Bread bakeathon #14 and sheep

The next instalment in the River Cottage Bread book bakeathon is bread sticks. This is a dough similar to focaccia but is a simple enough thing. Mix it together, leave to rise, go for a five mile run, return (wearing the contents of a puddle courtesy of a Land Rover), roll out the dough, cut into strips, spread with oil, sprinkle with seeds, rise for a bit and then bake. They are shepherd's crook shapes because as you lift the strips of dough they stretch and become too long for the tin. I quite like the shape.

We ate them with what I call 'Trail soup'. It's a vegetable soup based on a recipe that I originally read in 'Trail' magazine, hence the name. Chop two carrots, a slice of swede, a leek, onion, garlic and a potato into smallish cubes and leave to sweat in a tablespoon of olive oil with a teaspoon of butter added. Then wash the horrid sauce off a can of baked beans and add those along with some stock or water and maybe some green leafy bits like Savoy cabbage or cavelo nero and a chopped tomato. Add a handful or two of tiny soup pasta shapes and cook until everything is soft. Adjust for seasoning and serve with grated Cheddar cheese and bread sticks. A bit of pesto is lovely stirred into the soup too. Next bread: Brioche.

This afternoon's task was to sort the sheep. They've been quietly eating grass in the fields over the summer and now we need to sort the ewes from the lambs, check the ewe's teeth (if they've got no teeth they can't eat enough to rear lambs so they have to go). The ones we are keeping also get a dose of worming medicine at this time of year. We're organic but this has the blessing of the Soil Association.

In the race they go, two or three at a time. We check they've got ear tags and replace any as necessary. The rules on ear tags change annually. A year or so ago they had to be tagged in each ear as lambs. Now it's one tag but they're plastic and are a real bugger very difficult to insert in the ears. Ewes and ewe lamb replacements are drafted through the gate to the left; lambs for meat and cull ewes go to the right.

Toby the cat is there purely in a supervisory capacity. He chose the wrong place to sit as shortly after I took this picture he was bounced on by a siily lamb. After that he supervised from inside the building.

A purple dot of marker spray shows that this ewe lamb is being kept and will go on to have lambs of her own. The dot also means we can tell the two groups apart which is lucky because when we thought we had finished and were herding the ewes out to the field again the lambs made a break for freedom and the whole flock got mixed up again.

I'm afraid I may have lost my temper a little (a lot!) at this point. We managed to herd them back into the yard, with a bit of shouting and chasing (there's always a stubborn one. I chased it, furiously. It being temperamental, stupid and intractable, flattened mum into a pile of sheep poo before we rounded it up. I hate sheep.) I redrafted the dots from the non dots, then we tied the gates really tightly this time and now (phew!) the ewes are on the hayfields, the cull ewes and lambs for fattening are on the field by the house and the ram and the pet sheep Chops are (noisily) in one of the little paddocks.

Juggling children, sheep and bicycles

How annoying to be left so far behind by one's little sister.

Friday's school run brought with it a bit of a juggle with children - we were like the Tesco advert where the mum and dad rush about swapping children between various activities. I collected three from school, sent H9 and her friend G9 to the play park while I took R7 (dressed as Belle from Beauty and the Beast) to a party. Then it was home with the two eldest (having eventually tempted them off the swings) where I handed them over to Brian to take them to Brownies (once we had persuaded them to come down from the trees they were climbing) while I dashed back to the village to collect R7.

On Saturday morning we rounded up the sheep, separated the lambs and treated them against flystrike before sending them (noisily) back out to the field. The yard then had to be swept ready for the sheep shearer's arrival at 1.30pm which nicely coincided with H9 going off to a party.

The ewes were then sheared (they hate the process but love the result). Mum and I collected and rolled the fleeces and squeezed them into a wool sack. R7 bounced on the wool sack which, she claims, is a Very Important Job. We then had to scrub the yard clean and wash out the stables in which the ewes had been waiting for their coiffure appointment (they had little else to occupying their little woolly brains so they did a lot of poo). We then had to get showered and cleaned up ourselves because we were covered in wool and smelled awfully much of ovine excretions. Thankfully Brian got back from work in time to collect H9 from the party. We managed to fit bicycling practice sessions in both the morning and afternoon.

Sunday was sunny again so I got up at 6.30am to do my run in the cooler part of the day. Five miles in which I encountered only one other person and a single car. Bliss.

G9 came over to play with H9 and R7 and somehow I managed to pick the raspberries, blackcurrants and red currants, make a batch of lemon curd swirl ice cream (with our own eggs in both the ice cream and mum's home made lemon curd) and cook us a roast chicken lunch (with new potatoes freshly dug from the garden). The ice cream and raspberries made a divine dessert.

Then it was off to Rosebush for the Adran sponsored cycle ride which was two miles along the track towards the forestry and back around on the old railway line. R7 (who wasn't officially there as she is not a member of Adran until September) pedalled off happily while H9 struggled with the pot-holes and got very grumpy that R7 was so much faster. There was then a barbecue which the children tucked into happily while us grown-ups (and the dog) headed off in search of something cold and refreshing in a handy local tafarn.

All off this was conducted under the bluest of blue skies with scorching sun for which the only suitable antidote on Sunday evening was lashings of homemade elderflower champagne.

A woolly tale...

We have a small flock of Lleyn cross ewes and a ram. A nice little closed flock. But from time to time we get the odd interloper and that is exactly what happened yesterday.

She was a tiny little thing, straight off the mountain, with tiny little Welsh Mountain sheep's ears in which there was an eartag. Catching her was simple for she was collapsed in one of our fields. Mum and I read the tag and spent a 'jolly' half hour half-carrying, half-coaxing this little thing down into the barn. Finally, muddy, with our backs screaming in pain, we got her inside and penned her with some hay and a bucket of water. The hurdles surrounding her were largely superfluous as she just lay down, pointing her nose towards the sky, as if waiting for death. She was obviously in lamb and something should be done about her, but we are talking farm economics here. She wasn't one of ours (who watched the events disinterestedly from the next field up) and we were faced with a horrible dilemma of intervening or not, either way would cost us vets fees or knackerman's fees.

Mum rang around some local farmers last night, with no luck. Then this morning she contacted Animal Health and gave them the flock number. Leave it with me, said the official. She did.

Less than half an hour later a Land Rover pulled up and out hopped Jolly Farmer and Mrs Jolly Farmer. Mum took them and gave them the ewe. JF popped it nimbly under one arm and then into the back of the Land Rover. Then they told the tale of the sheep.

It all began 18 months ago when JF rented a field from one of our neighbours. It needed new fencing, so the neighbour said of course he would fence it, and duly JF arrived and put several hundred sheep into the field. Except the neighbour had 'forgotten' 30 feet or so of the fence. Every single last one of the sheep escaped (of course!) and JF and Mrs JF have spent the last year and a half rounding them up. This one had obviously been living somewhere else in the meantime. Presumably she lambed, then she was shorn and put to the ram again. Now she obviously has twin lamb disease, so she's off for a dose of calcium and a big crossing of fingers.

JF has, in the meantime, got rid of his sheep, apart from half a dozen or so, plus this one. She's had quite an adventure, poor little thing. I checked her teeth and she's broken mouthed, so I think, even if she does survive the twin lamb, this is the end of her adventure. As James Herriot once so famously said: "If only they could talk."