Thursday 24 July 2014

Oink oink!



Some very exciting new arrivals to report....our first calf born here at Saddlescombe.  He arrived on Monday morning and was up and with his Mum when Roly went to do the daily checks.  Amazing to think of the size and the fact she had him all on her own.  Suddenly the other calves seem really big!  They have grown so much its amazing.  She is being a wonderful Mum and we are so thrilled, Roly was a bit tearful when he came back for breakfast and told us all!  Very proud.

Belle now has some new neighbours, 3 little Saddleback weaners.  They are wonderful and seem very happy in their new home.  They have got plenty of work to do clearing the nettles we hope!  We can see them from our windows and we all have a big smile on our face when we see them.  Molly has given them lots of different names, predominantly relating to Disney princessess, I have only named one so far, Margot, as she looks like a little ballerina!  The whole naming thing is very dangerous, oh dear.....

The countryside has dramatically changed colour over the last couple of weeks, combines are rolling and our barley is looking lovely and golden.  Gary and Mark will harvest the barley for us around mid August.  The price looks a little disappointing so this is a whole new side to farming for us, trading, it reminds me of overhearing conversations my Dad used to have with neighbours and droughts and floods elsewhere in the world impacting what price our harvest would get.

The farm has been noisy this week, we weaned all the lambs off their Mums, so we are not very popular, but they all seem to have settled now and within the next couple of weeks we will be selecting our first spring Saddlescombe lamb for sale.  Another rather special milestone.

More soon

Camilla, Roly, Molly, Freddie, Boris and Belle

Monday 7 July 2014

Wildlife, wildflowers and 5 years

We celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary having a picnic with our cows!  Well, they were nearby and probably wondered what on earth we were doing having a picnic in the rain....whilst munching, we saw our first pyramidal orchid and have since seen a lot more.  The wildflowers up on Newtimber Hill, at the back of the farm, are just amazing, scabious, vipers bugloss, wild thyme and lots more we need to learn the names of.

Other exciting news is we have a pair of corn buntings nesting in our top field of spring barley.  They are a particular target species for us here at Saddlescombe so we are really pleased.  Bruce from the RSPB, has one more survey to do next week and we will then have the full picture so will keep you posted.

We weighed our first batch of spring lambs last week and some will be ready very soon so we are looking forward to lamb sales and getting to know some new customers.

Fair to say these first 5 years of married life have been busy...the next 5 here we come!

More soon

Camilla, Roly, Molly, Freddie, Boris and Belle