In the beginning there were Jacobs

So to recap – my husband had no intention of any additional mowing hence the arrival of the ovine mowers… twenty Jacobs (each with a nice pair of handle bars, which I soon discovered were very useful for grabbing hold of, but extremely painful when digging you in the thigh) had duly arrived, eaten a large amount of grass, put on an extremely satisfying amount of weight and were about to head for my, and various friends’ freezers, when my husband had another helpful suggestion.
‘Why don’t we have lambs, otherwise who will eat the grass next year?’
I didn’t recognise it at the time but that was THE crossroads moment of my recent life. That was the second I should have realised what trouble another ‘Fine’ would be letting me in for… freezing nights in the fields, or in more recent times, in the barn (slightly more civilised but still not a patch on my bed), hours of staring at the back ends of sheep wondering why what I was seeing there didn’t look anything like the book described, and when all went truly pear-shaped having to phone knowledgeable, and long-suffering, friends in the middle of the night, or as a last resort receiving a visit from a charming, but exhausted, vet…
Anyway, for better or for worse, I said ‘Fine.’
So the Jacobs had their lambs and I found myself on the steepest learning curve of my life. But somehow we all got through the first and second lambing seasons reasonably well, and the damage was done - I was hooked on sheep…