How can it be only three years since this bloke entered the world when it feels likes he’s been one of us forever?

Happy Birthday to the one and only colin.thelab

Since his arrival on the Homestead, there are few-if-any areas, physical, psychological, or social, that don’t have his pawprints all over them. Just look at the windows…the table legs…or, in The Bean Counter’s case, the plaintive cry of, “Where’s my lunchbag?” (he’s learning to stash it out of Labrador reach). I’m being facetious but it’s only to avoid getting sappy about pawprints, hearts and the such.

Out in the paddocks, there’s been a few birthdays too. Of the eight possible Mums, to date we have had five trundled off to the figurative maternity ward. It’s a little earlier than usual (leading to furtive fence jumping speculation) but thankfully the weather has been kind to the seven paddock newbies.

Our two oldest ewes, Eleanor (left) and Froda, have this whole baby thing well sorted

This year we’re trialing a couple of new-to-us ideas. Firstly, we’re numbering the lambs and Mums in an attempt to keep bloodline details straight. When they are little dots totally dependent on their mothers, I find it easy to tell who is who but, once they hit adolescence, one white lamb can look very much like the next one. This can lead to spirited and sometimes undignified Homesteader flock-of-the-future discussions.

The second bright idea is keeping the new family in the barnyard until the weekend following birth, thus giving the mums a chance to relax and get spoilt a little and us a more contained space to chase down the lamb for tailing, docking and health check. So far so good.

Number 4, Orla, and her brand new, stonking ram lamb and Vera, number 1, hanging in the barn with her twins

And speaking of anniversaries of birth, this month Union Homestead clocks up its first decade. On 27 August it is ten years since Leia the goat’s arrival signaled, mostly to us, that we were serious about giving this homesteading idea a go.

It’s been a steep learning curve full of triumphs, disasters, belly laughs, not a few tears and many many lessons. Every day is still a school day

and every day I still wouldn’t want to be spending my days doing anything else.