Rain. It’s feeling very British now; cold but not freezing, gloomy, very wet underfoot. Short days getting shorter. The cattle seem pretty weather resistant but I always feel for them as conditions deteriorate at this time of year. Someone once told me that cattle can cope with very cold conditions as long as they are […]
Turns out I was wrong about the supply of barn swallows and house martins in a post last week. I had thought we’d exhausted this year’s batch and with it the warmer days of summer.After some significant amount of walking about after calves, I managed to get all the herd into our field called ‘Wassledine’. They had […]
I got into the swing of hazel over Christmas and have cut a bit now. I like to cut a little, process it, then cut more; that way, by alternating activity, I avoid spending too much time doing either (and the associated muscle pain), but more important it avoids creating a cat’s-cradle of fallen stems that’s a pain to unravel.I’ve […]
Sometimes I wonder what we’re doing and probably why too. In a fit of enthusiasm, late in the summer, I agreed to supply willow “once the leaves have dropped, in late November”. You would have thought that after nearly ten years growing willow, I would know when leaves fall off the stuff. But of course […]
Daily feeding of hay and straw in the field is now underway and although we know this will last for only a matter of days, it is a bit of a pain. Not wanting to drive across the ground every day we are wheelbarrowing feed across one field – not exactly a brilliant solution in terms of time […]
At this time of year we aim to be completely prepared for winter. All winter feed is in, water supplies insulated against the coming frost, shed clean and tidy. For once I think we can tick all of those. By now (early November) we are just putting off the inevitable day when the herd comes […]
I seem to remember that it’s a combination of reducing temperature and day-length that prompts deciduous trees to begin the process of leaf shedding. I am once again impressed with the precision of timing involved; after all trees don’t just dump their leaves – that would be too easy. Rather, it’s an active process. Lots of useful material […]
It may be hard work getting the stuff cut, sorted, bundled and safely inside; and it’s certainly bitterly cold at the moment, but on a day like today the willow looks completely wonderful. A miraculous transformation takes place sometime in the autumn and I’m still not sure exactly when. From a more or less uniform greenish […]
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 […]
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 […]