Epiphany

The plan had been to spend rather less than the habitual two hours over morning coffee connecting with people around the globe on two very different websites, and drive down to the port early enough to catch the bizarre 'jumping into the sea to retrieve a cross' ritual that is part of Eastern Orthodox Epiphany. But before breakfast I wandered down the hill into the sheep precinct to check on our two ewes who were both heavily pregnant.

At this point all plans were instantly changed because the day had suddenly turned exciting. Our older ewe, who is mother to our younger ewe, had just delivered twins. For whatever reason, our little family are born black but fade to latte via chocolate, so here we have an all-black male (front) with his little sister (behind) who sports a sweet white fascinator. Her tail ends in white as well which is unspeakably cute (sorry!)

They were born at the bottom of a slope that is too steep for tinies to clamber up and so the entire family was loitering down at the bottom, away from the home comforts of water trough, shelter, feed bins etc. We phoned those with more experience for advice and were told that yes, it was a good idea to carry the lambs up to their shelter and that their mother was sure to follow. We weren't too sure if the lambs had got the hang of suckling and so some more phone calls, a nip into the village on a bank holiday (because everything is closed to watch eedjits jumping into the sea to retrieve a cross) to purchase a baby bottle and a swift lesson on milking a sheep and then bottle-feeding the babies and we think we'll be OK.

Of course the big sister of the new little ones is about to deliver an unknown quantity of nephews and nieces and the sheep shelter has been proclaimed too small for this sort of venture at this time of year, so we might be busy constructing larger shelters for the next couple of days.

So excited! :-D