An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language. ~Martin Buber

This post is all about sheep, yep the four legged variety - not the human form that follows and absorbs all that is fed to them. Last weekend was the first of the sheep round ups for the season.  

 There were many tired horses and tired men coming down off the mountain - in fact I wasn´t there to meet them - I left the coral at 5:30pm and the main flock and men on horseback arrived at 6:30pm.... very tired, very sore and probably very pissed off.  

 You see there was snow in them there mountains.... half the herding was done in a metre of snow - not good - for men, horses and sheep - but it made the sheep that much cleaner and prettier.

 See all squished together waiting to be collected by their owners and herded off home.

 To be weighed for slaughter..... That was today's agenda - I am so good at slacking off at work.  Today I went to my uncle Andre's place to help with the weighing of the lambs and sorting the lot that will go to the abattoir tomorrow.  They were so cute.  Clean, and almost happy with their lot.

 

 This one I liked a lot... I just love the colour such a golden tawny brown.

 This is the weighing device.  My office desk is on the left of the photo... It went really well today - we sorted and weighed 295 sheep.  This process will be repeated around the 20th.  I may be heading for the mountain on Saturday to collect the sheep that were left behind after the last roundup.  Am sort of looking forward to it  - then I remind myself of my age and the amount of time I have spent in the saddle in the last twelve months... not many minutes there...

Ah, if I didn't love the taste of lamb so much I might even consider becoming a vegetarian - then I remind myself of the other fact - farmers have to live too.  Also, these lambs have had a damn fine existence thus far.