My Sunday has gone something like this:
1. 9am phone call from John Angie to say he's on his way to turn the hay and will be here in about 30 minutes. Figure I'd better put some clothes on.
2. Go out to muck out horses, distracted by Mick jumping up and down pointing at our drive. One of the new lambs has managed to scramble up the log pile and jump the fence. Swear loudly.
3. While I go for a bucket of feed and my crook and Mick puts the dog in the house, the lamb decides she doesn't want to try and get back to her friends and legs it down the road.
4. Set off in hot pursuit, rattling bucket in a not-too-hopeful manner.
5. Lamb has met up with some of Anna's sheep and is now merrily skipping up the hill towards the common grazings. Rattle bucket for all I'm worth.
6. Anna's sheep know what a bucket is and come back down the hill, bringing the lamb with them.
7. Get as far as Jim Wilson's house, now with about 10 sheep following me and feeling like the Pied Piper. Anna's sheep hit the boundary of their territory and decide they're not coming any further. Mick and I manage to split the lamb out, but miss catching it. Lamb disappears up hill towards the common grazings again.
8. I give up and go and see if Ronald's in. Bless him, he and his dog get on his quad bike and head off up the hill to bring her down while I wait at the crossroads to turn her in the right direction for home. Wave at John Angie as he goes past with the hay turner.
9. Lamb, being awkward, shoots down the gap on the other side of Archie's house. Ronald shouts, 'Catch it!' and I miss again. Lamb shoots off down towards the salmon station. Much swearing all round.
10. As a few of Ronald's sheep are hanging around that area, he kindly rounds them all up into the pen behind his house. Lamb is recaptured.
11. Lamb is put over Ronald's lap on the quad bike and driven home in fine style. Thank Ronald profusely, go down the road to see how John Angie is getting on.
12. Hay is turned and smelling okay. John suggests we fire up the baler and throw a few bales through it. He and Mick hook it up while I wheelbarrow the requested six bales up from the shed.
13. John fires up his tractor (which is possibly an unfortunate choice of verb, because it had a small electrical fire whilst cutting my other field yesterday and was only saved by John throwing his flask of coffee over it!), the baler creaks into life and YES! IT LIVES!!
14. Doesn't knot very well though. Investigation shows that the knotters, which we'd cleared out previously, have baler twine wrapped round them again. Clear out the baler twine, sand down one slightly rusty bit of knotter and put some grease on it, re-thread it and cross our fingers.
15. Baler knots perfectly three times in a row. Move on to hay bob. Much, much swearing and WD40 later, get it set into position for rowing up, so it's ready to swap for John's turner/spreader.
16. 2.45. Lunch.
17. Mick heads off to the vegetable patch to put a fence around it so we can move the lambs down a field and stop any more escape attempts. I fire up the truck and go next door to pick up the pallets my neighbour kindly said I could have from his barn. Three trips and 10 pallets later, the byre is ready to stack bales in.
18. Mick has reached peak swearing with the fencing, so we finish it together. Lambs moved into new field, sheep put in with them (on the grounds that if they all pal up then if I do have another escapee, I can take the three bucket-trained ones with me to get it!), fly sheets put on the boys because it's now midge city, humans collapse in a heap.
Knackered but happy!
