July 2008

Well, we're grateful not to have had the floods of last year, but it's still been rather a wet month. We have managed to get our silage in, and our friends John & Rosemary Tuck have offered us some hay from their harvest. We will need to buy in more silage as there's just not enough for our winter feed and the grass isn't growing enough to keep up with the cow's summer appetites, let alone consider cutting again!

We got caught in the rain at Steeple Ashton, where we joined the farmers market at the reenactment of the Battle of Roundway Down. It was a wonderful day with so much going on, the drizzle came and went but when the rain came down in earnest at 3pm, all hostilities ceased and it was time to hot foot it to the cars PDQ back to the 21st century brick built houses and hot baths!

Our biodynamic practices have moved on in leaps and bounds. We have been stirring and spraying Barrel Preparation as the cows have moved onto new pasture, we've made dock tea for the square field and have a monstrously handsome biodynamic muck heap (only the one out of several tonnes of farmyard manure). We've been to Yatesbury Farm and seen a stirring machine in real life. There's no doubt about it, this has to be the next equipment investment on the farm if we're going to keep up with the land management as we'd like.

Brandy made a significant contribution to our progress this month with the catching of a boy rat! We need this to make a homoeopathic preparation which we hope will deter rats around the farm. We've never been a lover of poisoning things, and it's especially tricky when you have free range chickens and wild birds all around the place, so we continue to tidy up and rat proof feed areas and anticipate that this will keep the rat population in check. One of our little Shropshire lambs got fly strike and we're going to try and make a preparation with the maggots we caught as a prevention for next year. Will keep you posted (if you want!)

I'm walking around with a big grin on my face at the moment. Our eldest daughter, Anna, has moved in for a while. Having quit her job in London, she's now not sure what to do next... or where... so she's here, clearing and cleaning and organising and tidying... and the farm will never be the same again!