Wow, it is almost the end of the April… The days seem to be flying by but thankfully getting warmer and longer. We are starting to get busier on the farm and have spent the last few weeks putting fertiliser onto all of the crops. We have experimented this year with the use of chicken muck and digestate as a new form of sustainable fertiliser, and so far the results are very promising, with everything growing like mad! Hopefully it will be a year of bumper crops with high yields blush
With the longer days, comes longer working hours, and Richard has been out burning the midnight oil in his crop sprayer. In the last week alone, he has sprayed over 800 acres, still with a lot more to go. As with most things, everything needs to be done at once, so he is chasing his tail, and working every hour under the sun to ensure everything has the correct treatment at the right time! April weather makes this a very challenging job, because he needs nice calm dry days…if there is a moderate breeze or the weather is wet, then he cannot use the crop sprayer, so conditions really do need to be right!
We have been very lucky this month, and have had two new additions to our fleet. Martin has purchased a new New Holland T7-260 tractor to replace his John Deere, and we have also purchased a new 16 tonne Ktwo silage trailer. Both of these will work very hard during the upcoming silage and harvest season, and hopefully many more thereafter.
We finished our last job of spring drilling this week, which has been putting a field back into grass pasture. We have sown the field with spring barley, and this will shortly be under sown with grass seed. By sowing the crop this way, the barley gives the grass seeds a moist microclimate to establish themselves in the coming months, and prevents the warm temperatures killing off the weak grass seedlings. The customer should also get a nice yield of barley off the field later in the year too!
Now to the cute bit of our monthly blog!!! Lambs lambs lambs…and we have oodles! Judith has been very fortunate this year, with her flock of Suffolk sheep producing some wonderful big strong lambs, who are all doing well and growing fast. We also have 2 pet lambs, who were sadly rejected by their first time mums, and what little treasures they are. They are being bottle fed regularly throughout the day, and are living in their own field (a.k.a the farmhouse garden), where the little tearaways have developed quite a liking for rose bushes, bedding plants and anything else that is pretty and not supposed to be eaten!! On the upside, they do love cuddles, and make lovely company, and Molly, our Labrador loves fussing over them.
We have a very busy week ahead, with our piggies going off to another farm. We have had them since weaning for the last 9 weeks, and now they are onto pastures new. Loading pigs into the lorries is always amusing, as pigs do not herd like sheep or cattle, and they love biting and nipping at the backs of your knees. To add to the fun, someone always ends up falling over and getting covered in poo too! This however will keep the boys busy, as after loading, they will be mucking out the shed, jet washing and then disinfecting it, so it is all nice and clean for our new batch of little piglets to arrive next week.
As we head towards May, we are hoping this warm dry spell continues, so we can get the horses out onto their summer grazing. What a delight it will be to no longer muck out stables on a morning!
Wishing everyone all the best,
Martin, Judith, Richard, Tanza & George