Another arrival

We had an arrival yesterday – 2 lambs (one male, one female). This is the mother’s first birth. When I checked on them late last night, I was concerned about the female lamb. It was bitterly cold – we are going through a cold snap – and she was cold and shivering. I took the decision to take her home to warm her up and feed her. I knew the outcome would be that I would be breaking the bond between mother and baby (leaving me to be the surrogate mother to the lamb) but this was preferable to getting to the farm in the morning to find she had died.

I took her back to the farm this morning. She hung about with her brother but she didn’t suckle from the mother. She is now bottle fed by me. While this cold snap continues, she will be kept in our house overnight. A lamb’s biggest source of heat is the mother and if she no longer accepts the baby, she will provide no heat for it. Once the cold snap is over, we can look again at leaving her in the field with the other sheep overnight.

Until 2009 I was working in London, UK, but I gave it up to pursue a life of self-sufficiency. My aim is to grow or forage for all my food, produce my own power and live a healthier and greener lifestyle. I left London to return to my home village of Sunniside, near Newcastle, in the North East of England. I have a couple of plots of land there as well as the garden of my house. Our village is a commuter area for Newcastle but we are surrounded by countryside which we use for picking wild foods. My mission in life is to show that it is possible to live well without destroying the planet in the process. I am also keen to ensure knowledge of historic recipes and cooking is kept alive. I regularly try out recipes from old cookbooks using the food we have grown. I make videos about our progress and about how to cook home-grown foods. These can be viewed on www.youtube.com/jonathanwallace.
www.self-sufficientinsuburbia.blogspot.com