Julie Paton: Signs of better weather to come

Despite serious man flu, Mata dairy farmer Bruce Paton shows students he's a serious contender for a medal on the mudslide at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Photo / Julie Paton

It's cold, wet and miserable out there, as I write, and a chilly wind blows as a dozen calves daily plop into the mud, Mother Nature at her most inhospitable for their entry into the world.

Everyone on the farm is working long hours and every second person I meet seems to be sick, including Bruce, felled by a serious bout of man flu.

But spring - and the end of calving - is just around the corner. Every now and then we get a glimpse of better things and warmer weather to come, daisies and daffodils are sprouting, lambs are bouncing around the paddock ... wait, what? Lambs? But we didn't run a ram with our ewes this season - why on earth are they producing offspring?

Well, it turns out it's not some miraculous self-cloning technique. The real answer is just that we are appallingly bad sheep farmers and were a little too slow separating last year's boy lambs from their testicles.

So they impregnated their mothers, sisters, aunties and grandmothers, the wee rascals.

Consequently we find ourselves in the situation where every lamb is not just its mother's child, it could also be her grandchild, cousin or nephew. Despite all this incestuous inbreeding, the youngsters appear to be healthy and thriving and sport the normal number of heads and digits.

But don't take any sheep farming advice from us because I'm not sure our unconventional breeding methods would win any fans. Our youngest son is delighted to have a lamb for his last ever primary school show day - we don't know whether young Yodel's mother was also her grandmother, or even perhaps her great-grandmother, but the elderly ewe was struggling with twins so we brought Yodel home to hand rear.

We'll really have to do a better job with this year's unexpected crop of boy lambs.

Diversions are always welcome at this time of year, and towards the end of July we had one in the form of two Japanese students who stayed with us for a week. We decided it might be a nice idea to have all the students visiting our local college and their host families over for a big group get-together.

Entertainment is always a dilemma, but we had the perfect solution this year. We've set up a giant mudslide in the paddock in front of the house.

No, it's not aesthetically pleasing but it is a lot of fun and when you can't afford a holiday which involves travelling, you have to take your fun where you can find it at home.

This mudslide has entertained groups of visiting children and adults for the last couple of months, doing multiple duty for fun at birthdays and barbecues.

The Japanese students didn't baulk at all, they were up for it and took to it like ducks to water, skidding down gleefully and landing in puddles of mud at the bottom of the slope before tearing up the hill to do it again. Most wore their pristine white PE uniforms and I felt a twinge of conscience seeing these liberally coated in black.

Our hot water didn't last the distance for the massive clean up of dozens of muddy people, but everyone looked respectable in time for dinner.

I was still finding mud in unusual places around the house a week later - I think I've got it all now.