Sam, our almost 14 year old collie, died last Tuesday, 1st June.
We got Sam from a neighbour and he has been the last surviving dog from the litter for a couple of years, two of his siblings went blind but he has always been in the best of health. He’s only ever had three trips to the vet: for the snip, for a suspected concussion when kicked by a bullock, and for an injury to his neck (the bucket of [...]
The sun came out last week and the clouds disappeared for a few days. The temperature even got to 20 degrees Celsius. After a long winter and near despair with heavy rain the previous Monday, the drying wind and the sunshine were welcomed by all. Unfortunately, we’ve had showery days too.
Lou has been accompanying me on my morning [...]
One of the things I love about farming is that the vast majority of days tend to be different. They will have elements that are similar. We milk cows for over 300 days a year, in spring the calves are fed morning and evening, in winter all animals need to be foddered but other work tends to vary such as tasks like fencing, spreading fertiliser, spreading dung, grass measuring, dosing cattle, mowing grass, paperwork. If the sun is shining, it [...]
It’s been years since I’ve had a dog of my own, and I’ve never had a working dog who obeys me. When I was four, our cattle dog was killed on the road. Scared of storms, and the babysitter not realising he was normally allowed indoors during a storm, he ran off and was hit by a car. “Pupsy” was a dream dog. He brought in the cows when told to do so, he jumped into the boot and helped out [...]
We purchased a new pup about two months ago and she’s settling in well. Luthien is from one of JRR Tolkien’s books and Amarach means tomorrow or of the future. No prizes for guessing who chose the names if you know the reading habits of our daughter!
A poet, Brian O’Domhnallain, very kindly sent me a poem about our new collie and you can follow him on Twitter if you’d like to see more poems, many about farming [...]
