It’s something that’s known and studied in the earth sciences, particularly environmental microbiology. For example on a sandy beach that has been contaminated by raw sewage the sand that has been exposed to sunlight the longest will have a faecal bacteria count lower than that which has been exposed the shortest period of time. A properly collected and processed set of samples can therefore be used to support a prosecution.

As an aside most bacterial contamination on cleaner beaches comes from dogs, so yeah, clear up after your pooches please people.

Watched it thinking he’d make an absolute muppet of himself, which to be fair he does. But he also gets how bloody hard farming is, it’s a great series.

Soay on the other hand you can’t herd with a dog. If you try it they just scatter, leaving one very puzzled sheep dog. You have to train them to come to a bucket of sheep nuts.

It’s one of the many reasons I like the so called ‘primitive’ or ‘unimproved’ sheep breeds. The modern breeds tend to be the only creature in all of green creation looking for the fastest way to die. My mate had a flock he brought into a yard for the winter. Had a water trough there, sure enough it froze one night. Had a sheep standing in it, well, it was still standing in it in the morning when my mate found it. Stone dead of course. You tell me what sort of animal stands in water that’s freezing around it.

It’s properly called rooing. As the days get warmer the sheep will loose their longer winter wool. Time it right and you can essentially gently strip this coat off the sheep with your hands. Soay are fairly bright, especially so for sheep. They’ll pretty much learn to come and ask you to do it for them as the long wool gets itchy. All you’re doing is being a superior itching post.

It’s a fantastic fibre, but doesn’t take well to being put through a washing machine.

Most ‘unimproved’ sheep actually shed their fleece naturally with the seasons, the keeping of fleece is controlled by a single dominant gene started to be bred into domesticated sheep about 4000-5000 years ago.

There are a handful of domesticated sheep breeds that still shed. My personal favourite sheep breed, the small and light footed Soay does this. It’s a very ancient breed, rare, but becoming more popular. The Wiltshire horn sheds too. There’s gathering interest in breeding modern breeds that shed naturally for animal welfare.