We are looking forward to finally reopening the cottage to guests in line with government guidance and Covid restrictions! It feels like lockdown has been going on forever!! We have our first guests arriving this weekend and have been busy getting everything ready. The garden is beginning to emerge from underground and the window boxes are bursting to life! The trees are in full blossom and the countryside around East Lothian is looking beautiful just in time for the tourism market to reopen.
Lambing kicked off for us in March with our flock of Ryeland’s, these are an experienced bunch of mums and everybody gave us a treat by giving birth unassisted and looking after all their own lambs!! They are great mums and take to it every year like a duck to water and instantly care for their lambs whilst allowing us and (more frequently!) our boys to get in next to them and see their lambs. The best treat was Bumble, who after sadly aborting her lambs last year gave birth to a healthy set of triplets this year!! They are all doing well, and clever mum is doing a great job of looking after them herself.
The last Ryeland to lamb was our family favourite Dorothy, she kept us waiting an extra week after all the others. She eventually had twins and despite being small she does a brilliant job of looking after her lambs!
We had a small respite of two weeks before our Texels started to lamb. This is a new flock to us this year and they are Gimmers (first time mums) so needed a little help learning the ropes of motherhood!! Most of them have taken to it very well and got in the swing of it after a day or so.
We have however ended up with three ‘pet’ lambs – much to the delight of the boys who are dutifully bottle feeding them! ‘Blue spot’ and ‘soft head’ were rejected by their mothers, they had a tough time accepting that they had two lambs and promptly ditched them on us!!! ‘Wobble’ was injured during birth and wouldn’t manage to keep up with his mother and sister in the field so was brought into the ‘nursery’ with the other two. He has since made a full recovery and they spend their days careering around the yard and garden and demanding food at any opportunity and generally destroying my flower beds!!! It is a shame we haven’t had any small people staying in the cottage this year at this time to share the lambs with, still there is always next year!
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