Well that was a wet one. Crikey.
We were lucky to find a weather window at the end of September to get our Autumn wheat planting done and thank God we did. It has rained pretty much ever since we parked the drill in the shed and has put an end to any thought of more field work. The sticky, clay soils we have here do not lend themselves to delayed drilling which is a tool we can use in our fight against weeds but in the last few years we have found this tactic doesn't work because the weather is against us and the fields soon transform into a quagmire. So whilst we're feeling quite smug about being up to date, the blackgrass will no doubt bring us back down to earth in the spring.
October also means it's time to bring the cattle in.
Our cattle graze over summer on a flood plain and by October the risk of flooding becomes too
great to safely keep them out. That was also good timing as a week later we felt the wrath of Storm Babet with over 90mm of rain falling on already saturated ground. The resulting floods were some of the worst we'd ever seen, unfortunately affecting arable crops too. The wheat it affected was well established so will hopefully not have done too much damage.
In less stressful news, Tom headed up to Cumbria for the annual Herdwick sale at Cockermouth and came home with another trailer full of breeding ewes ready to go to the tup in November. These will hopefully be the last ewes we will need to buy in for a while. Now our flock has expanded we should hopefully be able to breed our own replacements which will be a game changer in terms of biosecurity and the ability to pick and choose the best genetics.
As a family, we also managed to sneak away for a few days to Dorset this month. Like many farmers we are guilty of not leaving the farm enough but since Harry's diagnosis we decided needed some family time. And you know what, the farm didn't fall to bits and we had a great time! A big thank you to Jo and Steve for manning the fort and Granny and Grandpa for putting up with our dogs!
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