Lamb ham

We were wondering the other day whether you could dry cure lamb, I looked it up on the internet and found several recipes!

Dry cured leg of mutton (or lamb)
Boned leg of mutton

The following are per kg of meat
30g salt
1tsp ground pepper
1tsp sugar
4 cloves
1tsp chopped rosemary
1 clove garlic finely chopped

Pinch of curing salt (optional depending whether you want the salt peter which will keep the meat pink or not)

Mix all the cure together
Smear all over both sides of the leg
Put the leg in to a plastic bag and seal the bag (or make sure the end is always above the rest of the bag)
Put the bag in the fridge for a week, turn every day and swish the cure around
After the week, remove leg from the bag and rince and wipe down with vinegar then dry it with paper towel or clean cloth
Roll in to a neat tube, as tightly as you can, and tie in place.
Hang somewhere well aired, humid and under 18°C until the leg loses 30 to 35% of its weight. This is probably about a month (but more or less depending on size of leg and conditions it is hanging in)

Sheep shearing time again

We are loving the head holder so we can shear them standing up (them not us - although we do think about making a bench for them to stand on one day). The sheep much prefer it this way too - it seems they didn’t read the ‘How to be a sheep’ handbook where it mentions going floppy when lying on your back…

Shearing a bit later than usual this year, partially due to the work on the house and partially because the cool wet weather has taken away the urgency…

Unleavened Flatbreads

250g plain flour

50g butter

180g milk

Melt the butter by warming the milk slightly and mixing the two together.

Put the flour in a bowl and add the butter/milk mixture

Mix until it comes together in to a ball and knead gently until evenly combined

Wrap and rest for 30 mins

Divide into 6 pieces and form each one in to a bll.

Roll out the balls on a floured surface until they are 3mm thick

Fry each side in a dry pan for 1 to 2 mins each size until it is cooked with brown spots on it

Stack them on a plate on a warm, but not hot, oven as they are done to keep them warm and moist

New ram called Coco

 The previous ram is in the freezer as he was being mean to his ladies (and had a go at me too).

It’s hard because they get all fired up with hormones in breeding season. But butting the girls when they were heavily pregnant and in labour was the final straw. Hopefully Coco can be more of a gentleman.. 

It is late in the breeding season now, so it is possible that the ewes are all pregnant already. We will see as there is enough of a gap between the rams being with them for us to tell which is which.

White is quite rare for the Ouessants, so it will be interesting to see what colour the lambs come out…

Drought!

Normally the sheep refuse point blank to eat hay, even in winter they prefer to scrape around for what little grass they can get. The last week they have been begging for hay and scoffing it down enthusiastically, all the grass has frazzled to a crisp. Really hoping this is a one off, else we are going to have to cut down numbers.

First lamb of 2022 - Missy

Every year I am surprised by how small and fragile they seem. Unbelievable that they can survive!

We’ve both been thinking ‘lamb’ every time we see a sheep standing by a molehill for weeks, this time it finally was!

Shearing the sheep time again…

Over the years we have got better, they look neater and there are fewer injuries (to them and to us!), but it still takes us 30 minutes per sheep and sometimes longer for the wiggly ones! We can only so a couple at a time also, as it is hard on the back…

It was quite difficult fitting it in to the cooler spell while I was working - it’s torture to do when it is hot because the bitey flies get us and the sheep so much. We did it early in the morning and a couple of afternoons as well, I arrived back at my desk for meetings disheveled and smelling of sheep several times. Fortunately people can’t smell over zoom!

They look much smaller and skinnier after shearing!

Their fleece is filthy with all the recent rain and consequent mud. Hopefully I can get it cleanish and find some time to do something with it!

Baa!

Lamb number 4 (this boy makes 3 boys and a girl)

 

Moving the sheepsies

The sheep have 3 lambs now. 2 boys and a girl. We are expecting at least one more, the other 2 ewes are not a year old so probably won’t have one, but it’s hard to tell for absolutely sure as they live with the ram all year round (he’d be lonely if he had to live on his own!) so it can happen later in the year. 

We just moved them on to new grass behind the house where there is now a bit of extra grass for them after I moved some trees of the bank below the potager.

Spec is the queen of the castle!

This fence is genius but also annoying! It keeps the sheep in, but is a bit of a fag to put out, it keeps getting caught on things and you end up walking the length of it MANY times. But on the upside it used to nearly kill me when we first did it and now I can do other things in the day! I must be fitter 🤣 

First lamb of the year

Missy has had a little boy. It’s been sunny and warm for ages and she chose the start of a cold rainy period to have him! Even though we have had some born in the snow and they were fine, it is a relief to see them looking happy and warm after the first night in the world... they are such tiny scraps of things when they are born, but they soon fluff up and get some milk in them and seem to double in size...

Snowy Animals

 It snowed a few days ago. Fortunately we had just got hay for the cows and horses so everyone has a full belly or warming hay. The sheep even accepted a little, generally if they have any grass at all they reject hay...

