Rain = Grass, Low Carbon Footprint Lamb,

Despite the greenness of this picture of our cows grazing peacefully against the backdrop of the valley, we have been in desperate need of rain and at last it has come. It rained quite heavily last night and is continuing today with a gentle but persistent drizzle...perfect for making the grass grow.
The Farmer & Elder son have been talking of maybe getting our silage cut towards the end of this week and certainly the grass in our top fields has come on very well. Once it is over the top of one's wellies and the knees of one's jeans get soaked when walking through in the mornings then we know there is a good quantity of grass that is just about ready to cut. Another good indicator is when a small corgi cannot be seen and just a movement in the thick grass shows where she is.

We spent this morning helping with a carbon fooprint survey that is being carried out by Sainsburys and through a local abattoir. They are assessing how much carbon is produced by the rearing of lambs for the meat market. A very pleasant ex-dairy farmer came out here and sat with his lap-top at the kitchen table for and hour & a half and asked about how much electricity was used in the production of our lambs. It was very little...only the cost of two strip lights in the poly-tunnel during lambing!! And the only use of diesel was in taking them a bale of hay each day with a small tractor and then the trip to the abattoir. The carbon-footprint of our lambs is minute we are pleased to say.

Before the rain came yesterday I spent the evening in the garden weeding out buttercups which seem to be on a bid for world domination! Though they do look so lovely in the orchard with the chickens I really don't want my hard earned herbaceous borders to become a sea of yellow.