Excellent points ellied
I like the 'Saga' couple - didn't at first but their quiet way with the animals impresses me. Perhaps the programme is more about seeing if anyone else can be successful in the way Jimmy was - but with only a tiny plot and lots of unneccessary difficulties put in their way, such as having to fit in with filming needs. We don't make a profit from our smallholding, when all the costs are taken into account, but we can live off the land if we don't expect any luxuries. For the younger couples, an income would be essential, but not for all.
It's only a programme but I hate seeing people's hopes being dashed, and their genuine distress under the added pressures of the programme, on top of normal smallholding stresses.
Back to sheep handling: the young couple got into trouble because they couldn't work out how to get the single sheep back into the pen with the rest of the flock. Every time the gate was opened, another sheep would leave. In this situation, we would use what we call a 'larcen trap'. The big pen is reshuffled to be two, by putting a couple of hurdles across the middle, with all the sheep safely in the back portion. Then the gate is opened and the single sheep will come back of his own accord to be with his flock, and the gate can be closed. Then the internal hurdles can be removed and all are back together.
I'm not sure what the electric fencing was doing in the background and it eventually caused a near disaster with the loose sheep getting tangled in it. We use that kind of fencing to direct our sheep into a handling pen, but it has to be really taut, not limp and drooping as it was then. No wonder they stopped the filming at that point - nothing to do with the couples, but sloppy work from the landowner
