

We are busy recovering as are the sheep! Henry, Amelia, Tiny and Daisy are now all happily out in the field by Paradise Wood munching on lots of clover. I'm just about to walk over and see them as it is such a lovely evening.

We've heard other farms around the country had great events too, have a look at the Farm Sunday website to see some photos. Although I know some were cancelled due to the weather so again we feel very blessed.

Other news on the farm is that this week is that we are busy making hay to feed the sheep during winter. The forecast is looking promising for a few dry days which is great. It is being cut today and then baled on Friday, fingers crossed, we will share some photos with you soon.

Thank you again

Camilla, Roly, Boris, Meg and Bel

Warming up!

Whilst we were out checking the sheep this weekend, we could hardly believe that a few months ago we were crunching through snow and breaking ice in water troughs! Today we were in shorts and sun hats! All the sheep were sheltering in the shade out of the sun and didn't appreciate seeing Meg and Bel appearing to round them up for us to check and count. They are all looking well and we feel very proud!

At the moment the grass is ok but we do need some rain soon to encourage fresh growth. We are starting to think about cutting some of the grass for winter feed but we will talk about that more when the time comes.

We had the ewe lambs (born last year who we will breed from this year) shorn last week and they look so much happier without their thick coats. The boys (rams) also had a haircut. Brian was amazing with them as always, so gentle.

We had Richard over to clear the sheds out of all the straw that built up over the winter, it was amazing to watch, it didn't take long at all! (see photo). It is all now piled up in the yard ready to be spread on the arable fields belonging to the Northmoor Trust later in the year as part of their fertiliser plan. Nice to think all resources which we produce are being recycled and everything has a value.

Our philosophy with our sheep is taking the greatest care of them and working with our environment. Nationally there is a problem with resistance to treatments available for sheep with worms, so we are keen to only treat them when we know there is a problem. We have been successful in a grant application to buy a 'Fecpak' which is a tool to help us count worm eggs and then decide whether the sheep need treatment or not. If the egg count is sufficiently low then there is no need but above a certain threshold it is best to treat to make sure our sheep don't suffer. The other photo above shows Adelle our vet running a course which we hosted in our lambing sheds, to teach us and 3 other farmers how to use the Fecpak kit. We're looking forward to using the Fecpak to help us manage our flock better.

Our next event is Open Farm Sunday on the 13th June which we are hosting with the Northmoor Trust, highlights will include tractor and trailer rides, sheep racing and sheep dog demos by Meg and Bel. Open Farm Sunday is organised nationally by LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming) where lots of farms all open up on the same day to welcome visitors onto their farms.

Did we mention we have now called 'little Meg' Bel? She seems to be happy with her new name, and is settling in well. It is funny having a young dog around, she is very enthusiastic but we are all still getting used to one another. We will post a photo of her soon, she is very pretty!

Farmers markets are all going well and we are busy selling our lamb burgers which everyone says are really tasty. Please come along and see us and taste one for yourself!

Roly, Camilla, Boris, Bel and Meg

May on the farm

May is my favourite month - the blossom in the orchard at the bottom of our garden is almost in full bloom, but I love it at the stage it is now, pink on the edge with a hint of what is to come. The grass is finally starting to grow properly and the long evenings are just a joy after such a long, cold winter! Having said that, we had another frost the night before last which caught us a bit by surprise.

All the sheep are now outside, we had one or two left in the sheds for an extra week after the main batch had lambed. One particular favourite had triplets in the end and in fact she is the only ewe on the farm supporting 3, all the others who had 3 we managed to foster onto ewes who only had single lambs. So our little family of 3 are doing really well and she is such a good Mum and plenty of milk for all of them. We love going to check them everyday. The daily checks can take anything from 2 to 4 hours depending on what we find. Our group of ewe lambs (who we will be breeding from next year) are down by the river, such a lovely field but it has a footpath going through it and unfortunately we caught a dog lose amongst them yesterday which resulted in one of our girls having a swim to the other side. An amazing guy called Chris jumped in and rescued her whilst we watched helplessly from the other side. Roly managed to find where he was and picked the sheep up and brought her back round in the truck, what a drama!

