A Busy week and not done yet!

Made our first cut silage this week – a fairly light cut but some good stuff which the sheep will enjoy.

We’ve also been busy with farmers’ markets this week – the regular one in Hereford on Thursday and the monthly Leominster one today. These markets are a lot of work to prepare for but I love doing them and getting the direct feedback from our customers. In Leominster today we also had some of our sheep! It’s the Leominster Festival and the theme this year is sheep so who better to ask…. I did wonder last night if this was such a great idea – trying to find a presentable ewe with a couple of decent lambs to put on show but it’s been a great day with lots of interest and fantastic weather.

We’ll take a bit of a breather this evening with supper with some friends and then a BBQ at a local farm but tomorrow, I need to get some fertiliser on the silage ground for the next cut and patch up a bit of thin reseeded grass. Guess who won’t be getting Sunday off!

Nice drop ‘o rain……

I suspect most people are unhappy with the recent rain but it’s been quite useful for us.  I never thought I’d hear myself say this after the winter we’ve had but we really do need rain.  Probably more than that though, we need warmth.  Plants need plenty of heat and moisture to grow properly and the nights are still so cold that we’re not getting the grass growth we need.

Having said that I walked our silage grass yesterday and it is beginning to bulk up a bit.  Advice this year is to take a light early cut and then hope for better conditions to produce a decent second cut. I think that’s what we’ll do so as soon as it comes dry again I’ll mow that piece.  The reseeded piece of grass is still very slow – I think it’ll come eventually but considering the plan was to cut it this week – and it’s only about an inch high – we might need a ‘plan b’.

I heard the curlews again this morning – they must be roosting up in the trees at the top of our field.

Our new blog

I’m told we need a blog. Apparently anyone who is anyone on the web has a blog so I guess we’d better have one. We’re farmers really (I always add the ‘really’ to re-assure myself since we do lots of other things these days) – we farm sheep and sell our lamb direct to the public via farmers’ markets and direct from the farm.

Last week I spent a great deal of time decorating – in advance of opening our doors as a Bed and Breakfast establishment. We have two lovely rooms – one en suite and one with its own bathroom and visitors have the use of the old part of the house with a cosy sitting room and dining area in what was the local shop.

We spent our weekend treating lambs for worms and injecting them against the many diseases they seem to get these days and today we’ve been getting ready for shearing tomorrow.

Life is rarely dull here.