I am at great risk of showing my age, but the nights really are drawing in.

Every day seems to end in a race against daylight at the minute.

It will take me a few weeks to reacclimatise and remember the benefits of being forced into the house at five o’clock with my feet warming in front of the fire.

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For now, I will just mourn the days of glorious sunshine and long summer evenings with no curfew until bedtime.

A few final days of basking in the sun in Portugal last week were a fitting finale to a great summer for me.

My best friends from home played a blinder and surprised me with the trip for my birthday.

It was a fairly large milestone and I’m disclosing no more information. But other than the great presents, I’m not that thrilled about having so much in common with fossils.

Perhaps you can expect to hear more phrases akin to “the nights are drawing in” and “every day’s a bonus at my age” in the coming months.

Strike

I did hear the holiday being referred to as a workers' strike in the house and I was well warned to enjoy it, as it would be the last mid-tup sale holiday I’d be getting. Any more cheek like that and I’ll be scheduling another break!

Talking of tup (ram) sales, we sold our first lot of tup lambs and shearlings in Ballymena last Monday.

We were delighted with very steady trade and it was a great opportunity to catch up with other breeders, a lot of whom had made the journey over from Scotland. All in all, a good day.

Heading to Scotland

This week, it’s our turn to make the journey and we head to Scotland for Lanark and Dalmally Blackface tup sales.

After a lot (I can’t stress the volume of this enough) of debate, we made the decision to take three ram lambs to Lanark tup sale.

Traditionally, we (the bosses, I’m a mere blow-in) always sold rams in Scotland, but, at present, due to bluetongue, movement restrictions are in place.

Livestock can travel from Ireland to Scotland, but are prohibited from making the journey the other way. Therefore, stock travelling to Scotland are on a one-way ticket.

This really did make for a challenging decision. There’s such a large degree of risk attached, but luckily (or unluckily, it depends how you look at it) we have some ewes stuck on that side of the water, so should the lambs not sell, they will still have a purpose. Time will tell…