July, 2001

As June turned to July, the weather was perfect for haymaking. The grass was "ripe" (apparently) and that would have been a good time, however we were at a Mark Rashid horsemanship clinic. Mark was riding Crystal and Lorraine was catering for the starving masses - watching people having great fun with their horses can be a hungry business! So, to put it in a nutshell, we missed that particular boat, the clouds came over, the temperature dropped and we began to notice the daylight hours reducing. Our hay was going to remain on the fields for another few weeks.

Mark had landed a small, part time computer programming job and promptly twisted his ankle jumping over a farm gate. That put him in bed for nearly a week. Interesting coincidence?

The beef we produced last month - which is the most mouthwatering we have tasted - was snapped up (more available soon!), and we turned our thoughts to how we might make life on the farm work for us financially. Doing our sums on the beef we had produced was interesting. Last month our heifer had yielded 253.4kg meat, on which the abattoir had given us £1.55/kg. They paid us a grand total of £392.77 for this animal, which we had bought for £200 back in December. Feeding her had cost about £150, add to that the cost of housing her, bedding, diesel for the tractor which lifts the feed and cleans the barn and there's not a lot left to pay the mortgage! Needless to say, we did better with the one we marketed ourselves so we have resolved to sell as many of the remaining 9 this way.

The restocking conversation is one which we have engaged in with great care. The animals we bought with the farm are "continentals". They are animals which are better suited to concentrated cereal rations than to our grass so they are bred and raised by the more intensive farms to be big animals with good muscle and apparently liked by the supermarkets. However, we are more interested in extensive farming and finding a way to keep our animals as naturally as possible. In our quest for the "right" animal, we eventually reached the Rare Breeds Survival Trust who sent us information about the British White Cattle (among others). Having visited a local herd we are most impressed with these animals. The farmer in question was keeping them in relatively small family groups (a bull with half a dozen cows and their calves). When we visited they were having their afternoon nap and were most reluctant to get up and greet us. These seem much more what we are looking for. Docile, calve without assistance, no horns, happy to eat grass and are good at converting it into muscle, don't mind the rain, mums produce good milk and calves do well on it... why aren't there more of these around?

Well, our farm consultant helped us out with that one! On his initial visit he told us not to be too worried by the fact that we wanted to do something few others seemed to be doing, "'cos farmers don't like to change their ways", or words to that effect. On further investigation it would seem that although these animals are good all rounders, they are smaller than the continentals we have, so the meat yield is less, I guess that can be balanced out against the fact that they are less expensive to feed, but in a commercial world uniformity is much sought after (think which steaks or apples or eggs you prefer) and these cows come in all shapes and sizes (naturally!). Well, we like them and are exploring further as we write.

Back to the consultant who had been sent to us to offer some guidance on "diversification". However, he quickly ascertained that we have lots of idea's about diversifying, but needed more assistance with how to make sensible use of the buildings and land we have here. He asked us how much we needed as a bottom line figure and after swallowing quite hard, told us that we could make that milking goats.

Well, we had considered some goats, 10 or so (?), particularly to help us out with some pasture management (yes, we have heard they're also good at "managing" trees and fences and hedges and gates!). We already have a defunct milking parlour which would need converting but hey... we could find a way to do that if necessary. Milking, now there's a technical business. We have learned from helping the guys next door (milking about 150 cows twice a day) that the easy bit is getting them into the parlour and collecting the milk, the tricky bit is feeding them so they produce milk of the right consistency and planning when you want to cows to calve and feeding them accordingly and determining rations and ... and ... and ... but ever willing to do what it takes we enquired, "how many goats would we need?". "Oh, about 400 I should think" was the reply! Well, that's a lot of goats and significantly more intensive than we had in mind... so we sent him back to the drawing board and are still waiting for him to resurface.

The last weekend in July we had our first "Helping Hands" weekend. Our intention with these is to offer people who are interested an opportunity to come and join in with whatever is going on on the farm. We have had a lot of friends eagerly offering support, so here's the chance to utilise it. Three friends stayed overnight and another two showed up on Sunday. It was a very hot weekend and haymaking was the prime activity. A contractor had cut it early the previous week and Mark had borrowed a turner for the back of our tractor and had spent many an hour driving up and down creating quite a dust storm. The contractor returned with baler on Sunday and we watched as this machine was pulled up and down the rows, stopping every few minutes to open and drop and neat round bale of glorious golden hay ~ you can smell the sunshine in it. We also gathered thistles which were beginning to blow seed around, fixed some electric fencing, spent some time with the horses and the cows and even had chance to teach someone how to read music!

We love our life here and sharing it with friends is one of our favourite parts. We want to thank Rena, Alison, Jack, David and Ros for their assistance, for teaching us, sharing with us and lightening our weekend.

There's another one August 18th/19th, let us know if you'd like to join in.