We have been given devastating news that
National Grid, an American owned company, wants to spoil our beautiful valley
with yet another set of gigantic pylons and over-head power lines. The line
will run from Bramford, near Ipswich, to about 500 metres from our front door.
We need all the help we can get to fight this, so please visit the
Stour Valley
Underground website to see is happening and support the case for
undergrounding the cables and protect what is left of 'Gainsborough country'.
For those of you in America who might be reading this, the very first 'stars
and stripes' flag made by Betsey Ross used cloth woven in the Stour valley.
Please help keep our valley beautiful. Thank you.
Begining of February saw our
first reasonable covering of snow. Tony took the opportunity of donning his
designer ski ware and gliding down our hill like the professional skier he is -
not!
Boiler suit £30, skis free, boots £10. Loads of fun? - Priceless!
Our regular visit to the Tendring
Show went well and everyone enjoyed it, including Tony's daughter Charlotte
(Charlie) and her boyfriend Chuckie. Unfortunately Charlie had a very bad case
of hay fever and did not look well! Here the alpacas look on as Gill teaches a
youngster the finer arts of spinning.
Due to a
bit of bad luck both our Sheep shearer and alpaca shearer turned up on the same
day. Panic broke out for a short while then it was all hands to the pumps as we
got stuck in. Thankfully Charlie and Chuckie came over to give us a hand. In
the evening we went out for a well deserved curry!
Only lambed a few of our best Dartmoors, as we
are still slowly reducing the size of the flocks which have become too
large.
This is the first time we have
taken the 'Baylham three' to the Tendring Show. They seemed to enjoy it! They
are quite used to people and like being hand
fed!
Sandra Scott sheared our alpacas
with a bit of help (or is that interference!) from us. Some of the alpacas
grumbled a bit but they all felt the benefit afterwards. We also took the
opportunity to trim their toes and teeth. Here one of our boys is getting his
top-knot trimmed, but not too much in order to keep the sun
off.
We did not lamb many ewes this year but this
Shetland ewe lamb proved a big hit with
visitors!
Stour Valley Sheep
welcomes a new member to the team. She's Sue, the Border Collie. She is five
years old and has been trained to work with sheep. All she has to do now is to
train her new owners!
We have added a page to our site for youngsters
called, with some originality on our part, the Kids Page! Here you can play
games, or save a picture to your computer, colour it in and send it to us for
display. Cool!
We were hit by the gale like most people and suffered some damage to the roof of one of our barns. Looking at the TV news pictures around the rest of the country we got of pretty lightly.
Trecked west to the excellent annual lunch of the Shetland Sheep Society at the 'Crooked Chimney' near Welwyn Garden City. As you can see it was well named!