About two miles from home is the lovely small village of Polkerris, which consists of a few houses, a pub, a great pizza joint and a beach. The road ends on the beach, and there is an old harbour wall and an former life-boat house (now the afore-said pizza place: Sam's on the Beach). The pub has a large cat and the pub terrace is one of the best places from which to look towards sunset on St. Austell Bay.
And that's all I need to say!
This has been a hard winted in the UK for farmers. So lambing was also hard. I lost more lambs than I have ever done, as did many people, and this is really sad and upsetting. Also sometimes your decisions catch up with you! So I had more stock than ideal for my land, so more lambs, lambed over a longer period from younger ewes. All this adds up to more work and heartache.
And when one is also running a business, there are just too many things happening ... and the business also needs me!
I spent the day on Wednesday and again on Saturday in the Shearing Shed at the Bath & West Show, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.
We helped last year too. On these days there are demonstrations and talks all about wool and shearing, while the sheep shearing competitions happen on the Thursday and Friday. The demonstrations included hand blade shearing, which uses the same tools as used over 4,000 years ago and are still used extensively, mechanical wheel-driven shearing (by humans!), a wonderful 1952 Lister steam engine which drives 4 shearing sets and modern electrical shearing. You can gues which drew the largest crowds!
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