A Word from Westyard

Our summer holidays can be summarised in three words.  Far. Too. Short.  We were cheated.  Well actually, the truth is, the small girl changed schools.  The old school finished quite late, and the new school started back quite early.  As a result we lost about two weeks.  Never mind, we'll probably catch up in the future.  As a result we packed quite a lot of holiday stuff into our five and a bit weeks.  Lots of trips to the beach; a trip via Exeter Airport (we are so lucky to have an International airport on our doorstep!) a bit of swimming in our pond, and of course lots of time at home on the farm just kicking around as we do best.  An old school friend invited us to hang out with her and her children on the north Devon coast - it was just a few days but we made memories.  The weather was lovely, the evenings were warm and bad Mummies that we were we couldn't resist sunset on the beach one night.  This was...

Three months have flown by since my last entry.  Much has happened.  Lambing came and went in a flurry of days that seemed to blur into nights.  Three of us were on duty and at times we were all standing watching when the action hit, marvelling at nature in its purest form, witnessing the birth of lambs.  It was good fun.  It was elating. Tiring, and at times sad.  But that's the nature of Mother Nature, cruel and kind in the same breath.  On the whole it went smoothly and we had a good success rate, with lots of cute bouncing lambs at the end of it.  The scanning helped enormously and allowed us the confidence to know exactly what to expect...apart from one ewe that was scanned as a single but had a double.  The small girl was very good; lambing dominated her Easter holidays and as a result we didn't get out and about much at all.  Instead, we lived between the lambing shed and the farmhouse kitchen consuming flapjacks and lots...

Times they are a turbulent.  In every way.  Our building project has us swinging on both sides of the emotional scale; one minute jubilant with ideas and the next crushed with the reality of the mounting costs.  The winter storms have been in full turbulent swing, helping the demolition on with sheets of metal and plastic roofing flying off at high speed and landing in adjacent fields. Our sheep are expectant, fully rotund and due to lamb at the end of the month. We are currently in a stage of re-design with our building project.  The design doesn't fit the budget.  Either that or we throw more money at it.  The danger of 'value engineering' is that the quality can be compromised.  It is a fine line between cuttings costs and down spec'ing.  All the time being aware that we are beholden to an ecological timetable that gives us a short window of opportunity to get the farmhouse roof off, and back on again before May - whe...