Sheep, Swallows & Yellow Wagtails

29 August 2011
Our bird expert neighbour popped over this morning to report his sighting of a small flock of yellow wagtails companion feeding amongst the sheep.  The sheep stir up insects from the grass which the yellow wagtails snaffle to feed themselves up for their onward journey to Africa.  There is one immediately to the left of this ewes head.

The swallows are also feeding up and down the ridge and furrow grass field, flying at about knee height most of the time. The pair that nest in the garage have had a remarkable year, they are now on their third brood having raised six from their first and four from their second sittings.  They are very fast and thus quite tricky to photograph but there is one centre picture amongst the sheep below...

and a slightly clearer one here...

The numbers hunting the insects coming off the field edge trees were incredible, there are nine in this picture and there must have been another 40 plus over my head at the time, a mix of swallows and house martins. 

Harvest Update

9 August 2011

Harvest has progressed well and is all but in.  Neil took some lovely photos of the straw bales, which were baled yesterday, on the 70 acre.

The hay too has been baled, 27 large round bales this year which is half the amount of the best hay crop from the same field achieved a number of years ago. The ewes and ewe lambs were moved on to the hayfield on the 31st July and relished their new surroundings by making straight for the apple tree boughs overhanging the fenceline.

Harvest Afternoon in Woodhurst

31 July 2011
What a beautiful harvest afternoon in Woodhurst.

Hay and Harvest

24 July 2011
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.

Woodhurst Feast Week - Cream Teas

19 June
Torrential rain on Saturday made setting up for the cream teas event that we were hosting in the garden on Sunday a stop start exercise. We were however blessed for the fourth year in a row with dry and, at times, sunny weather. A great team of volunteers baked, waitressed, plated up, sold raffle tickets, set out and cleared away such that we had another successful and well supported fundraising event.

Woodhurst Feast Week has been celebrated in the village for over 200 years. It takes place in the week around the 24th June which is the Feast Day for St John the Baptist, patron saint of Woodhurst church.  Feast Week provides an opportunity for the village to get together and also to raise vital funds to help with the running costs of the Church and Village Hall.  Each year our resident local historian, Shirley Firth, organises a church service centred around a village theme.  The service was well attended this year to hear more about the pubs of the village, unfortunately all now closed!

Bees

12 June
We had a swarm of bees settle in a tree next to the grassfield footpath yesterday afternoon.

Luckily Dennis (supplier of honey and apple juice for the B&B) was at home this weekend and responded to our call for help. Armed with ladder, a swarm box, a white sheet and some bee veils, Dennis and I set off to see if the bees would behave.

All went to plan and the bees are off to join Dennis' other hives.

Swallows

5th June
The first weekend in June has been a busy one for the pair of swallows nesting in the garage.  This year they have raised six chicks where they would normally only have four of five. All six fledged this weekend which has resulted in chaos in the garage and all and sundry, including Spike the dog, being dive bombed on the driveway and garden by the protective parents.

The back of the Landrover proved a popular perch point for the young.

It is sheep shearing time tomorrow, weather permitting. How typical that we have had pretty much three months without rain in this part of Cambridgeshire, everywhere is parched and we need only one more period of dry weather - yet it forecasts heavy rain tonight.  The crops and garden will appreciate it but the sheep shearer will not!