17th January, 2012: Happy New Year!  Here are pictures of the flock and winter shearing.  Gideon the shearer and I delayed this event, which is normally before Christmas, because the weather was horribly wet.  Sheep are fine with cold but much less happy with wet, particularly when shorn.  So I feed them extra rations and give them access to shelter anyway but the wet and wind were a bit much.  We seem to have struck lucky as it has scarcely rained since we did it.

Here's Harry watching Gideon arriving - the sheep stay indoors for around 24 hours before shearing to ensure they are dry and are not fed then either as shearing on full bellies can be very stressful and anyway they can eat all day afterwards ...