A direct consequence of not being able to use our barn for lambing until it has been sterilized is that the sheep are all lambing on pasture.

We have been blessed – our luck is changing I think (knock-on-wood) – with weather that is close to perfect for lamb survival. The 10 day stretch of fantastic weather in mid-April has produced the best early growth of pasture that we’ve seen in our 36 years of farming here.

Christopher is finding that pasture lambing has a lot to recommend it. We may never go back to using a barn for lambing.

Yesterday, Ian started to disc up some land that we first started to rent last year. We haven’t worked land in a while as all the rest of the farm is in permanent forage. One of our friends says that this is a form of permaculture as it is sustainable indefinitely. Our mostly shallow and poorly drained soil on our drought-prone island is not suitable for grain growing.