Spring Field Work & Gulls

While spring is upon us in all its glory the ash trees are still stark against the sky. There is the merest hint of fresh leaves begining to blur the skeletal outlines but it will be quite a while yet until the trees are in in their full plumage. A neighbour who called in the other day was making doom-laden mutterings about ash die-back but there are the faint signs of life that hopefully makes that scenario unlikely.

Of the two ewes left to lamb one produced a set of twins yesterday so just the last one left and she surely cannot go on much longer. The ewes and lambs of the main flock are now out in the fields enjoying what have been days of wonderful golden weather though today it has become grey and cold after a lovely start when I was out with the dogs at 7 o'clock this morning.

On the farm tractors have been busy ploughing and harrowing in preparation for the seed to be sown today. The birdsong has had a bass rumble of tractors across the fields and flocks of gulls have arrived from the coast about 15 miles away, to glean from the turned earth meals of worms and grubs making a change from their usual diet of seafood. It is extraordinary how the gulls know when ploughing is taking place, they arrive within a very short time of the the first furrows being turned and spend the day following the tractors in a noisy flurry of white.

The view across the valley has transformed in the past week into a patchwork of green and pale yellow where the fields of some of our neighbours have already had their first cut of silage taken off. The cut fields stand out in stark contrast to the lush green of those fields still growing though in week or so the mown pastures will start to have a green haze over them as the new regrowth emerges.