A busy week and weekend.
We are now one week in with the 2011 harvest, the oilseed rape is now mostly combined but the dry spring has meant that there is quite a spread between the first field that was ready and the last. The results are better than we could have hoped for after such a prolonged dry spring. Time will tell what the wheat does this year, it looks reasonable - our fingers are crossed!
The hay was cut by our livestock farming neighbours yesterday in the Grassfield, this is about 11 acres of historic ridge and furrow. The hay cut is very late this year and even with the recent rain encouraging some late growth, there wont be many bales. What there is smells lovely and sweet; we managed to get on top of the proliferation of creeping thistle last year and noticed a greater than normal variety of meadow herbs and flowers, perhaps the drought meant that the grasses didn't crowd them out for once.
We have also wormed and attended to Tony and Vals' sheep's feet in preparation for the ewes and lambs being separated. The ewes will come up to our Grassfield once the hay has been baled, Bruno the ram and the ram lambs will stay down in their current paddock.
The veg garden has also been affected by the dry spring with potatoes in particular suffering. We were too slow in netting fruit but in spite of the attentions of the resident blackbirds we have a good quantity of gooseberry gin, redcurrant gin and raspberry gin on the go with a bit of pick your own at a local farm shop boosting stocks. There is also plenty of fruit in the freezer for jamming with gooseberry jam being a successful experiment this year.
The young fruit trees in the orchard are positively groaning with fruit, particularly the apples, pears and medlars.
