We own a book by Eddie Straiton called ‘Cattle Ailments, recognition and treatment’ (The Crowood Press), which, when it arrived a few years ago, I glanced through quickly and have rarely felt inclined to pick up since. My reluctance is no reflection on the book’s relevance. Rather, the graphic illustrations reveal my squeamish side and I have […]
Rather unexpectedly, it’s dark and white this morning; obviously we need to keep more of an eye on the forecast, as we hadn’t noticed it was on the way. Fairly typical southern English snow – wet and sloppy and the temperature is hovering above freezing. Actually now that the cattle are inside, we feel a bit like whatever happens […]
It’s raining, cold and windy; usually I’d be feeling gloomy and wintry myself. However, I’ve finally got the rain water harvesting system hooked up from the barn roof and I’m feeling a bit smug. Many months ago we bought a second-hand water tank and placed it next to our barn. Slightly fewer months ago, I […]
It’s still very dry although we did have a drop of rain over Thursday and Friday nights which produced some puddles; something of a novelty. The Environment Agency have started to put out drought warnings. All worrying, but we just carry on and assume that things will adjust. In 2010, we brought the herd indoors during the last […]
Until last weekend I’m not sure I believed in mangelwurzels. I’d heard of The Wurzels and was aware of hearing people refer to roots as mangles; but now I know the truth. A mother and son team in the village who grow vegetables to an olympic standard and scale called recently to offer us mangelwurzles as cattle […]
Here I go again – droning on about the weather. It’s a cliché I know; but if the weather doesn’t actually rule our lives, it’s a pretty powerful aristocrat. The spring of 2011 was hot and dry around here, which meant our cattle were out on grass without danger of poaching soft ground. However, the grass […]
It may be a cliché, a British farmer discussing the weather, but it has been strangely hot this week. Actually it’s been beautiful – high 20s celsius, often with a breeze and not too humid. But now it’s October, the leaves are turning, it’s dark by 7pm and we’re still wearing T-shirts – strange […]
There’s a great deal of cow stuff going on at the moment. We’re moving most of the herd, very slowly around the farm in an anti-clockwise direction so that by tomorrow afternoon they will be in the field with a barn from which we can easily get a steer into a trailer. He’ll go to the abattoir […]
We spent Thursday distributing beef to customers. It’s a day that requires a fair amount of preparation and always starts early and tense. This pair of animals went off to Evans more than three weeks ago. We loaded them with a surprisingly small amount of effort, at 5.45am, and they looked good. The half hour journey has […]
We are very pleased to be able to offer you the chance to buy some of our beef. It’s taken a while longer than planned after such a dry spring but two animals will go off to Evans at Marston Moretaine on 11 July. We hope you will want to buy some so please read on […]