John William learns the highs and lows of farming and a nurse gets a crash course in sheep management at the farm on the M62

In his usual exuberant manner, he’s been up at the crack of dawn and out in the yard. His bike, footballs and various broken toys played with, then discarded.

Sheep have been moved round to suit his ever growing flock, the stables, pens and barns filled with his motley crew of pet lambs.

I try not to think of the cost involved of getting his cherished orphans to this stage and hope for his sake he’ll see at least some of them out with the tup next year.

Despite his care and attention they seem to succumb to every ovine ailment known to man.

There has been much success, however, in the Blue Faced Leicester shed. Following the removal of the CIDRs, the device used to synchronise oestrus in ewes and the introduction of the tup, things have progressed swiftly.

The ewes were separated into two groups, the new tup lambs split between them. Both tups were doused liberally with raddle paint so we knew who had been mated.

I don’t think 60 seconds had passed before the first ewe was tupped and as luck would have it, it was the only non-Leicester in there!!

Romiley, his favourite pet lamb from last year, was now, according to the shrieks of joy “in lamb, in lamb”!!

John-William spent the rest of the day observing the action in the shed, but the marking of the other sheep was of little relevance to him now. The tup had picked Romiley first, she was clearly his favourite and as far as he was concerned, nothing else mattered.

Unfortunately half-term didn’t go quite as planned and resulted in a late night trip to A&E.

John-William, still buzzing after a day on the farm, was on his way to bed and following the usual battle to get him up the stairs, his antics saw him stumble, lose his balance and fall against our log burner.

It’s rare that our fire isn’t surrounded by piles of washing hanging a clothes horse, but on this occasion it wasn’t.

At first it appeared that he’d banged his arm on the stone surround, not the actual fire, which thankfully had almost gone out.

On closer inspection, though, I saw a nasty burn on the underside of his arm. Following a call to the NHS helpline we headed to the hospital with a very tearful boy.

His fear of catching the dreaded virus, which causes him great panic was overwhelming, despite my endless reassurances that he would be just fine.

Thankfully it was pretty quiet and we were in and out within an hour. With much relief the burn was carefully dressed, a skin graft ruled out. Whilst I learnt about caring for a burn, the nurse was given a 15-minute intensive lecture on all things sheep! By the time she was ushering us out of the door, she knew all about rubber ringing, prolapsed ewes and how fast one tup can jump 12 ewes!!

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