Farm Diary 22
I am writing this page in April 2000. It will lack the immediacy of some of the earlier entries, but should still give some idea of farm life. The text will be rather brief! I am basing it on memories evoked by the photographs and on the notes in the farm Day Book and animal and field records.
May 18 - 20
May 18
Another 230 four- week old chickens arrived yesterday. I think I'm
going off chickens in large numbers! A few laying hens wandering around
are quite different. We picked the next batch of hens for eating this
morning. Tuesday mornings are becoming less enjoyable.
Another lovely
day. We moved the cows and calves from Barn Park to the bottom half of
Tree fieldWalked down to the river to check on the ewes in Mill Field.
This is the log we cross over the leat on though the ford is fine in this
weather, not too deep to wade.
The old bridge over the Inny down by the Mill.
.
Jess
running along the path between the Leat and the river.
Hoggs (young ewes before their first shearing, when they're called shearlings) down in MillField,where we moved them a day or so ago.
May 19
James topped the bottom half of Barn Park where the cows had been.
May 20
We moved the ewes and lambs to the western end of Corner Park and then James spread three tons of muck on Gratna. (We try and spread the muck a little sooner but it had been too wet.)
Then in the afternoon we went to see Geoff and Val Hill at New Court Farm in Lamerton. They have a prize-winning herd of pedigree South Devons and we have bought all our heifers from them. A heifer that we wanted had just calved and we were going to look at her.
We had a lovely walk round there farm and Val had made us a gorgeous cake for tea. It felt like a holiday.
The Hill's provide Bed & Breakfast in their converted barn in the summer months. I would highly recommend it - they are wonderfully hospitable people. Phone
It's lovely to see Geoff with his heifers.
Shirley
and her new calf (I think I've explained that Geoff likes to use an
Aberdeen Angus bull on his first-calving heifers). Shirley is the 7th in
the line of Shirleys named after the Hill's daughter.
The
Hill's cows (and bull) grazing, with Lamerton Church in the
background.
For some other good farm diaries, link to:
Paul
Stanbridge, farming 500 acres of arable, 25 miles North of London.
A good example of a responsible, conventional farmer. I don't envy him
his problems with destructive humans.
Ford Farms, a small farm near us who has just started a diary page.