Our other real excitement is a new 4 legged addition to the family who we have named Bella, Bel for short. She is a lovely dog and came from Emma in Norfolk who has clearly trained her so well but it is taking us and Bel a little while to get used to one another as well as Meg and Boris of course. Boris thinks its great having another playmate and Meg wasn't sure at first but now they are sharing their kennel and seem happy cosying up together. Bel is really pretty, she is tri coloured, so she has some brown markings in her unlike Meg who is just black and white. I can't quite believe we've got 3 dogs! One of the photos at the top shows Meg having a haircut, she had carefully built up mudballs all through the winter which we carefully removed with some sheep shears, we were slightly concerned we had given her a mullet haircut! Poor Meg!

It was really exciting starting to sell our new season lamb, so some of the lambs which were born in January are now fit for us to sell. It was hard at first but gradually we are beginning to feel really proud of what we have achieved and lovely to hear feedback from our customers on how delicious the meat is. We have also started cooking and selling our lamb burgers at some of our farmers markets which seem to be going down well!

We have four little lambs in the orchard by our cottage, thanks to our lovely neighbours Clive and Liz who have let us have a small part of their amazing orchard. Every time we arrive back or leave in the car there is plenty of chat to remind us they are there! Henrietta (Henry for short), who sadly lost her Mummy and is so sweet, she has prettiest knees! And has been to visit people in local nursing homes and she has proved a real hit! See photo above. Amelia, who we found one night in one of the fields, not very happy, her Mum didn't have quite enough milk to support her and her sibling, Tiny, whose Mum didn't have any milk and has been to stay with friends of ours Laura and Charlie in Charlbury and is now back with us but missing them we think! and finally little Daisy, who a bit like Amelia, wasn't getting enough milk from her Mum.

All the lambs are growing really fast now they are outside. Being outside though presents new challenges in the form of worms and fly strike. I remember fly strike from when I was a little girl on our farm, it is when flies lay eggs on the lambs when the weather gets warmer and they hatch into maggots, it is so horrible. We have now treated all of them for this so fingers crossed we won't get any.

Finally, our next event on the farm which we will be doing jointly with our landlords the Northmoor Trust is Open Farm Sunday www.farmsunday.org on the 13th June, we will update you soon and let you know our plans, but just as a tempter, sheep racing and farm olympics are amongst the planned activities!

Thank you for reading and more from us soon.

Bye for now

Camilla, Roly, Meg, Boris . . . and now Bel too!

8 more to go and Happy Easter!

Well, what a three weeks it has been! We can't believe that we only have 10 more of our girls left to lamb, it has been amazing but a steep learning curve and some very late nights and early starts. We are certainly more than a little sleep deprived and now we can see the end in sight we are certainly beginning to feel the effects of only a few hours sleep a night!

We have had some beautiful lambs, most of whom are all outside now, we have been really worried as the weather is still pretty cold and now very wet so we are hoping that we shall have some nice warm days for them and time to allow the grass to properly grow.

Since we last wrote we have had nearly 6,000 people visit us and our girls over two lambing open weekends, it was incredible. If you are reading this and you came and saw us, thank you, it was amazing to see so many people come and be so encouraging and supportive to all that we are doing. Some were lucky to see some live lambing, others had a long wait! On Sunday 21st we had a very sad thing happen, one of our girls having only one lamb was having difficulty, we tried to help her but in the end we had to take her to our vets. We saw a lovely vet called Evan who in the end had to undertake a caesarean, I (Camilla) had to help! It was weirdly fascinating if a little gory and distressing. Sadly the lamb was dead, it was enormous and just too big for her to have had on her own and to come through the birth canal. She is now back home and being given lots of TLC by us and we will be chatting to Adelle our vet about her ongoing treatment. Many of our triplets we have successfully managed to adopt onto ewes who were only having one lamb which has been great to see. We are currently only bottle feeding two...little 'Tiny Tot' who is currently in our kitchen and receiving lots of attention from Jessica and Arabelle and who will be shortly going to stay with our friends Laura and Charlie in Charlbury. The other is Henry (Henrietta) who sadly lost her Mummy but is doing really well from the bottle and taking her chances when all the ewes are feeding from the troughs! So funny, she is so cheeky. We will be definitely keeping her, we have a real soft spot!

