TUPPING TIME

At the risk of sounding repetitive ... though forecast wise, not for much longer, more fog!

But this morning at least it was moving, not that made much difference to visibility.

In the top sorting pens by the mountain gate, another farm was sorting out ewes but with the swiftly swirling fog, photography was, sadly nigh on impossible. I could only just see them as they waited patiently to be sorted out. These pens like yesterday were muddy.

In this case, father and son were working hard to get their ewes sorted out, ready to move down the mountain road and to be finally let loose in the in-bye field for tupping.

Meanwhile, to my delight today, I spotted this delicately gilled fungus pushing up in the grasses in the verge, with a delicate "necklace" of a dew bejewelled spiders web.

But apart from the few Dead Nettle flowers and some stubborn Yarrow blooms, there was little else to be seen. The hawthorns were bare of berries, the few blackberries were to be quite honestly, tasteless and teeth gratingly seedy.

More predominately in the verges was the dumped rubbish of passing cars. Drinks cans,  (both high energy and alcoholic) plastic bottles, food packaging ... as usual,  McDonalds! 

We wended our way back down the mountain road to the less foggy old churchyard.

The autumnal leaves are falling fast, littering the ground with at least what are bio-degradable leaves blown in and around the gravestones and trees.

One of my favourite corners of this lovely churchyard with it's carefully constructed old stone walls, the views over The Argoed, and rare for this old churchyard a Field Maple as golden as this carpet of beech leaves below it. As I photographed this I heard a sound ... 
that of farmers moving ewes down the mountain road from the pens. We stood by and watched as some 60 ewes were gathered in to an in-bye field and then that movement completed, time for the ram to be released ...

Not the best photo I know, but this ram was bought this year at local Ram Sales, so he now has  a new set of ewes to attend to and I feel sure that in the days ahead, he will perform at his best. We shall see in the spring lambing ahead just how well he has done to add his genes to the new generation of young lambs on the farm. He has sixty ewes to attend to and I just know that this lovely looking Welsh ram will do what he was bought for. (producing the next years generation of lambs). New blood in our local stock is what is needed to ensure that our Welsh breeding line is kept very much alive. Up here there is a mixture of Texel and Welsh and in one local farm an almost forgotten breed of Balwen sheep. I look forward to seeing next years lambing to see what breeds appear on the mountain ... locally.