Al let the sheep into the orchard, which is a good way of clearing out some of the undergrowth. However the lambs are now large enough to make a lot of trouble while still being young enough to be springy and gung-ho.
Yup, up they climbed onto the carefully stacked stash of stone for…something or other in due course. They were very keen to eat the nice hazel hedge up there, because literally everything is nicer to eat than grass. And it turns out that young sheep can scramble up and jump down just like goats. This was all very well but the wall between the orchard and the Rumwoldstow cloister garden has been taken down so that the foundations of the old Roman gatehouse can be built. And those sheep decided that Rumwoldstow looked much more interesting so managed to knock aside the panels blocking the gap and go for a good rampage around the gardens.
I say, I say, I say, how can you tell if there have been sheep in your bed?
Hoofprints in the beetroot!
Overall the veg are coming on well in the new bed, with only the dwarf green beans stubbornly refusing to come up. These are all late varieties, it’s a bit marginal but I hope we’ll get some crop of white beetroot, salad leaves, carrots and spring onions. Two of the second planting of beans have finally germinated, these are ones that I soaked for an hour before planting. And one got firmly sheep-trodden so I can’t really blame it. I am sure that next year I’ll need to move some of the larger plants around as they’ll get a lot bigger, but just for now there is space for them all. And the snails haven’t discovered them yet, perhaps because of the walls.
Back in the home garden, the older dwarf green beans proved a tasty target for the sheep before they all ran out into the road…then fortunately all ran back! I’ve been very lucky, the sheep might have eaten and trampled a lot more before Al shooed them back to their orchard.