A Day of Introductions

Yesterday was yet another busy day. After dinner, I was going to spend the afternoon in the Shepherd’s Pie, with Ben and Sheila and introducing Pip to sheep. It started well. We managed to get the sheep into the Pie, and I started with Sheila, to find out which ewes were aggressive towards dogs and which weren’t.

Everything was going well.

Until the ewes started to get tired. They stopped. They stared. And they tried to hit Sheila.

But Sheila was too quick for them. She knew to get out of the way. She had soon got them moving again.

I kept watching the ewes. Some of them ran with their heads up and ears back, a sure sign that particular ewe was going to be trouble. There was more than one however, and I ended up with a mental list of troublesome ewes in my head. Dad was with us too, and headed to the lambing shed to get a spray marker. The idea was that I would mark the ewes I didn’t want in the Pie with a yellow dot on their back. It turned out that this wasn’t very easy, so I decided to take photos of the culprits instead – something I’m much better at.

However, Sheila wanted to keep the ewes moving, which was fine, because she might single out a few more troublesome ewes.

I noticed that the Pie was vey wet, but thought nothing of it. With the amount of rain we’ve been having recently, the ground could be forgiven for not being able to soak it all up.

But then…

DISASTER

BIG DISASTER

As I was walking along the wettest part of the Pie, the ground underneath my foot suddenly caved in, and my foot was underground. It was pretty deep too. I manged to pull my leg out of the hole and turned around. Then I noticed that water was coming out of the hole. I told my dad about it, and he helped me dig a hole where the smaller hole was, expanding it. We bailed all of the water out… only for it to fill right up again in seconds.

It overflowed, and water was pouring out over the ground. That explained the wetness.

It turned out that the leakage was a broken underground pipe from the early 1900′s. The hole is still there, so we can monitor the pipe.

Resigned to the fact that Pip wasn’t going to see any sheep today, I decided to show her a different new thing – the tractor.

Pip wanted to drive.

But she’s underage.

She loved being able to look out of the window.

After that successful introduction, we went to the garden for a 6 months photoshoot.

She is very lanky.

Pip is an expert poser.

She was on a posing roll.

This is my favourite shot of the day, or even week. I just love it.

Kim did some posing too.

That evening, a customer came for some bales of silage with his dog, a 9-year-old Springer Spaniel called Pudsey Bear. Understandable, because he was huge.

Well, that’s my half-term holiday over. This week’s been fun, eventful, and a little bit mad. I look forward to the next school holiday!