Farm News

It is now October and the weather is still surprisingly summery. Apart from the beans the crops have been very good this year which means we have a small surplus to sell which is always good. We have good stocks of silage and straw which should be ample for the winter.
The lambs grew and we are selling them at the moment to Good Herdsmen though we are more than happy to sell them to the public as half a lamb or a whole lamb. The ewes will be back to the ram in a few weeks time hopefully producing a good crop of lambs next March / April.
The pigs are due to be moved soon to a new field. We will be bringing in most of the young pigs to the sheds when the weather starts to deteriorate, which at the moment looks like being November. Our new boar Morris has been here nearly a year now and is settling in well; some of his piglets are doing well at about six weeks old.
Due to decreasing sales we are reducing the number of sows back to about three or four. It remains to be seen which of the sows we will be keeping – ideally the most productive.
We will be housing the cattle in the next few weeks - feeding silage in the field is not the best once the ground starts getting soggy. We will start weaning the calves off the cows when they come into the shed; the calves will be able to go into a different section on their own to get away from the cows where they will be fed a bit of meal. This system worked well last year as the calves are really self-weaning.
Our current wwoofer, Cärrie, is unfortunately leaving us tomorrow to go home to Germany which is sad as she has been with us since the end of last year and has been invaluable to us. We will be taking a break from wwoofers for the time being so we can have the house back to ourselves for a bit.