Lambing time

I must admit that no matter how lovely the little newly born lambs are, a whole programme called Lambing Live, suggesting that there will be blood and all, makes me shiver and does not make me to want to watch it. Nevertheless, it is apparently extremely popular and as the BBC Farmers Hour told me, everything has been happier than last year, when there was snow deeply in many of the higher areas and countless lambs were lost. This year it was all sunny and happy.

The programme reminded me that Number One Son had not visited the local City Farm for ages, so we headed there on the English Mothering Day. At the same time when Archaeologist Husband was still in Reading – admittedly on his way home – in a conference networking and meeting his Roman pottery expert and Roman archaeologist friends. It was a fair day, even if it was not as sunny as the Saturday before when I and Number One Son were looking for a new proper-sized bed for him (and I fell for a cheap model, since I got a nice mattress and free home delivery, to the fury of Archaeologist Husband who had to try to put the flat pack wonder together). Number One Son and his reception classmates have ‘Animals’ as this half-term’s theme, so a picnic at the City Farm felt vaguely educational as well.

Everything was nice and lovely, but not overly exciting – until two things happened. Number One Son saw the huge pigs of a traditional British variety. Number One Son was standing next to their drinking hole, and we were lucky, since a huge pig waddled towards us in a muddy pigsty and started to drink. I must say this was very educational to me as well, since I had never seen pig’s upper lip ever. Very thin and feminine, I must say.

Even if Number One Son hogged the sandwiches and enjoyed running around in the playground, the real treat was to the last. He realised that he can feed grass to the sheep and the tickling that resulted from the sheep basically licking the grass from his hand made him giggle. That was a happy end to the fun visit.