My next stop was at Melinda Baker’s farm in Shepton Mallet, Somerset. She had to work for part of the day on Friday, so her husband kindly took the day to take me around and play tourist.
This is the chapel of the Marston House. It belonged to the Earls of Cork and Orrey. The manor is now a corporate headquarters.
This is Longleat House, an Edwardian manor that belongs to the Marquis of Bath. Much of the land is now a safari park, but we didn’t go because of the rain.
This is another lovely manor house.
We then headed to the small village of Frome. Here is one of the roads.
In Frome, we stopped at the museum. They had a book with weaving drafts. Frome was a center for tweeds and fine worsteds, and I really would have loved to poke through the weaving book myself. There were samples of the cloth, plus the full weaving draft and sett were listed. I hope they will consider documenting and publishing this valuable book.
We didn’t go in, but I liked the look of this traditional pub.
My second castle was Nunney Castle, a French-style 14th-century moated castle.
This was probably part of the original stables and castle outbuildings, but it is now owned separately.
With our tourist stuff done, we went back to the farm. There, I met Mrs. McGregor and her daughter. They had to come pick up a ram lamb they were purchasing from Melinda. We first adjourned to the house for tea and to fill out the required movement paperwork. The UK is much stricter about documenting animal movement than the US. Every sheep is double-tagged, and all movements on or off the farm are documented.
The ram on the right in the first picture is the one that was sold.
Melinda’s ram lambs, her yearling ram, and a wether buddy in the back.
I particularly liked this ram lamb. Unfortunately, he is of the lowest Scrapie resistance, and he was under a mandatory slaughter order. The UK requires that all group four and five rams be slaughtered. In the US, nearly all of our sheep would be slaughtered, since we have so few resistant genotypes here. Of my own 27 adult rams, only four would be acceptable to keep here in the UK.
This is Lovel Jumping Jack, her yearling ram. He has the preferred style of UK horns – much thinner and longer than ours, and more closely set to the head.
They loaded the ram into the back of their SUV and tied his head to the headrest. It was a most unusual way to haul a sheep!
We had planned to look at Melinda’s ewes in the yard individually, but it was raining hard, and we decided not to move them in. We did go see them in the pasture, and we talked about their good and bad points, as well as what the senior judges will be looking for.
Thus ended my first day of flock visits.