A whole lot of straw

Two trailer-loads of straw, to be precise.

Last week we were tree-planters.  This week, farmers – or rather hands working in a farmyard, to make it a regular farmyard again after hosting members of the public during open days.

Weather: aaargh, awful for photography!  Not so great for the workforce either, but we enjoyed the luck of the draw with tasks today, for many of them had us working in a straw-yard, under a roof.

Let’s start with some pics from last Tuesday, now Editor and computer keyboard are reunited, to remind ourselves of what Green-Gym weather is supposed to be like.  First stop last week was the village green.  We had trees, we had volunteers aplenty – and one spade between us.  So our first move was to ‘hurry up and wait’, and watch a demonstration of how to plant a tree:

When the missing spades arrived, it was not quite all hands to work, for there was a bit of a disparity between number of volunteers and number of tasks.  Work around the green took us up to tea-break.  It was not quite the hedgerow-planting which most of us had anticipated on the basis of planting done in previous years on other sides of the site:

After the break, at our second site for the day, it was hedgerow planting.  We had volunteers aplenty; and we had spades – but no trees.  So our first move was to ‘hurry up and wait’, and watch while volunteers discussed which old trees could be taken down to make room for fresh planting:

“That’s not a tree.  It’s an ex-tree.”

When the missing treelets arrived, then it was down to work again:

So on to this week’s session.  A damp, miserable start to the day that even beautiful apple blossom couldn’t brighten up!

Never mind, everybody came well prepared for the weather.  All of us kitted out with weatherproof jackets and hoods …

and some of us steel-toe-capped as well, courtesy of new safety boots:

This was the scene outdoors before we went into action.  During the ‘lambing weekends’ open to the public, this had been a children’s play-area:

The big task was to collect the small-size straw bales and move them via the trailer to the lambing shed.

Shifting even small-size bales by hand provided a good work-out.  “This is the exercise of which you write!” commented one volunteer.  It also gave the site warden a chance to demonstrate her reversing skills:

Inside the shed, 300+ ewes and lambs were enjoying the comfort of the dry warm straw:

The mini-bales were unloaded and spread around – all by hand, of course.  (“I’ve never thought of myself as a straw man before!”)  And this was all very exciting:

For the younger animals in particular, straw bales = play opportunities:

Then our versatile warden brought a tractor load of hay for their feed.  This had to be spread in the feeding racks:

Volunteers also had the opportunity to learn a bit more about the various breeds of sheep present.  Most of them – the sheep that is, not Green-Gymmers – were Lleyns, a breed originally from the Llŷn Peninsula, which sticks out into the Irish Sea from north-west Wales.  Lleyns are popular with British farmers for their sweet temperament, also a marked tendency to produce twins.  (But there are not too many of those this season: pasture too poor last year because of the drought.)  The other sheep in the shed were Texels (short tails, stocky) and Poll Dorset (short legs, “spongy” wool).   

Occasionally there was the odd sheep to be moved out of the way first:

Mums were soon tucking into the new hay …

while hopeful lambs looked up and waited to be fed by mum:

We humans enjoyed another lucky break in that our own tea-break was also under cover, but away from the livestock.  Our tea-crate volunteer did a splendid job improvising a service-bar inside one of the log sheds:

In the second half of the session, there were several tidying-up jobs.  Some Green-Gymmers seized hold of brooms and rakes, and swept out trailers and the walkways inside the lambing sheds.

Others headed back to the erstwhile children’s play area, to take down the safety barriers.  These were loaded on to the now straw-free trailer.  First the concrete blocks, then the barriers themselves:

Another job was to construct some more temporary fencing the other side of the shed.  Wire was put in place around an enclosure:

No, what one volunteer is holding there at arm’s length is not a dead rabbit.  It is the leader’s lost glove:

Finally, the trailer was closed up; and we all went home to get warm and dry again.