July 2006

With great gentleness and rather less energy and enthusiasm than usual, I have found my way through July.

The last batch of turkey eggs yielded one small black fluffy ball who turned into a rather fun companion in the house. Billy (no mates) or Rocky (I will survive) as he was known, woke up in the mornings, jumped out of his pen and proceeded to follow us around the house in our daily work, sitting with us on the sofa in the evening, watching the news! His end was sad and untimely when a friend visited with her dog. Whilst both Brandy and Thomas have absolutely no interest in the chickens and turkeys around the farm, for the visitor, the temptation became just too much to bear. He picked him up in his mouth, quite softly and poor Billy must have died of fright :-(

Whilst the beginning of the month was scorching, the end of the month, when we were making hay, was somewhat more unsettled. We found ourselves watching the weather and holding our breath everytime another bit of hay was cut. It's important that hay has chance to dry thoroughly before being baled otherwise it can overheat and catch fire (not a good thing in the hay barn), or just go mouldy (not a good thing in the feeders). We have an ailing hay bob whose wheel came off during one session of turning, then the second wheel buckled under the strain and we ended up finishing the job with a borrowed piece of kit. Thank goodness for Guillaume, a strapping young Frenchman, who arrived with bags of energy, an impressive tookit and a fascination for all things mechanical. He fixed the hay bob, a trailer and the van within the first 2 days... now we have set him on the tractors and digger... we are considering "losing" his passport!

Mark hid himself in the study between hay carting days and as a result, the first stages of the Vowley Farm On-Line Shop opened - go see it (if you haven't already!). At the moment the main focus is sales of our natural HORSEMANSHIP magazine and the Natural Horse Gathering Tickets, but our meat will be added as soon as I can get out there with my camera and take the necessary photo's and put together relevant words. This is all part of the most necessary work of bringing in more money.

And on that note... we met a very nice man from Business Link - well, two actually. One who told us in no uncertain terms, that we were barking mad to continue in farming as there was no way we could make the money we need to in order to keep going (confirming how we feel sometimes). The second was an accountant who was more encouraging and, along with helping me do cash flow forecasts and working out break even points and gross profit margins (are you impressed?)... also introduced us to an agricultural accounts manager for one of the high street banks who was very enthusiastic about what we're doing. He confirmed that our cash flow challenge was relatively minor in comparison to many agricultural businesses he's working with (doesn't feel like it to us, but there you go), and that he would recommend we get some extra finance to help us through that... and he'd be happy to help! Well, I know that's his job, but it was good to hear someone in the know say that he thought we had a viable business and give us some concrete suggestions as to how to move forward. I'm just very nervous of taking on more finance when we're struggling with what we have and when my enthusiasm for life is at a low and I don't know when/if it will return... watch this space.

So whilst all that's been going on, we've been enjoying lots of rabbit stew! Alex is a young man training to be a game keeper. He comes to the farm and helps keep our rat and rabbit population under control. We are every hopeful he will come up trumps with a fox at some point, although (touch wood) they have been relatively untroublesome this year.