Current Weather at Strickley

Wednesday 10 October 2012

Farming News

After my non-farming posts I though I ought to tell you what's been happening on the farming front. In a few words "not a lot". That's not to say we've not been as busy as usual, but that it's mostly been routine day-to-day stuff.  The weather is a major issue of course, and more stock has come inside earlier this year. It's not so much the amount of grass, and the feed value, but the state of the fields. Strickley has never really suffered in dry spells, so conversely a lot of fields are very wet. There's been a lot of movement of stock from one field to another to maximise the available grass without paddling up the ground. And we've abandoned hope of getting some more big bales from The Lots, and there's now some fat lambs wintered up there.

 This week the weather has been better (today marks 4 days with no rain!), so yesterday we got a bit of slurry spread. There was definitely an agricultural whiff in the air! Making the most of a dry day yesterday Henry and James painted the shippon window frames and fixed a few slates on the roof. Michelle has had a few school visits which went well despite the uncertain weather.

 Today is Routine Visit Day by the vet - a regular visit so we can be proactive in keeping the herd in the best health possible.

The cows have settled well in the new cubicles. We sold the old cubicles for scrap and never really though about what happened to the metal after we unloaded. But this week someone told us it gets crushed and baled and taken to Glasson Dock, where it is loaded onto a ship and sent to Spain - where it is used for such things as sardine tins. I'm not sure how true any of that is, but it puts a new slant on "swords into ploughshares".

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