‘I know what a ram is,’ she assured him. She was from Australia, after all—sheep were their thing too … just not exactly her thing.

‘Right, so at the moment we’re well into tupping season.’ He paused once again before adding, ‘Mating season.’

‘Got it,’ she nodded more confidently.

‘In another few weeks we’ll separate the ewes from the rams and then a few more weeks after that scanning will start.’

‘Scanning?’

‘We scan the ewes to check how many are pregnant and how many lambs they’re carrying.’

‘You give each sheep an ultrasound? Like a human mother?’

‘Yep,’ he agreed. ‘I thought you came from a farming community?’ he asked, hitching an eyebrow curiously.

‘I do, but I don’t necessarily farm. I’m learning quite a lot on this trip.’

Stuart grunted in an offhand way. ‘It gets fairly busy. We have a contractor who comes out to do it. Then we sort them into their groups—singles, twins and triplets and sell off any barren ones.’

‘Do you get many twins and triplets?’ she asked. Who would have thought sheep could be so interesting? She’d never really given them much thought before.

‘Aye. Ideally we like twins—the ewe has two teats, so we get maximum benefit. But we get a few triplets too.’

‘Wouldn’t that be hard? I mean, if they only have two teats, what happens to the third lamb?’

‘They’re not ideal,’ he agreed. ‘We generally leave them on their mam for the first twenty-four to thirty-six hours so they get some colostrum in them and then we try to put one onto a single, or with an ewe that might have lost its own lamb.’

‘How many sheep do you run here?’

‘Around four hundred.’

That was a lot of roast lamb.

Her gaze once more travelled to the hilly landscape around them. Stuart had mentioned that this was considered low-lying country, but it seemed a Scots version of low-lying and hers were two very different things. There were areas of flat land, but then so many ridges that led down steep gullies into flowing streams or that dropped off into cliff faces that bordered the coastline. There was a harsh beauty to the place, but in no way did it look as though it should be even remotely hospitable to livestock, and yet it was.

She spotted sheep now, grazing on the sides of hills and seemingly immune to the wind that was blowing despite the sun shining. ‘They must be incredibly tough to survive out here,’ she said, still watching the sheep in the distance.

‘They’re a hardy breed.’

‘They look happy enough,’ she said. She wasn’t quite sure what an unhappy sheep might look like, but these ones definitely looked content.

Stuart’s low laugh made her feel warm all over. ‘Happy sheep—that’s our aim.’