Let's start tonight's post with that photo of Calum (11) at the show again.
He loves to look after animals and, like I said before, wants to have his own island croft when he is older. He has plans to have plenty of sheep on his croft and so is keen to learn more about them.
The best way to learn is from someone who has been keeping sheep for a long time and so he loves to go and spend time with one of the elders in my dad's church. This man is known in the surrounding villages for how good his sheep are and each year at the agricultural show he wins prize after prize for them. Calum says that this year he won 18 rosettes and about 5 trophies! Whenever we are home he very kindly invites Calum along to his croft to spend some time with him looking after his sheep and showing him around his croft.
Yesterday Calum went along and had a great time. He took lots of photos of the sheep and I have to share some of them with you. I promise not to share them all, and they are all just sheep, sheep and more sheep but he really did capture some good photos of them!
One of the jobs they did was cleaning the sheep's feet. Kind of like a foot spa for sheep!
They also rounded up some sheep to move to another croft. They had a little help from the sheepdogs for this. That's another thing Calum loves about going to visit. He loves seeing the properly trained dogs doing their work.
Nearly all of the sheep are Blackfaces, with a few Cheviots as well, but he has one Blue Faced Leceister. Don't I sound like an expert? I'm not, I'm just passing on Calum's information here!
He said the Blue Faced Leceister was very happy to pose for the camera!
Although this one here looks like she (I'm guessing here!) was quite happy to pose too!
To get the sheep to the other croft they herded them into a trailer attached to this quad bike and then drove them along.
As well as seeing to the sheep they also dug up a few tatties and Calum came home with a bag of lovely fresh potatoes. We had them with our dinner tonight and they tasted so lovely and earthy.
Who knows, perhaps one day Calum will have one of those sheep rosettes from the show for himself! After all, he is learning from one of the best!
Don't know if you've ever been but there's a brilliant working sheepdog demonstration in Kincraig (not far from Aviemore). It's great to see how the pups start with chasing ducks around the farm before progressing on to the serious business! You can help shear a sheep, bottle feed lambs and cuddle adorable puppies. We've been several times and just love it! Arlene
ReplyDeleteThanks Arlene, I didn't know about this so no, we've never been! It sounds great though. We'll need to look into it next time we are passing that way.
DeleteI can just picture him doing it when he is grown.. and he has the look. I can see why he would want to do it; It stirs my heart up just to see the beautiful sheep. The pictures came out beautiful. The Tatties sounded delicious too. Have a great weekend.
ReplyDeleteBlessings,
Pam