Yesterday we had the South West Water man come to help us find a large leak which we have been looking for since before Christmas. With a mile of water main running through the farm and almost constant rain it’s been like looking for a needle in a haystack!

I expected the man to turn up with a battery of high tech equipment. Imagine my surprise when he stepped out of the van with a pair of dowsing rods and proceded to walk slowly and carefully back and forth across the likely area while we trotted along behind with armfuls of marker poles. Within an hour he had pinpointed the problem. Andy our digger man dug and the problem was found – a split in the Alkathene pipe nearly 1.5m down.

For those with a scientific rational turn of mind like me dowsing has always sounded like mumbo jumbo but since coming here I have been forced to revise my opinion by facts. All our neighbours swear by it for water location. One had a borehole put in last year and the company used their own dowser to locate the aquifer. Then Roger needed a new water source at work and he did the same – employing a borehole company with all their high tech drilling and lining equipment but they needed a pair of dowsing rods to tell them where to start!

It’s accepted completely as normal and mainstream down here. Where I still have trouble believing it works is dowsing for health or dowsing over maps looking for water or even missing children which some practitioners claim to be able to do.  My jury is out on that one!

Meanwhile in the barn, oblivious to all the fuss over water, the goats and sheep look much more comfortable a week after shearing. It never ceases to amaze me just how quickly wool and mohair grows. They have had plenty of good haylage to fuel the growth and have got through roughly 3 times their normal amounts. Roughage in the gut feeds the bacteria in the rumen which in turn make heat. So you put silage in and the bacteria turn on the radiator for the goat or sheep!

The phone and the email have been busy with requests for fleece and I’ve been backwards and forward to the post office in Bampton each day. Everyone has clearly got over Christmas and is planning or starting new projects!

HMS Pickle – our newly shorn Bowmont ram. HMS stands for Her Majesty’s Sheep! He was named after HMS Pickle – the ship that brought the news of the Battle of Trafalgar and Nelson’s death to the Devon coast.