Sheep - how it all started

In the dark days of 2001, when the countryside was virtually closed down due to the foot and mouth outbreak, we had a flock of Herdwick ewes from a Borrowdale farm wintering at ours and as they could not return home due to the restrictions they all had to lamb here at Dancing Gate. This was a steep learning curve for me as we had not had sheep since I was a little girl and Dad put me in charge of them. Things mostly went okay, but by the time lambing was over we had four pets - either due to their mum dying or rejecting them. April, Pepsi and Toffee were all texel x herdwick and Sooty was a pure herdwick. As they were all girls and everyone had got so fond of them there was no question of sending them to market and so as things got more back to normal in the autumn a search was on for a suitable tup to borrow. Neighbours along the road let us borrow theirs when they had finished using him and so 'Sue's Flock' began. In May 2002 April and Toffee had a ewe lamb each and Pepsi had twin ewe lambs. Today, there are about 75 ewes, lambing each Spring.