Now it is Easter time, what a special time of year, from the longer evenings to the daffodils and birdsong and seeing all our little ones outside, running around and generally getting up to mischief.

Just to finish on a lot of thanks you's to all our family and friends who came to help us over the two lambing weekends it was an amazing 4 days - Chazie, Sarah, Jonathan, Carol, Michael, Dave Whenmouth, Jessica, Zoe, Nel, Melanie, Bethany, Sally, Sarah, Alistair, Rosie, Poppy, Helen, David, Christine, Tamsin, Fred, David Doyle, Stephen, Fenella, Mum, Tetta and of course Meggy, who spent her time getting lots of attention from all the children! and finally the Northmoor Trust who put a lot of work into the publicity and making both weekends run so smoothly.

More soon and a very Happy Easter!

Camilla, Roly, Boris and Meg

Lambing Live!

Dare we say it...but we think spring is on its way! For the first time today everyone and everything around us seems a little bit warmer! It felt so good to feel the sun on our faces and fingers crossed we hope this weather is here to stay as we need the grass to grow...fast! and to make sure all our new lambs can go outside as quickly as possible.

All our sheep who lambed in January are now outside which is great to see. We thought this would be an easy job, just open the door to the shed and they would all rush outside with a hop, skip and a jump! But oh no....the ewes (lambs mummies) were straight out but the lambs didn't know what to do, they had never seen the great outdoors before and thought actually we are quite warm and cosy here on the straw inside...with much running around, grabbing, catching, falling over we managed to get them outside, we were exhausted! We were so worried about them the first few nights as we were still having some hard frosts, but apparently we are told that the cold is ok, its when it is wet that you need to really keep an eye on the lambs.

We have been glued to Lambing Live the last few nights, we have learnt a lot from the Beavans in Wales and thought the programme was brilliant. We really liked how they covered the whole sheep year from the tup (the daddy) right the way through to seeing the lambs being born. We hope it will create lots more interest in our lambing weekends coming up.

So, we have had one or two early arrivals the last few days, some great little lambs, one that is serioiusly cute who we have named 'Johnny' after Johnny who came to see them last week who is nearly 3 years old and lives in Abu Dhabi with his Mummy and Daddy, Rimps and Jim, our lovely friends who were over for a weeks holiday. We have had some sadnesses too with some being too little and weak to make it once they had been born, we find this really hard, we wonder if it will get easier. Tomorrow is our official due date, the maternity wing in the lambing sheds are looking very expectant but very content. We are so looking forward to our lambing weekends these next two weekends and showing everyone what we have been up to.

We have applied for some funding for a mobile sheep handling system for the sheep which will really help us when the sheep are all outside again. We have also applied for support to help us buy a 'faecal egg counter'. Doesn't sound that glamorous! But it will be a brilliant management tool for us to help us manage our worming system. We only want to worm the sheep if it is absolutely necessary not just routinely. So fingers crossed we will be successful.

We have just had some friends to stay this weekend, Eddie, Lucy and their daughter Roberta, Toby, Bhupi and little Kabir and Ben! Some of them feature in our photos above for this post. A first mothers day for Lucy and Bhupi which was really special that they were here with us and amongst lots of other expectant mummies!

Michael starts helping us tomorrow who is on work experience from Sparsholt College and Caroline continues to be an amazing support and will be helping us run the childrens activities over the lambing weekends.

We look forward to seeing as many of you that can make it over the next two weekends, a time which we think will be really exciting, we can't wait!

Camilla, Roly, Boris and Meg

The calm before the storm.....

We are waiting for our next 200 sheep to start lambing on the 15th March, they are definitely beginning to show signs of having their lambs soon! Lots of big tummies and they seem to be constantly hungry! Our other sheep who have had their lambs we are longing to get them outside to start eating some yummy spring grass, but it still isn't quite warm enough (see the weather forecast in the photo from last week!) for the grass to start growing. The lambs are growing well but they just need to have some sun on their backs now. We are bottle feeding one or two, little Fred, who is a real character, who was one of a triplet, and two others whose Mum is struggling to support them both and then one other who suddenly looked a little hunched and hungry the other day.

