Hi there, I hope you are all enjoying the spell of fine weather that we are having at the moment!

After selecting and buying males – both rams and tups – in October, November is the main month for letting them run with the females – the ewes.

The ewes are gathered in from the fells and land away from home, and are brought back for dosing for fluke.

The fields we use for tupping, or mating, have been cleared for a few weeks to allow fresh grass to grow and generally rest the land.

The ewes are sorted into batches to go with certain breeds of tups. All our shearlings – two year olds - are ‘tupped’ with a pure breed, so the Rough Fells will have Rough Fell tups and the Swaledales will have Swaledale tups.

The sheep are sorted into bonny ones, the not-so-bonny ones, and then the ordinary ones. The bonny ewes will go to the pure bred tups, the not-so-bonny ewes will go to the Blue Faced Leicester tups.

And then the ordinary ones that are left will go to a Texel tup to produce fat lambs. All of our Cheviot sheep run with a Leicester and all the mule sheep run with Texels. Again all this selection takes time and a keen eye is needed.

The tups that go away from home have a harness fitted on them, as this makes it easier for the farmer to watch what is going on. The harness goes over the shoulder and under his chest, where there is a plate that we fasten a block of colour to.

Then when he mounts the ewes the colour is rubbed off the block on to the ewe’s bum. As I said last month, the colour determines when the ewe will be due to lamb.

The tups at home are ‘raddled’ – this is a powder colour, which is mixed with oil and applied to the chest. They are ‘raddled’ every day so we get to make sure the boys are performing okay.

As well as all this taking place, the cows have to be scraped out and fed every day as they are inside. The fat lambs we have to feed and watch for any ailments.

On another note, we only seem to hear the bad about the youth of today, but I want to tell you about some ‘young-uns’ who we know who are doing lots of good.

Grayrigg Young Farmers’ Club have produced a calendar for which they have got sponsors, so that all the money they make will go to two charities.

Lowick YFC had a slaves for sale auction night in Ulverston, and club members will give up their time to carry out work ranging from walling, ploughing, tractor driving and clipping, right through to gardening and walking dogs.

They had a brilliant night and raised more than £5,000 for two cancer charities. There are other YF clubs in Cumbria whose members are doing lots of good things as well.

Anyway must get on – wrap up and keep warm! Jayne Knowles