Day 1; The #PlayOutside Challenge

 Meet Barbara and Unice.

 Today is day one of the Dirtbag Darling #PlayOutside challenge on Instagram, and I embraced it with both arms open, literally, whilst meeting Barbara and Unice, new members of our family.

 Considering I'm born and bred in Wales, the land of the sheep, it's quite funny to think my first experience of feeding a full sized sheep (I've bottle fed lambs before), happened in a small paddock in Hampshire!

 The Dennis family recently adopted these two lovely ladies to keep their paddock in tip top shape, and so far they're doing an excellent job. Occasionally, we go out to their paddock to feed them, just to top up their diet and keep them happy and friendly. Barbara was getting a little too familiar - she let me stroke under her chin! - but I think Unice is warming up. They've both currently got runny noses, bless them.

 I've never fully understood how farmers could separate emotion from their livestock. Being a farmer seems like such a heartless job. When I visited my friends Sioned and Lisa's farms last Christmas, I expected nothing less than frolicking through the hay bales collecting newly hatched eggs and stroking baby lambs; the reality is much different and much crueler. Don't get me wrong, I am a meat eater and will continue to be so. This past year I cut down majorly on meat since my housemate is a vegetarian and I began to embrace her way of life, that was until I tried to give blood and was told my iron was too low. I went home that night picking up some burgers on the way, washing them down with a pint of Guinness to top up my iron levels. I am a universal blood type and the thought of not being able to give healthy blood to people in need seems far more important to me than not eating meat. I do also feel we have canines for a reason; this dates back to our neolithic roots. As we grow older and get to know our bodies and what it needs, and as I've become more in tuned with my own body, with age, and become more familiar with its needs, often, it seems, my body send itself subtle reminders that it requires a steak. Rare, please.

The reality is that none of us actually want to see animals being slaughtered, even if they do end up on our dinner plates and in our bellies. I could never fully acquaint myself with the lambs I'd met because I knew what their fate would be. However, since Unice and Barbara aren't sheep for the slaughter, and merely pets for the paddock, meeting these Jacob sheep was quite a lovely experience and hopefully a lesson that we should treat all animals with love and compassion, even if they are only sheep.