The Roberton Show

The weekend just gone was a very exciting event in our calendar, the Roberton show. In the Scottish Borders just down the road from the Black Fox Metalcraft workshop, it's a chance for farmers to gather & showcase their best lambs of the year, in particular Cheviots, Scottish Black Face, and Texels. But also for the local community to meet up, with all sorts of competitions from veg growing to kids artwork, plus dog agility, archery and craft stalls. Back in the early days of our business, we used to tour the country exhibiting at events like these, from small local events to the huge county shows like Cheshire and Staffordshire. It was loads of fun meeting other craftspeople and chatting to customers, but totally exhausting working all week, packing up and driving sometimes several hours on a friday night, setting up the stand ready for a weekend of displaying our weathervanes and farm signs, then packing up and driving home on the sunday ready for being straight back in the workshop monday morning!  It was ok for a couple of years but now we have 3 year old twins and a border collie we couldn't manage a schedule like this. So now it's fantastic to just enjoy these events as a family without working! The photo below shows our metalwork display, including house signs, swinging farm signs and a portfolio of bespoke weathervanes.

It was a great day on saturday anyway, the weather was absolutely perfect, and Bryn took part in the agility competition and came 1st, winning a trophy! He's from working stock but I've never trained him with sheep so practice a lot of agility training in our garden to keep his mind busy. Like many Collies he has got so much focus and drive, and loves using his brain, but is completely ball obsessed which is actually a plus from a training point of view as he will do anything for one more throw. At one point in the show field, a group of boys were playing rugby and I noticed around the edge were all the border collies (including mine) lying down staring at the ball with 100% dedication and focus. They are brilliant.

I'm currently working on a bespoke Border Collie hanging basket bracket based on my Bryn.. will post about this in a couple of weeks, but for now here is a bespoke weathervane featuring a customer's border collie - we worked from a photograph she provided. His white markings are painted on by hand, but we can also cut them out so the light shines through, which is what I'll be doing with our hanging basket bracket.

We can create bespoke farm and business signs, as well as weathervanes based on a specific breed of sheep, and are happy to work from photos of your dog at no extra cost. Below shows a Scottish Black Face sheep being closely followed by a Border Collie, with text painted by hand in a font chosen by our customer.