It’s melting off a lot now, but much colder than it has been here for years. The last two winters were very warm and even the few before that, though we had snow it didn’t freeze so hard.

The ducks don’t seem to mind the cold and go swimming as soon as I break the ice on their water. Nutters!

The chickens aren’t too bothered either. Apparently if it gets really really cold they can get frost bite on their combs, but not seen any sign of that

Buttercup always used to feel the cold, but the remaining ones don’t so much

The horses have their run in and plenty of hay as well as wooly winter coats

The sheep have plenty of wool, they only accept hay when they can’t get at the grass at all.

Sheep on the loose!!

The sheep are not meant to be here in the front garden! They are meant to be nibbling away in the orchard to get the grass down so the bracken can be strimmed again to help the apple trees. 

We ended up spending the morning preparing the next field for them as it was pretty much time to move them anyway. I think little Speck was the ring leader as it is difficult to get the electric feed out to the orchard so she squeezes through the mesh of the fence, then her mum wants to follow... then they all want to go...

Greek style lamb

The size of our lambs is a bit comical. This is a rolled shoulder. It did nicely for 2 people with a little left over for bibimbap on Sunday. I cooked it quite slowly as it comes out very juicy and tender that way.

The sauce is kefir (yogurt) with mint and chives in it. The salad is from the garden (except the chickpea sprouts - but I did grow them!)

Followed by rhubarb meringue pie

Sheep shearing

It’s that time if year again. It has to be times so that the break in the fleece that happens in spring is long enough, but before the hot weather comes and with it, the danger of fly strike (we spray at the same time as shearing).

We don’t enjoy it much - too hot, too many flies, unhappy sheep

The sheep don’t enjoy it - always a danger of bits of skin getting chopped off despite our best efforst

But it has to be done anyway

First get the sheep

Then put them in a small area where you can catch them

The lambs get wormed and sprayed, but thankfully we don’t have to shear them

Two done in the first morning, five to go. We will do some more this afternoon and hope/plan to finish tomorrow morning before the coming heat wave...

We won’t be winning any sheep shearing competitions as each one takes about 30 mins!

They can’t recognise each other once the fleece comes off. This lamb is standing right by her mum baahing madly. Muuuum muuum where are yoouuuuu?

First ever problem with a Ouessant giving birth

We have had a sad few days. One of the Ouessant had problems giving birth. The lamb died and even the vet couldn’t get it out. Seems likely it was breech. 

Eventually after a number of injections the vet did manage to get it out, but it was a bit rotted and gruesome by then. Pretty unpleasant experience for the ewe (and us!). She has recovered after antibiotics that I had to inject for a few days.

We will probably cull her in the autumn as we don’t want a repeat of this problem (birthing problems are rare in Ouessants and she has had other lambs ok, but we don’t know what the effect of these problems will be on her). Seems sad to have gone to the effort of saving her just to kill her, but that is life, we can’t have one we don’t want bred as they all live with the ram.

1st Ouessant Lamb

Finally the first of the Ouessant lambs.

Much later than normal, but better late than never

The others are doing well

Potato scones to celebrate

Slow Roast Mutton Leg

Roasted for 3 hours at 150C then about another 30 mins at 180C. I started the potatoes cooking before I did the meat and put them back in for the last 30 minutes.
Before roasting I put cloves of garlic and sprigs of rosemary under the skin.
We had it with roast potatoes and carrots and some beetroot I found hiding in the garden as I was weeding.
Came out really yummy!

Another lamb!

It’s a girl! This is Dagmar’s second lamb. Dagmar is my favorite sheep, she is quite friendly because her mum died when she was youngish and she needed a bit of extra care, she has nice wool too. The twins are doing well, they keep getting confused between Missy, their mum, and Dagmar. I thought that although I struggle to tell Missy and Dagmar apart by sight, surely to a sheep would be able to tell them apart! There is certainly 2 more to come, and maybe 2 after that, depending whether the 2 youngest sheep have one or not.

Proud father

This little one may or may not have a lamb this year as she is just about a year old herself

Dagmar with her new lamb

The twins, you can see one just peeking out behind his mum. The white one is a mummies boy and the black one a little adventurer.

First lambs! Finally!

We normally get the first lamb end of Jan or early February kind of time. This year we had to wait until mid March! This was because we had a new ram and he was very young so took a little while to get going and get the hang of things. Good job though because the first ewe had twins!

They look like tiny tiny little scrappy things but they are actually quite sturdy and she has done an amazing job of producing two sturdy little fellows. Both boys.

Curing Sheep Skins

Tiny rug made from one of our lambs. From one of last year’s that I have finally got round to finishing as this year’s have just gone to the abattoir. The rose I used for scale is quite small too...

We now have enough to use usefully in the La Mongie flat on stools and chairs. Still several waiting to be done though! It takes quite a while although with practice the process is getting slicker. Sheep skins are so easy compared with the cow skins, smaller and thinner and more flexible makes all the processes much easier.