Oh look, more sheep!

The snow has all gone from our land, though we could still see some snow on the hills further up the valley. It was still cold today but I enjoyed a walk up our road, listening to the lapwings - or 'peewits' - that have recently returned from wintering on the coast to their nesting grounds here in the North Pennines. If you have never heard a peewit before, they have the strangest call, particularly at this time of year when they are pairing up ready for mating. I would love to take a decent photo of one of those birds but I fear my camera isn't really up to the task, so I'll have to rely on hubby and his mega-lens for that one!

This shot shows some of our fields both in the foreground and the three in centre shot of the hillside further back. It isn't the easiest of land to farm: we used to be a dairy farm when I was a kid, but the smaller dairy farmers were mostly crushed out of existence in the late 70s/early 80s and we stopped keeping cattle too soon after that. Now we just keep several breeds of sheep. The animals need to be pretty hardy creatures and the only crops we grow are some hay or silage in the summer, though I remember helping to harvest one or two rows of 'tatties' and 'neeps' that we grew on the farm when we were kids. In the days before pumpkins were widely available in the UK supermarkets, we had turnip lanterns at hallowe'en!