These fields were thick with high waving seas of grass until last evening when the Farmer and Sons set forth with tractors and mowing machine to cut the grass for the first crop of silage. And a superb crop it is too. Elder Son made the decision to spread a lot of slurry during the winter & it has certainly paid off...we have one of our best crops for many years and it is all done organically without any input of artificial fertilisers, just muck & slurry from our cows.
Today the grass is being turned or tedded, and will be brought in before the weather breaks tomorrow. Elder Son reckons we have until midnight before the rain starts. So it is going to be a long day and very late night for the tractor drivers. With the fields spread with swathes of cut grass the local red kites & buzzards are busy wheeling in the skies overhead searching for carrion, the sad victims of high speed mowers.
This morning I went out to do some much needed shopping accompanied by Small Grand-daughter. We got to the end of our drive to find council workmen resurfacing the stretch of public road that joins us to the outside world. They have been at it for two days now and my goodness but they do work exceeding slow and with very frequent tea-breaks. Everyone who has come up to the farm in the last two days has said they passed the roadmen sitting in their vans no matter what time of day it is. The road is being patched and we hope it will be completely resurfaced
I took Small-Grand-daughter to visit some friends who had a new baby 10 days ago. She was not very impressed by the dear little baby but was enchanted by a troupe of fluffy goslings that had hatched this week. Gosling are lovely but they do grow into geese which are not my most favourite creatures. We had geese many years ago and my view of them was tainted by the gander, known as Hissing Sid who was very protective of his two sweet and mild wives. So much so that I had to make major detours around the back of building to avoid him or else go out armed with a broom with which to make him think I was fiercer than he was. It was quite relief when Charley Fox took him off one day when we were out. Sadly the fox also got his wives some time later.
On the subject of geese some wild Canada geese hatched a brood of goslings on one of our ponds & it appears that this year they have managed to rear them without the depredations of the local corvids who have a taste for little fluffy things.
As a fine example of never knowing who will turn up here next, I have just had conversation with a boy from South Korea(!) who appeared at the back door asking directions to a neighbouring farm where he has been staying for the last month. He had got of the bus in our nearest village and walked down our lane knowing that there was a route through the farm to his hosts farm but did not actually know the way. I was of course able to direct him and then had a interesting conversation about his travels. He says Britain is much more beautiful than South Korea, but I have no way of verifying that. He found it very odd that I do not have a mobile phone. I asked him how he funded his travels which involve staying on farm and working for his bed & board and he told me he had sold his car. He had arranged his places to stay through an organisation called Helpx (www.helpx.net)which places travellers willing to work on organic farms and smallholdings, similar to Wwoofing.
