Tuesday 24 July 2012

Sunshine and showers....

Is summer finally here?! Up and down the country you will be hearing the background noise of mowers, tedders, forage harvesters and balers (towards the end of the week) as every livestock farmer rushes to get their hay and silage made before the weather is set to change again at the end of the week. We are no different! We use a great contractor called Stuart who is doing his best to work through the backlog. We have decided to only mow half of our hay crop in order to get it tedded (turned) and baled within this short window. The rest will be done when we have our next sunshine window. We hope this won't be too far away! Haymaking is great when the weather plays ball and all is straightforward. We are late this year so stress levels have risen slightly. The quality starts to deteriorate the longer it is left and the wetter it gets so there is always pressure to have it all done in good time.

It is lovely to see some sunshine at last but it means we have to alter our days a little bit if we are working with the sheep. Today we need to select lambs for next weeks markets at Oxford and Reading but this will now be an evening job once it has cooled down.

Our other news is that we are expecting another baby! Due at the end of January. So Molly is going to be an older sister. We have made the big decision not to lamb in January next year and lamb all the flock in March. So we shouldn't have the same excitements we did when Molly was born!

Our plans are moving forward for shepherding experiences during lambing next year which we are excited about and will keep you posted.

Camilla, Roly, Molly, Boris and Belle