The holiday cottage has just been awarded four stars by the ETC. Over the winter we made several improvements, including new oak furniture in the living room, new flooring in the bathrooms, new carpets in the bedrooms and a re-paint for the bathrooms and bedrooms. Oh, and the baths have been re-enamelled. The ground floor bath (with shower over) has had a non-slip surface, too - slimy bath mats with suckers are so last year!

The main bathroom

The twin-bedded room - less orange than before!

The sitting room. The new oak cupboard has new games in it,

including Monopoly, Snakes & Ladders and Scrabble

The second king-size bedroom

The master bedroom

The living room

Come on holiday to West Ilkerton, and see for yourself!

We've finished calving! Primrose, our pet cow, held on for a long time, but she eventually calved yesterday. She's a very proud mum. We'll keep her in with two other cows and young calves for a few days, and then they'll join the rest of the herd in the fields.

The cows are sharing the barn with the hoggets (yearling ewes).

The hoggets have been shorn early this year. In the photo Chris is catching the sheep for Ian South to shear. We are going to keep the hoggets in the shed for a week or two so that they get used to being naked, and also so we can feed them some cake. If they get used to eating sheep cake now, they come up to eat it much more readily when they're in lamb and they really need it.

Sarah and Bramble
Now for some doggy news. Bramble the cocker spaniel is rapidly turning into Sarah's dog. She's so full of life that I can't keep up - actually that applies to both of them!
Beetle is still well, but unfortunately Ben, our young collie, was run over by the quad bike at lambing time. He was very poorly to begin with, and the vet thinks he may have cracked his pelvis. He's making a recovery, but he's still quite lame. Time will tell....very sad, as we're all so fond of him.

Our other bit of sad news is that Sam (the old scruffy collie) had to be put down before lambing. He's buried on the farm.

Beetle and Ben

We're fast becoming a vintage machinery refuge. Chris' brother, Nick, traced his old tractor and bought it back. Chris, Nick and Rupert have just had a lovely afternoon playing with their new toy.

Sarah's Landrover has been promoted to number one farm vehicle. Chris uses it every day to feed the animals:

Spring has sprung at last and lambing is over! Most of the cows have calved, too, with just our pet Primrose to go.
As you can see from this photo, West Ilkerton wasn't immune to Royal Wedding fever:

Why I should follow that photo with this one of a rabbit I do not know, but here it is:

Rabbits have been in short supply here for the past few years, but now they're back, fighting fit and poised to take over the world. Needless to say, they're breeding like rabbits.
The deer are also multiplying somehow - perhaps the rabbits are giving them lessons. Sarah took this photo, on the field we call Opposite, in mid-April. You can see that some of the stags have shed their antlers. Now, in mid-May, all the stags have shed their antlers. It's amazing how difficult it is to find the antlers, though - especially a matched pair.

We had some great lambing assistants this year. Chris' goddaughter, Tiggy Waterer, came to help for the first five days. She was a tremendous help, and we wish her the best of luck with her GCSEs. When she's a famous vet we'll be able to say she did some lambing experience with us! Then Shannon Hagger came to stay for a few days, and Seb Smith (our nephew) came to stay for a week. The Hagger family are regular visitors to the holiday cottage, and Shannon has decided to study agriculture. She fitted in immediately, and was a great help at a very busy time. Seb, who was with us for a week last year, was thrown in at the deep end and did Sarah's early morning shift and lots more besides. Sarah, meanwhile, did her final year dissertation - some of the time!

Lambing Team 2011: Shannon, Sarah, Seb and Chris
We sold most of our tame lambs (with apologies to Sophie and Alice!) but we still ended up with some which had to be rescued from the fields at a later date. Here's our niece, Alix Walton, feeding the tame lambs:

Now that lambing's over there's time to enjoy ourselves a bit. Chris took this photo of (l to r) me on Bella, Sarah on Winaway and Frances Steer on Tempo on Ilkerton Ridge. We'd just been on a lovely ride up the Hoar Oak valley. I can always make the excuse that I'm looking at the Exmoor ponies when I go out for a ride! We now have 30 ponies and 3 foals (the early foaling mares must have got in foal to Ziggy before I sold him last year) We haven't got close enough to the foals to see whether they're male or female yet.

Mare and foals on Ilkerton Ridge, May 2011