Countryside Alliance Badges: New & Old

Today the Countryside Alliance made their new badges available to purchase from their website. They launched their new logo and branding in February this year, this was the first change they have made to their logo in 10 years. The new logo was designed by Steve Edge who has worked for Fortnum & Mason, Purdey and lots of other big names. I think that this logo will do wonders for the Countryside Alliance and, although we will all miss the old one, it will soon become a staple for the brand. 

I was lucky enough to win one of the new badges on one of their Twitter giveaways and I have been wearing it ever since. However, they are now available to buy for £4.99 here sp you can wear yours with pride too… 

Today when I was on their website after clicking the link to see that they had launched their new badges, I noticed another badge that they had for sale. This was the old style British Field Sports Society pin. It instantly reminded me of the badges I had found on my Granddads old Barbour when we got it out last year. I went into my wardrobe to have a look at the badges just out of interest and to my surprise (and delight!) it was the exact same badge that was out of stock on the Countryside Alliance website! I had to take a picture to make a comparison of the two and they make a great pair so I think they might have to live together on my tweed coat or one of my schoffels. 

Hopefully, I will be doing some more lambing over Easter so stay tuned for that and I hope all of you are having a good lambing season! 

Lambing Live 2017!

Well, I have had a very exciting weekend doing some intensive lambing for work experience...

I did a little bit last year but it wasn’t very hands on, and although I definitely learnt more about lambing, I got much more stuck in this year and it was great!

On the first day, within minutes of walking into the lambing shed I watched 3 lambs being born and then I was stuck straight in moving them into an individual pen with the ewe. I spent most of the weekend following the girl who worked at the farm around and attempting to learn as much as possible from her. She had recently come back from New Zealand so she had a lot of comparisons to make about how different the farms were over there which was interesting.

The lambing was starting to slow down at the farm, but there were still lots of lambs to come and lots of work to be done. My first task of the day was to empty and refill all of the water buckets in the individual pens, I was glad to have a job that I was familiar with to start off. When I finished, I was ready for some hands-on experience with the sheep.  

Conveniently, when I had finished the water buckets, she had just spotted a ewe that had gone into labour. As I hadn’t ever pulled a lamb, she got the lamb into a good position and told me to lamb it. I pulled the lamb and it was great! It was so satisfying to see the little lamb come around and later get up and start to feed. The one thing I hadn’t ever realised before was how slippery lambs are to pull out!

Through the rest of the day, I helped with lots of different jobs such as loading the ewes and lambs into the trailer to be moved into the field, spraying the navels with iodine, giving the lambs their initial injections, bedding down the individual pens and moving the ewes and lambs around the shed.  I got to do some more lambing and I started to get more confident towards the end of the day when she would catch a ewe in labour and tell me to just „lamb it!“.

I also got to go on a tractor ride (always well received) around the grounds of the estate and assist with dropping the lambs and ewes off in the field. I had to help match the ewes up with their lambs and I got to watch the sheepdog at work.

The next day I did lots more filling of water buckets, moving ewes and lambs, and all of the stuff I did the previous day. I watched some castrations and tail dockings, and I did lots more injections.

She gave me some trickier ewes to lamb and I even did one on my own that she didn’t feel for me and just made me talk her through what I was doing. I was feeling way more confident with lambing by the end of the weekend.

At the end of the day, I assisted with the tube feeding rounds for the weaker lambs which were really interesting to see.

All in all, the intensive lambing experience was invaluable, I learnt so much and I am now so much more confident around the sheep and while lambing. It makes you have so much respect for the people who do it day in and day out.

As they say in New Zealand (apparently)  - pretty big day, pretty big job, feeding the planet...

Ariat Work Boots First Impressions

I recently received a pair of Ariat work boots to trial and review so I thought that I would do a quick first impressions post on them.

These are the Mastergrip 6“ Waterproof work boots from Ariat. They have composite toe protection, a slip resistant sole, waterproof surface and lots of other great features. I think that these boots would be great for anyone who works in an industrial or agricultural setting, they seem hard wearing and comfortable to work in.

I wore them on Saturday on a visit to Formby Beach in Liverpool, I spent some time with my sister getting some shots for my blog and we also went on a walk down to the beach.

We walked down through the dunes to the beach which was a total of almost 6km which in hindsight was probably a terrible idea in brand new boots, but they were surprisingly comfortable and I didn’t have any problems with them except one blister which I believe was the result of a poor sock choice!

The boots proved themselves to be waterproof on the beach and they handled the rough terrain well (even if my balance wasn’t quite up to it!)...

The design of the boots made them easy to bend in so I think that they would also be good boots to wear for lambing and other similar activities.

That's all for now but I will be sure to update you again once I have had the chance to put the boots through their paces a bit more!

*Photo Credit goes to Play at Home Teacher

**Disclaimer- This product has been sent to me from the manufacturer but all opinions are my own and are honest.