The White Stuff

Amazing scenes in the south-west of England recently - the deepest snow for 18 years, so the Met Office tells us. Understandably, since this is a very unusual state of affairs for us, the whole country was unprepared. (I was idly wondering, when watching a news report featuring people complaining about how badly prepared the councils were, whether they themselves had got grit and salt for their front paths? No?) We are more fortunate than most, because we do have the 4x4; but we also have to get out there to do the animals, no matter what.

The sheep are doing very, very well in the snow, to my surprise. I think they would definitely prefer to have this sort of weather than the mud and rain of recent winters. They need to be fed hay, although they are perfectly capable of finding grass under the snow - just not very much of it. Even Alfie, no fan of frosty weather on the whole, is a lot less cross about it than he was around New Year.


Here are Alfie (on the right) and Lulu, waiting for Foz to feed them. They always like a bit of a scratch first. You can see that Alf has snow on his back; he's so well insulated that it just won't melt. He is toasty warm under all that fleece (and the way you tell that is to feel right up between his hind legs - if he's warm up there, then he's fine. It's considerate to make sure your hand isn't freezing cold if you do that, though.)


Here's Alfie at speed, galloping through the snow to get to a bucket of food which he hadn't previously noticed. I love the way all the snow is being kicked up as he goes.


This is Magda, our oldest ewe (not that old, at 5, but still, we must respect her seniority!) She's really happy at the moment, enjoying the snow and loving the attention she's getting. Even if you know nothing about sheep at all, I think it's possible to see from her expression that she's really enjoying that scratch from Foz.

I'm afraid there has been little time for spinning, but I do have some lovely new yarn up on Etsy. Hopefully it will find new homes soon!