February 2006

Oh I do hate February... the tractors died... regularly... both together... there was an arctic wind blowing most of the time, and when it wasn't windy it was wet... and sometimes it was wet and windy... brrrrr...

I got a call at a farmers market from Mark saying "one of the cows is down". It turned out to be Myfanwy, who had just had her calf. He was rather big and she was rather small and I think the whole experience just drained her. The vet came and declared that she had staggers - a magnesium deficiency, usually associated with cows on fast growing spring grass... humm - well, he gave her a mineral and glucose drip and we gave her some homoeopathy and within a few minutes she was up and about again. Her calf has sorted himself out with 2 mums. Mark had been milking Venus since she'd lost her calf and we'd been enjoying a lovely rich, creamy milk (the stuff I remember from my childhood) but she had been dry for a couple of days and then we saw why. This little guy was suckling his mum and Venus too. Needless to say, Myfanwy is probably doing better for the job sharing and he's mighty pleased with himself!

So, if you know Mark, I suggest you sit down before I tell you this next bit... ready?

We've got some sheep! 440 to be precise! They are tack lambs, come down from the Welsh mountains to winter in the valleys - not by themselves you understand. 2 shepherds, Anthony and Kevin watch over them (but not necessarily by night) and they spent 3 weeks here munching their way through the tufty grass. This is part of our on-going dock strategy. Our organic friends in the know say that if you have sheep, you don't have docks, so we rather hoped that the sheep would eat all the fields down to within a few inches of their lives, and in the spring (I understand it will come again one day) we should get some lovely healthy growth of good stuff. Well, it might take a year or two for complete anihilation of the dock population of Vowley Farm, but this is a step in the right direction. Our main concern was, of course, that they stay in the field where they were penned, this they did, in spite of a vicious reputation of escape - that role left solely and sadly to the horses. Unfortuately the sheep didn't stay as long as we'd expected as the ground was just too wet. Time will tell what effect so many little feet have had on boggy ground.

We did get to grips with a bit of hedge laying. Nowhere near as much as we'd hoped, but over a rather wet and windy weekend, we cut and clipped and tied and wove a section in the hay field. There were a happy band of helpers present and as ever, it was such a pleasure to be doing grounding work with nature. Good for the soul, the heart and community.