It's still cold (and often damp) but I've just spotted one of the first signs of Spring - Henry is chain harrowing muck and mole hills in the meadows. From now on we'll be doing more and more "Spring Work" as the weather picks up. Grass doesn't quite grow itself. It needs to be fed (organic muck and slurry only - a whiff of which has been in the air this week), sometimes aerated (not sure of spelling) and always rolled. There's a window of opportunity between the ground being too waterlogged or frozen after winter, and the grass growing too much.
This week we've also being busy connecting the borehole water to the main cattle housing. This has meant digging trenches from the bottom of Wellbank, down the side of the lane, across the lane and round the bottom of the slurry tower and onwards through the Barn Field. The main water pipe comes up from the road through this field and we knew vaguely where it was. Very vaguely. I think we had three direct hits with the digger (but in some cases it was only about 6 inches deep). So the water supply was on and off all day. Planning the route and buying the right pipes, bends and junctions was rather like looking at the Windows screen saver (the "pipes" one). It's nearly there now and soon most of the stock will be drinking our own water. We know that the cows like it, as we've had a couple of temporary troughs outside the Cattleplan, and the cows seem to prefer the water in these to the troughs inside.
We're still trying to get the settings right on the wildlife camera. We set it up by the beck in the wood again, but pointing in a different direction. Twelve hours later we had 4317 photographs of the beck: very scenic - but the only moving things were water and leaves. Maybe next time.
