June 2009

We have certainly had a hectic spring on the farm and in the shop. On the farm lambing and calving have both gone well and the weather was mainly kind to us which makes a big difference. Now all the lambs need to be marked and tagged which is the next big job for David, Aaron and Brian before we start shearing the sheep.

They have already made a start on sorting the cattle into batches to turn out the bulls with so we can calve earlier next year in the new buildings. Roy is now working very impressively with Aaron and is ready to take on more of the practical sheep work.

In the shop Laura has been working hard and has the ice cream serve over counter up and running and proving very popular with our customers. She has also put a lot of work into a new project which is a hog roast. This is a marvellous piece of equipment which can roast a full pig or lamb or anything else you can think of and we will hire out for weddings, parties etc. We tested it for the first time on Saturday at the shop and it went down a treat with everyone and sold out quite quickly. Laura was getting quite stressed out what with her work on the web site and the ice cream and now the hog roasts but everything went so well that she is much happier now.

We were all looking forward to whit Friday which is a unique and major event in the Saddleworth year. The church walks in the morning were glorious with huge crowds of people enjoying the processions in the sun.

The band contest in the evening was quite a contest with non stop rain and bitter cold. Laura was off at 3.30pm to play with the Fairey band and got soaked by 4.30pm but had to shiver until they played the last contest at around midnight. Apparently it was the worst weather on whit Friday for 30 years and I can certainly believe it. Hopefully it will be sunny for the next one.