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MARCH/APRIL/MAY ROUND-UP
Finding
the time at the moment to sit down and do a diary every month is proving
impossible so I thought a bit of a resume of the farm over the last 3
months would be better than nothing.
The shop
has been ticking over as well as can be expected. The winter veg held on
very well but as soon as a bit of warm weather came at the beginning of
April, everything went to a head and flowered and that was the end of that.
The one exception being a late variety of cauliflower called Nomad, which
was brilliant and saw us through Easter and we were able to help out a
fellow grower who supplies a Box scheme and she took our excess and was very
pleased with the quality.
Steve has
been unable to get as many vegetables planted as he would have like as
things have still been wet and many times very windy which is not good when
planting out tender plants. The polytunnel has a healthy row of runner
beans and the salad leaves are looking good. Our fantastic helpers Trev and
Cas have been down at Easter and Whitson so they have been helping us catch
up and fight the everlasting battle against weeds!
The beef
has been exceptional even though I say it myself, we had a Angus/South Devon
steer in the deep freeze in the middle of March which was superb and then at
the beginning of May a Belted Galloway Heifer – both fantastic flavour after
being hung for 3 weeks and all the roasting joints and steaks being snapped
up very quickly which is testament in itself.
Out on
the farm we were able to start grazing the fodder kale in early March, which
helped things in the sheds as more and more cows were calving and space was
getting short. As we were able to get the cows and calves out by day this
made things a lot easier with the bedding straw and not so much was being
used and the animals were a lot healthier getting good exercise and a green
diet.
We have been pleased with our new
bull Basil, as said in the previous diary entry his calves have been small
when born but have grown on very well. Basil is a fine specimen of a bull
and in the warm Spring sunshine (yes we have had a few good days!) his honey
coloured summer coat is through and he is shinning like a guinea.
As for
the sheep, they have been a huge learning curve. Trying to keep the weight
off them before they lambed has been a total failure, we have good grass and
they have just never stopped eating, hence fat ewes and difficulty lambing.
I won’t go into too many details but we do have 3 single lambs and one set
of triplets who are gorgeous and named Tilly, Willy and Billy by Annie
Osborne of Georgia. There does seem to be one more ewe left to lamb and she
will do that in her own sweet time. We will put this year down to
experience and look forward to a better lambing next year. Its not until
you embark on a new project that you hear about all the pit falls in having
sheep and in particular Suffolk sheep that you realise perhaps we should
have studied things a little better before we took off!!
Spring
has been brilliant for wildlife at Higher Trenowin. Golden Plover and
Ringed Plover have been up on our top fields until mid April. Whimbrels
were also around for a number of weeks, seeming to stop over and rest before
going further North. Saw the first Swallow on 28 March and have at least 3
pairs nesting in the building around the farm. The first Cuckoo was heard
on 19th April, well in time for Towednack Feast and we have quite
a number making a wonderful noise while perching on the telephone wires and
fence posts.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY
Well what
a New Year it has been, gently eased into 2009 with dry mild weather and
then not a full week has gone by when we were plunged into one of the
coldest Januarys for a good few years – down to –6 decrees C – unheard of in
this part of Cornwall, defrosting frozen pipes became quite tedious. Then
the cold weather left us and down came the rain. Then that left us and in
the beginning of February it got even worse – snow! Well I know it was only
for a day down here but again it was something we are just not used to.
Have a look in the picture gallery at one of the Belted Galloway heifers
looking magnificent against the unusual background. What a year it is
turning out to be.
The
weather did calm down towards the end of February and things did start to
dry out once again. It meant that I was able to get a bit of work done
chaining and rolling the grass fields and Steve managed to get some dung
spread on the fields to help the Spring flush of grass.
With the
extreme weather we have been having and the dramatic change in temperatures,
it has not been favourable to our in-calf heifers who were finding it a bit
difficult to keep their condition outside, standing in mud and water. We
had enough room in the shed so we brought 17 of them in – if cows could have
smiles then these young ladies did, snuggled up in the deep straw on their
first night in.
The cows that we brought in in
November have all calved bar one by the end of February – a bit sporadic but
in the main all healthy. We have also had 3 calves born sired by our new
bull Killerton Basil. They have been small when born but this has been good
for the heifers as it meant easy calving and all healthy and up on their
feet in no time.
At the
end of February, Steve and I added a new string to Higher Trenowin’s bow –
sheep. We have bought 14 Suffolk and Suffolk Cross bred sheep – 12 in-lamb
ewes, due at the beginning of May, one ewe lamb and one very handsome
Suffolk ram. It is a bit of a gamble as we both know very little about
sheep ailments and going by all the pills and potions that came with the
sheep, there are a lot of them, but we like to think that our good knowledge
of stock management will help us through and we have plenty of experienced
friends who are more than willing to give us a helping hand. It is our hope
that, if lambing goes well, we could keep the ewe lambs to increase the
flock and fatten on the ram lambs for sale in the shop.
In the
shop things have been a little quieter than is seasonally normal – January
is notorious for being a slow month as everyone is on diets and still paying
bills from Christmas, but we have noticed that our customers are becoming
more frugal and who can blame them. All we can hope is that our customers
appreciate that we provide fresh vegetables and quality meats at a
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