April

2 - Six calves born last night. All were ear tagged today with our herd number and an individual number.

4 – Lambing is in full swing now. Our visitors in Shepherd’s Cottage are a great help. The days are a seemingly never-ending round of checking the shed, walking the lambing field, marking lambs, moving ewes and lambs out to fields, and feeding sheep. Not much time for anything else.

14 – A pair of dotterels sighted on Wether Hill. Rare birds, they nest mostly in the Cairngorms in Scotland. Probably this pair was passing through. Unusually, the male bird hatches the eggs and tends to the young.

16 – In the evening a vixen paraded her four cubs along the riverbank in the field behind the farm.

17 – Official start of the hill lambing. Jim goes around the two hills morning and night on the quad bike. Jake, a shepherd of many years experience comes to help for three weeks. He lambs the hill twins, the Cheviot ewes and the “Glitters” ewes. The latter are brought into a field because much of their home ground or “cut” is not accessible by a quad.

19 – The swallows have arrived! One flew from the old byre at the Hill Cottage and two were back in the garage at the farmhouse, perhaps re-visiting their former nest site.

20 – The last of the in-bye mule ewes lambed last night.

25 – The hottest day of the year so far. A red squirrel ran across the farmyard into the wood. Saw curlews, meadow pipits, skylarks and peewits on the hill.

26 – A blackface lamb was killed on the road at Peggy Bell’s Bridge. Who ever did it had not the decency to say. The ewe was brought in and an orphan lamb “set on”. She has taken it as her own.

29 – The gorse or whin is almost in full flower, colouring the riverbanks and the steep scree slopes of Reaveley Hill. Red campion, leopardsbane daisies, honesty and periwinkle are flowering in the lane near the church. The show of marsh marigolds in wet ground near the Old Rectory is one of the best ever. Swallows are feeding on the wing in the field beside the farmhouse.

30 – Hen blackbird still sitting tight in the old barn. A cascade of hay, trailing down the wall, drew my attention. Her untidy nest is on a projecting stone, half way up the wall.