Tuesday 21 April 2015

Spring time on the farm

We are just emerging from what is the most intense but amazing time of year on the farm....lambing! Our last post was back in February and then we entered the void of calving moving seamlessly into lambing.  Our first calving at Saddlescombe, really special and we loved it.  Our first 2 calves were little heifers and Molly has predictably named them Elsa and Anna (for those of you who aren't Disney Frozen fans, they are the main characters!).  Shortly followed by bull calves and some more heifers.  They are amazing!  I thought even quicker than lambs to be up on their feet and suckling.  Now that the grass is growing their gorgeous red coats look incredible against the fresh green growth.

Henry, meanwhile has had his annual pedicure and is waiting patiently in a nearby field to do his work all over again.  When the first calf arrived he was right up close to the hedge in the next field bellowing, as if he was thumping his chest!

We are almost at the end of lambing and it's been a good year.  We've had wonderful vet students again, Katie and Sarah, who worked incredibly hard and were joined by Alex for a week who we had had on work experience last summer, as well as amazing Ems who regularly helps us out on the farm and Jenny too!  So we had a great team and a great atmosphere.  As usual they named their favourites, so Walter and Georgina are now out in the fields with their mums, 2 successful adoptions they helped happen.  Henry our first ever orphan lamb had 2 cracking lambs for us again, they have had so many cuddles!

Our open days were a great success, thank you to all our helpers, an annual established team!  The weather was fantastic and lots of visitors were lucky to,see lambs being born.

We had a visit from Michael from the Sussex Wildlife Trust yesterday, who is kindly going to monitor butterfly activity on one of the banks on the farm where we've been busy scrub clearing to allow the wildflowers to grow back, so we'll keep you posted on what he finds.

The spring barley is in and already showing, soon we will be thinking about hay making!!

More soon

Camilla, Roly, Molly, Freddie, Boris and Belle