Tupping gone wrong

Remember how I said that the ram had serviced all the sheep and that I'd put him in again just in case? Well, it turns out Little Fecker is not that good at fucking, or better, he's not that good at getting them pregnant, because surely he's applying himself a lot.
The result is that I might have as little as only two sheep in lamb (Selvaggia and Concubine), but hopefully the third time around he managed the other 3.
My mistake, I left it too late and when I realized that he didn't work it was too late to get another one. If I went to get another ram now I would have lambing in June, which means milking until January. No way Jose!!! Better be barren for a year, especially now that we only have 4, hopefully we'll make treasure of my mistake and won't do it again.
There is a chance that LF is just inexperienced, that the Frisian sheep are a tiny bit too tall (in fact the only 2 that are not on heat again are the shortest ones), or that LF is not mature yet. Truth is that probably he is infertile but I like him so much that I'll try to keep him, possibly as a teaser ram. Way to go Little Fecker!

Bird mass extinction

Dear friends and 5 readers, I have been finding it difficult to post recently, regardless of the amazing opportunities offered by my newly acquired smart phone (which I got for free from Whizzie).
It's all a big mess in my mind. It's a series of small and big jobs queuing around in my gray matter.
The lane has been fixed but the drainage is still to be sorted out. We did do it actually, we sent all the water in a piece of government owned forestry bordering with us, but it turns out that our neighbour bought it 5 days later and now he's complaining about it and threatening to plug the drain. You think he'd have told us but he didn't. We have a fucking good bunch of neighbours.
So we'll have to do it again.
The ram has serviced all the sheep and I've taken him out now. He's with his Suffolk concubine now.
I'll put him in with the ladies in two weeks again. Just in case.
For the rest, I'm trying to sort out drainage on the upper fields too and tomorrow the digger man is coming in because it's been very dry for two weeks and it's perfect weather to dig.
But the dreadful news of the day is that we had a mass extinction of birds. The fox got 9 chickens and the 3 super cute ducks. Poor Whizzie was heart broken and gave the only 1 survivor to a friend. The evil fox went in and out all night, but what is more shocking is that she climbed a 2 meter net. Guantanamo has been violated. To add more sadness to the bird diversity situation at the farm, I killed a robin. The robin is a lovely little bird. Not just any robin, but the one that I knew and grew accustomed to see around and in the stable. He died in a mouse trap that I thought I had carefully placed in a bird-proof spot. When I saw it my heart shrunk to the size of a walnut. And now I feel even worse. Total miserable. At least we learn from our mistakes.

Electricity

Electricity is a great thing. I finally got the electric connection for the shed last week. And I love it.
Even though the sheep are all dry now, it's still quite busy around here.
We are trying to sort out drainage in a few parts of the farm, especially around the new lane, in order to defeat the evil forces of the water that want to take our new lane from us.
A gate is also very slowly going up at the entrance of the farm. What color do you think we should paint it? I'd go for red.

Little Fecker has been having lots of fun with the sheep but I have noticed that the first one that was covered is in heat again. Not a good sign little Fecker! You better sort it out if you want a long career!

The female lambs are the funniest things ever. You should have seen them playing today. Jumping like silly goats all over the field.

The love sheep

I'm almost ashamed of myself but I'm thinking of getting more sheep: http://www.muttonbone.com

humidity in cheese making

Well well,
humidity is a very important factor in cheese making, mainly in aging, because to get your cheese to age properly within the expected time frame, you need the humidity to fall within a certain range. For example for my pecorino the best is around 85%.
But in the specific case of pecorino, but also other cheeses, humidity is also important in a step that I always took a bit for granted: rind formation. I never had any issues so far and rind for pecorino it's formed after soaking in brine by simply letting the cheese to air dry for one or two days, depending on humidity in the air.
There. In the past couple of weeks we've had so much humidity that I cannot get the rind to form at all. The cheese stays wet and finally after a few days gets covered with slime. Not nice. I do not like slime on my cheese.
It's the awful combination of high precipitation and high temperatures. This will be a challenge next year, I doubt we'll have such a dry summer in the next 30 years :(