Six weeks, one camera, no paywall.
From the middle of March to the end of April the lambing shed camera runs continuously and sits outside every tier of Belonging. It is the most watched thing this estate publishes and it costs nothing to watch at three in the morning.
Why this one is free.
Putting the best six weeks of the farming year behind a membership wall would be the cheapest possible thing for this platform to do, and it would work. That is precisely why we have not done it.
Belonging exists to give people more than they had, not to take away the thing they came for. The lambing camera is the thing people came for. It is free at the free tier, free with no tier at all, and free at half past two in the morning when a ewe has finally decided.
Everything else on Gawping comes with Belonging, including at Loitering, which also costs nothing. So in practical terms the paywall on this section is a sign-up form, and we are aware of how that sounds.
How six weeks actually go.
The first singles
A handful of early ewes, mostly in daylight, and a lot of standing about looking hopeful.
It starts properly
Twins, and the first genuinely long night. The camera earns its bandwidth this week.
Peak
The busiest fortnight. Between two and five in the morning is when most of it happens.
Triplets and problems
The difficult ones. We do not cut away, and some of it is hard to watch.
Out to grass
The pens empty, the shed gets swept, and the camera goes to a seasonal still.
This camera shows things that go wrong
Lambing does not always work. Ewes get into difficulty, lambs are lost, and a vet is sometimes in shot. We do not cut away from that, because a farm camera that only shows the good outcomes is an advertisement. If you would rather not, the hedgerow camera is four hundred metres away and nothing ever happens on it.
Lambing, in numbers.
The cameras worth having open in April.
The shed first. The yard, because the trailers start going out. And the two that show you what the weather is doing to the grass they are going out onto.
The four things to know.
Live
Mid-March to the end of April, continuously.
Free
To everybody, member or not, permanently.
Infrared
On all night, which is when it matters.
Foster a ewe
A season at a time, with the updates and the photographs.
Foster a ewe for the season.
You get her number, her lambs, the updates and a considerable amount of mud in the photographs.
