Winter on the farm

We’ve survived our first winter on the farm! Well technically I’ve had a few winters on this farm before, having grown up here, but this is our (being mine and Freddie’s) first winter here.

It’s been a very busy time of year for us, and we may have missed the last 3 weeks of winter due to being in Canada for a wedding (more on that in a separate blog post or two). Even though it’s been winter we have been extremely lucky this year in that it has been quite mild and not too wet and cold, which is always a worry when you start lambing in the last month of the winter season! This has meant we have had grass growth for a lot longer than usual, which has meant more feed for our ewes…which flows onto hopefully better lambs! Because our system relies solely on grass we are very dependent on the weather playing nice and so far, so good!!

The winter started off with a busy move down from the Bay of Plenty, which coincided with Gypsy Day (1^stJune), and we then spent the next couple of weeks unpacking and getting everything in place around the house. That being said we still don’t have anything on the walls yet and I have definitely not finished with styling the house, but all good things take time! I have been getting a lot of inspiration from Pinterest so watch this space!!

Shortly after we moved it was Fieldays week, which is always good fun. Fieldays, or Mystery Creek Agricultural Fieldays, is essentially 4 days every year in the winter where farmers descend upon the Waikato to discuss, buy and look at all things farming. There are incredible innovations, tractors and more, and if you are interested in reading more about our time there do check out my post about it!

Winter also means lots of scanning for our ewes! This is an extremely important part of our farming operation as it allows us to correctly assign certain paddocks to certain sheep based on how many lambs they are carrying. A ewe carrying more lambs will require a higher feed intake to ensure that she has healthy lambs that grow well. So, it is important that we know what ewes are carrying a single lamb, compared with twins or triplets. Because we stagger our lambing based on the ewe’s age it means that we do our scanning over a few weeks, with the older ewes being at the start of winter and the hoggets later on the winter. We were very lucky this year in that we only had 3% of all our ewes empty (not in lamb), which was great considering we had a dry summer earlier in the year.

Than lambing begun!! As always it started of quietly and then it seemed like they were all lambing at the same time!! Lambing is always a bit hectic but at the end of the day it is extremely rewarding to see all the lambs bouncing around the paddocks happy as can be! It’s definitely one of my favourite times of the year as they are just so cute!! We try to check all the lambing ewes twice a day so that we can assist with any problem lambings or cast ewes. We currently have 3 pet lambs and they keep us very busy but are so funny with their individual personalities coming through – we had 5 before we left for our holiday but gave them away to family friends as sadly they couldn’t come with us to Canada!

And that essentially brings us to the end of my winter re-cap. In between all the farm work and moving we didn’t have too much time away as we were saving hard for our Canada holiday. It ended up being the trip of a lifetime with the most amazing memories made (if you follow me on Instagram you will have seen why!). Spring is here now and although we have had a fair bit of rain and cold already I know that summer is almost here so that makes me incredibly happy! The days are getting longer which means more time spent outdoors! Bring it on I say!

Until next time though guys! If you have any questions please just let me know and we will talk soon 🙂