As someone now living in Tyrone, all roads led to Croke Park last weekend.

I was looking forward to the occasion - a new experience for me. Despite Tyrone’s loss, it lived up to expectations and we had a brilliant day’s craic.

As a sports-enthused Scot, I’m well acquainted with defeat and felt almost at home wearing the jersey of the fallen side!

It was an early start the morning we left for Dublin. We all raced around completing our chores before the day away.

The sun was splitting the stones and the guilt was coursing through me that there were still two batches of ewes to shear. Instead of seeing to this, we were off gallivanting.

I’m unsure of the technical term, but in this house, we have christened it “farmer’s guilt”.

It’s a strange phenomenon that occurs when trying to have a day away and suddenly all of the uncompleted tasks around the farm seem to come to the forefront of your mind and become more urgent.

I’m sure plenty can relate. Nevertheless, if you succumbed to it, you’d never have a day away from the farm.

Shearing

Regardless, we finished shearing in the latter half of this week. You’re bound to be glad to hear this, as I have seemed to spend a lot of time complaining about both having to shear and also the weather preventing me from getting on with the job.

It baffles me as to why farmers have a reputation of never being happy!

Worms

We gathered dung samples from lambs at the start of the week to identify counts for worms and coccidiosis.

This is the hard-working team who keep the show on the road.

The boss was determined to walk them home to the concrete of the fank (sheep pen), but I protested that we’d manage in the field. We compromised and did it exactly how I’d suggested.

It wasn’t until we were stalking poor, unsuspecting lambs round the field armed with teaspoons and sandwich bags that I did quietly think to myself that perhaps his suggestion did make sense.

Not that I’d admit this. I’ll just be extra mindful of what I use to stir my coffee going forward.