We have our first Cropsharers! Our lovely neighbours the Duffs have subscribed and will get some lamb every month and Alistair Duff comes and helps us out when he can. He has been brilliant and is really good with the sheep and seems a natural with animals. We've also had Caroline helping us and we are looking forward to having Michael join us in a couple of weeks when we start lambing in earnest.

Our lambing weekends are fast approaching, we are busy organising them with the Northmoor Trust, there will be plenty to see and do, Meg is in training for some sheepdog demonstrations! We will be selling our lamb burgers again and Charlotte our friend in Oxford will be making them for us that week and cooking them over the first weekend. Tetta, Roly's sister will be cooking them for us the second weekend.

We are hoping to host farm visits to see the sheep for the Let Nature Feed Your Senses project (http://www.letnaturefeedyoursenses.org/). We had James Taylor from LEAF and Jen from the Sensory Trust come to visit us to make sure we are suitable for the types of visitors would be having. The target audience for the project are disabled, the elderly or people from areas who have been highlighted as being deprived. We will keep you posted.

We also wanted to mention Pippa Lamb who has kindly taken two of our little lambs we were feeding, one she is going to keep (Fred's brother) and the other she took to keep him company! Apparently they are up to all sorts of mischief and even went for a sleepover with Hilary Warburton who we rent some grazing off at Shillingford while Pippa was away!

We had our cousins down to lunch today and gave them rack of lamb, which they thought was pretty tasty. They were really encouraging about what we are up to.

We look forward to seeing you at our lambing weekends, for more information please visit our website http://www.camillaandroly.co.uk/

More soon, the countdown to the main flock has begun so there will be lots to tell you about soon!

Camilla, Roly, Boris and Meg

We have had an amazing couple of weeks welcoming new life into the world! In freezing conditions our girls have delivered some wonderful little lambs who are all growing fast and enjoying running around the big nursery pen we have made for them in the lambing sheds.

There have been some highs and lows, with both of us having to help some of our girls have some of their babies. Most of them have done it all by themselves but one or two have needed assistance. One morning we arrived to a single, twins and triplets and we had no idea who belonged to who! We managed to successfully adopt one of the triplets onto the sheep who had had the one lamb, she had plenty of milk to go round where the triplet mother might have struggled to raise 3.

The lambing sheds seem full to the brim and it is a joy walking in there and wondering if anyone has been born the short time we have been away. We have some amazing support from John and Julia Sargent who are always there to help, John in fact had to help me (Camilla) deliver a lamb today who was proving a little tricky to come out and I needed John's experience to reassure me and the poor ewe who by that stage was exhausted. Ian Jones who came on our lambing course with us is being a tremendous support and we are so grateful to him too. We had some friends to stay last weekend, James and Claudia and their 3 children, Stella, Theo and 4 month old Sylvie who all saw a lamb being born and in fact James helped deliver one! This is something we are really keen to share with families and people who would like to experience this incredible gift of helping a ewe to lamb. If you are interested let us know as we are just developing our Cropshare scheme.

We are busy planning our two lambing weekends with the Northmoor Trust which is really exciting. They will be joint events between us so we are both looking forward to welcoming you all on either the 20th/21st March or the 27th/28th March. Keep an eye on our websites for details http://www.camillaandroly.co.uk/ or http://www.northmoortrust.co.uk/

We are so pleased the evenings are getting a little longer and the mornings a little lighter, spring is around the corner now, the snowdrops and aconites are trying their best to recover having been subjected to such cold conditions.

We were recently interviewed alongwith Tom Curtis from Landshare and Harry Barton, Chief Executive from the Northmoor Trust, on Radio 4's Costing the Earth. The programme was promoting the whole FarmStep concept which the Trust are pioneering, have a listen.

More soon and we look forward to seeing you in March to show you lots of lambs!

Camilla, Roly, Boris and Meg