What's happened to summer?
Posted: Monday 24 May, 2021
Monday 17th May
Nice morning, but rain started at 4pm.
Picked up two bales of hay. Took the faecal sample to the vet; as I arrived, Alistair was leaving, but he took the sample back to get it sent off. Ken arrived with diesel and to collect the weight thing off the front of the tractor.
Did some paperwork then had a snooze. Was woken by the rain!
Dan went off to empty the muck trailer because I’m going for a tonne of layer pellets tomorrow. It’s all time critical because the car’s going for an MOT on Thursday and the trailer’s going for a service next week.
Tuesday 18th May
Picked up layer pellets, which Dan unloaded for me. I need to do some costings on the hens – price of feed and replacement birds have gone up and my egg prices haven’t. I’m not looking to make a huge surplus or even pay myself the minimum wage, but I don’t want to be subsidising it either.
Friday 21st May
Polymyalgia flare-up so not much to write about Wednesday and Thursday. We’ve had a lot of heavy and persistent rain. The ditch is as high as I’ve seen it for a long time.
The ditch ia awful high.
Bedded the field shelter again so that the lambs have a clean, dry bed and brought the cattle in this afternoon, mostly to give them a break but we’re going to “jag and tag” the calves tomorrow, so it will be a quicker start if they’re in already.
The faecal sample from the steer came back clear, so hopefully he just needs some grass.
Saturday 22nd May
Well, that’s the two wee calves jagged with Bravoxin 10 and tagged. All grown up now with their earrings in. Jagged the lambs as well; I was going to give them a white wormer for Nematodirus, but apparently it’s not good to do both at once as it affects the efficacy of the vaccine. So, I’ll do it when the shearer is here next week.
Weatherwise, it’s been dry and sunny and warm enough to work outside in shirt sleeves. The hawthorn or May has burst it buds yet, so cloot-casting is off the agenda meantime.
The hawthorn or May flowers not out yet.
I reckon everything as two weeks behind “normal”. There’s a viburnum at our front gate that was in full lower when we moved here on 14th May and it has barely burst its buds yet. Spent the afternoon in the veg garden, weeding and planting out dwarf French beans.
The sheep enjoyed a bit of a respite.
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Ewes and lambs. And Ace.
Dan cut the grass – it doesn’t seem to be growing much in the fields but it’s growing on the “lawn”.
Sunday 23rd May
Although it’s been dry and sunny today and water levels have dropped, there’s heavy rain forecast overnight.
Water levels dropping.
We found some Sprouting Broccoli – it’s delicious. Spent some of the day working in the veg garden, while Dan dealt with some broken branches that came down in the storm on Friday.
And a photo of the calves doing synchronnised sookin'.
Roll on, summer.
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Synchronised sookin'.
