Casey welcoming our new arrival

I don't want to leave my thank you to the end this week, because on Friday we said goodbye and good luck to an important member of the CaenhillCC volunteering team. Sarah joined the farm team a few years ago, but now she's off on a new adventure and we're all going to miss her. She's been fantastic looking after our animals, fixed more fences than I can count, helped tidy up after lockdown and has dealt with anything Chris has thrown at her, so for that I want to say a huge thank you. We couldn't let Sarah go without a real farm send off, so for her last visit she was rounding up our naughty goats, herding our emus and leading daisy around with bananas.

We have had Sarah helping with our lambs this week as well, though apparently she doesn't have room for one in her next place, so I guess Chris will have to stick to the night feeds for now. We do avoid stepping in and bottle feeding our lambs where possible, but with our lambs being so unseasonably late one of our ewes is struggling to produce enough milk. This has meant Chris, with the help of Sarah and Casey, has needed to step in and feed Devon and Dorset some milk. Thankfully the lambs are feeding really well from the bottle and Casey loves the extra feeding responsibilities. While little lamb Hope, who was only born this week, and her mum Tiddler are back out in the field to enjoy the grass.

With extra work to keep Casey busy at the farm, Chris and I have been working on the CaenhillCC 2021 photo calendar. I'm really excited to be involved in creating the calendar this year for the very first time, I hope I can make it extra special. We've taken the final few photos with a fantastic photo shoot with Daisy, so now it's just down to myself and Chris to pick the best shots. It's going to be so difficult to choose just 12 photos. We'll make sure we let you know as soon as the calendars are available and give you a sneak preview of the pictures.

With all the extra pictures I've been taking I've got so many to share on Twitter and Instagram, but sometimes I just don't know what captions to use so, I thought I'd get you involved. I can't ask you to help with my work for nothing though, so this week I launched my first caption competition. All you need to do is find the photo of Coco and Eli in the @CaenhillCC_xtra twitter feed, or the @CaenhillCC_animalphotos Intragram feed, and leave your best caption in the comments. The competition closes tonight and I'll extend it until midnight (UK time) to give you some extra thinking time. The winning caption will get an extra special shoutout with the animal of choice, I just might need Casey or the emus to help pick the winning answer as there are so many good captions already. I'll be bringing you competitions like this a little more often, and the next one will be to help name our little rabbits so keep an eye out for this. 

Behind the scenes feeding chickens with Casey

While it's busy at the farm making it safe to bring in students again, Cuthbert is working hard on his recovery. Thank you so much to everyone asking after him, he's made some great progress this week, especially now he's got his own set of wheels. That's right, our star has his own wheels, but these wheels are all goose powered. We're hoping the wheels will help build Cuthbert's muscle back up and once he's a little stronger we'll be bringing you a little more from him, we'll let you know details soon.

Away from Cuthbert working out, we've had Smile the runner duck growing up super quick, I need to bring you some photos soon, I almost didn't recognise him on my last visit. We've finally named Daisy's silkie friend and she's now called Milky, thank you for the suggestion Frannie, it was too cute to ignore. Plus, one of our muscovy ducks hatched the cutest little bantam chick, though we've had to move the little one under the heat lamp to keep it safe while it's mummy duck is still on eggs.

There you have another week at the farm, don't forget that you can still join us at the farm Saturdays for our socially distanced tour, just make sure you book in advance, and now you can get that bit extra by following the Chatty Farmer on YouTube for some extra special moments like the video below.

Until next time, keep safe,

Kara, Casey and Teddy