A Month on the Farm - May

by Libby and Lisa Buchanan

With the ground drying out - far too much - we have been busy finishing muck spreading the fields and then harrowing madly. All around the countryside at this time of year, you might notice fields with attractive stripes which is where the harrows have scratched out moss that may have grown through the Winter and pulled out any dead grass. We rarely roll the fields - it only compacts the soil and prevent rainwater permeating, but we have a few areas which were severely poached by the cattle last Autumn when it was very wet, so we have rolled them out. This will be followed by acration to make sure we break up any compaction.

At the moment the weather feels alarmingly like last Spring. In a very short space of time, going from wet to very dry cold weather, and then no rain. We pray this may change, but where have those lovely warm April showers gone? They seem to be a things of the past, and yet they are crucial for grass and crops to grow …

Our imminent TB test sans we are not able to put the cattle out for a coupe of weeks so we had to make the difficult - and expensive - decision to buy some organic silage. We didn’t have enough to see us through after last year’s awful harvest so we had not chance. We certainly couldn’t put the her out and then bring them all in within a week or two - apart from the logistical complications of doing so, they wouldn’t come in once they had the taste of Spring grass!. On the upside, this delay should allow the grass to get away and establish itself. We have two fields which have been attacked by leather jackets - their larvae have eaten every piece of clover. The solution is to aerate the fields again and again hopefully chopping up the larvae with the blades. Once we think we have them thwarted we will reset the fields.

Meanwhile, we are trying to think of ways to protect the cattle from TB - on of the sources of transmission from badgers is via cattle water troughs (TB can live in water for 60 days!) and sat licks. We have a superb craftsman working with us creating a frame in which the troughs will fit, lifting them off the ground so the badgers cannot reach the water, and metre-high concrete blocks with dips in the middle for the salt. It is expensive but we have to protect our cattle from TB as best we can.

The exciting news is that we have spotted bullfinches in some of the hedges we have planted, a pair of Partridges and - God bless it - the first returning swallow.

All is well with the world!