October 2010

Over the last year I have busy been tackling various jobs on the farm, some routine and some completely new to me.

cowsIt will take time to re adjust the cows from their summer calving pattern to the winter one that will better suit us now they are wintered in the new cattle shed. Hence, it was well into spring before the cows had all calved and we were able to send them back out onto the fell.

It has always been a problem identifying the individual cows from a distance and knowing which calves belong to which cows when splitting the cattle into batches etc. The cows have very hairy ears which tend to hide their tags. To confuse us further they will sometimes lose their tags all together. While I had them all inside I have taken the opportunity to try out fitting new dewlap tags to the cows to make identification easy. The large tags hang from the thick flap of skin on the cow’s neck and are designed such that they can’t get caught on anything or be snapped off like the small ear tags. Time will tell, but for now the cows can be seen on the hills sporting their new bright yellow medallions.

With the weather being less and less reliable and the high cost of feeding the cows inside over the winter period, I have been looking to get more from our silage crop this year and to aide this I bought myself a small mower to try mowing some of our less accessible fields in addition to our main mowing meadows that the contractor normally with his larger machine. I haven’t done any mowing in the past, but after getting the machine all set up on the tractor I found that I managed ok, with not too many tufts of grass left behind. Sadly I didn’t get chance to try out my new haybob, to shake out the cut grass and dry it out more for better hay. We had to just bale the grass as soon as possible with the threat of showers tending to be just over the horizon.

Albion StableThe main problem this year has been finding some grass to mow. The long dry spell early in the year severely stunted the grass, so it was a long time before there was enough to bother cutting. At long last, by the middle of October we have managed to gather the last of our silage for the year and with the extra fields I have managed to mow this year, we have almost scraped together enough to balance out the poor crop of grass.

Clipping the sheep was also hindered by the weather, it being vital for the sheep to be dry to aid clipping and preserve the wool when it is bagged up. By midsummer when they were ready to shear the dry weather was difficult to come by and it takes quite a lot of good luck to get the slots it the shearers diaries to coincide with the dry days.

Eventually we got what looked like a being a dry day booked with the shearers. After confirming to the shearers on the morning that the weather was dry with us and to set off from Lancaster I got to the farm just as a heavy shower started to break and I ended up rushing around like mad with Roy to try and gather the sheep into the cattle shed out of the weather.

Luckily the shower stopped and the sheep weren’t too damp, but half way through shearing the sheep, with the shearing units having to be set up outdoors, we looked down the valley to see heavy rain falling over the village and again I hurriedly set off to get all the sheep out of the sorting pens and inside. The gods were shining on us though as the heavy showers in the village didn’t actually get as far as us, and we managed to carry on and finish the sheep in the dry.

ROyWith all the uncertainty over when we would be able to shear and mow grass I decided that it would be a good idea to buy a camper van to make it easier to get some spare of the moment short breaks, without having to book a holiday that might end up clashing with the farm jobs.

The van isn’t exactly spacious, but never the less Roy was able to come with us for a break after I modified the van to give him room to sleep in the front foot well. He was very well behaved and didn’t try to chew anything. However, he did wake us up now and again with his snoring! Didn’t see that one coming.