A lamb died at the grass keep, likely because its mother accidentally sat on it. We loaded the sheep welfare gear into the truck and drove to Selkirk grass keep to pick up the dead lamb.
When we arrived, we saw that the lamb’s eyes were missing. Red lines streaked down its face, standing out sharply against its pale cream wool. I wondered aloud how the lamb could bleed so much if it hadn’t been alive when its eyes were taken.
I had read that birds usually wait a while after an animal dies before they start feeding, but Charlie said the lamb was still warm when they found it. It was a warm day. Charlie worried about the smell from the lamb decaying in the back of our truck, while I kept thinking about flies that might show up.
Tomorrow we’ll ask the knacker man to come and take away the dead lamb from Woodburn. He drives a red-and-white lorry with a red-and-black bull logo, which always feels a bit strange. Charlie opened the field gate and called the ewes and lambs over with some lamb pellets. They run as soon as they hear the plastic bag crumple.
Only half the flock showed up to feed. Most of the lambs were suspicious, which was ironic since we needed to worm them for fluke. I filmed a lot of the shearing in portrait mode, but this Linux video editor won't resize or render it for the website. On the way to Denholm, we passed a horse box and watched a farmer baling silage.
There was a Common Riding gathering on the village green in Denholm. Still, I wondered why we should care about it since we're English.
This afternoon, I went with Charlie to his workplace. We spent the day driving a tractor through the fields and turning silage.
He had trouble with the silage turner and had to go back to the farm yard twice before he could fix it.
It took forty-five minutes to turn the first field and thirty minutes for the second. Between these two fields, Charlie fed the coos while I took photographs.
While I was waiting for Charlie, I saw the Common riding along the hillside. I think it was the Denholm ride out, passing near Rubis Law, out looking for English people on horseback.
When we got back to Hawick, we saw that the Common Riding crowd had gathered at Hornshole to celebrate the killing of Englishmen while they slept. Charlie said he found the event distasteful, and watching the 'dark tourism' scene made me feel uneasy.
This rhyme came into my head.
"Fy, Fa and fum,
I smell the blood of an Englishman"
Thomas Nashe, Haue with You to Saffron-Walden, 1596.
Afterwards, we had fish and chips from Tony's fish bar in Burnfoot, then collapsed from exhaustion. Charlie still had to drive twenty miles after 10pm to feed the sheep. He was so tired when he got back, and I was already sprawled out on the bed.