Thank goodness that's over for another year

"I hate @*#&%$ sheep".

This was R's frequently-uttered mantra. So frequently, in fact, that it was even mentioned in one of the eulogies at his funeral!

Over the years, our tiny flock has varied in size between two and seven. Before I started keeping sheep, I fondly imagined that you put them in a field, they eat grass and that's about it, perhaps with a bit of mollycoddling at lambing time.

How wrong I was.
You have to vaccinate them against myriad noxious diseases, trim their feet regularly to prevent foot rot, apply insecticide to stop flies laying eggs on them and the maggots eating them alive, administer anti-worm and fluke medicine and shear them once a year at the very least.

My two original ewes are Hebrideans. I bought them for several reasons. They are pretty sheep and extremely hardy, having evolved to withstand the wet and wind of a Scottish island. They aren't at all fussy about what they eat and don't need the lush grass that many of the lowland breeds require. They have single lambs and give birth easily outside (I have not yet had to intervene in a lambing). And finally they are small sheep with handy horns to grab hold of, making them relatively easy for one smallish person (i.e. me) to manoeuvre.

I didn't read the small print, though. In 5 point type, right at the bottom of the contract, it reads that they can be a bit 'flighty'.

Flighty? Ha!
These are the devil's own sheep. They can run like the wind, jump the sheep hurdles I bought to keep them penned up and spook as soon as they see another person enter the field with me.

Sometimes they will meekly follow me and the bucket of feed into the corral. Other times, nothing whatsoever will induce them to go in. On those occasions, R and I had a method of rounding them up involving a length of sheep netting which we would slowly wind up, gradually driving them into the pen. Unorthodox, but it worked.

Late yesterday afternoon I had the phone call from the shearer saying that he could do my girls that evening. All I had to do was to round them up for him, and he would take it from there.

Naturally the sheep were having none of it. Despite the fact that they desperately needed shearing to give them a break from the heat, they had no intention whatsoever of going into the pen. Two hours later, I had managed to catch one. The other two were standing 20 feet away, watching me with curiosity as I sat on the ground holding the bucket of feed, bawling my eyes out and shouting at R for not being there to help.

When the shearer arrived, I still only had the one captive, so I apologised and said I would understand if it wasn't worth his while to just shear one. I was fully expecting him to go on his way, but this wonderful man said he and his daughter would help to round them up. We eventually managed it, but it still took nearly an hour - he wasn't expecting them to jump quite as much as they do. He also gave me some useful suggestions about arranging the corral to make it easier to do next year, although he did say he might bring his dog with him, just in case!

The actual shearing took all of ten minutes.
And were they grateful? Well, what do you think?