Spring, Lambing , First Silage, Wedding Preparations

Its been a while since my last post here and for no really good reason other than general busy-ness, heavy colds, lambing and wondering what the weather will bring next. In one week we had snow to be followed only two days later by glorious sunshine that enabled us to sit out in a friend's garden watching the butterflies. Since then spring has truly sprung...the birdsong is cacophanous and wonderful and the 'flowers that bloom in the spring tra-la' are stunning with blossom on the cherry trees and now beginning to open on the fruit treees in the orchards, to say nothing of the usual mighty show put on by the blackthorn hedges. The narcissus are now almost finished but the cowslips, primroses, bluebells and violets are embroidering the hedgebanks and hidden corners around the gardens. With the lovely weather over the Easter holidays our guests in the holiday cottage had a perfect time for exploring the area and returning to the farm to spend the warm light evenings sitting in the hot tub with a glass of wine. Today it is now once again cold and wet with a chill little breeze...but the birds keep singing.

Lambing is finished and although we only have 40 ewes this year they kept the Farmer busy and with a number of difficulties mostly caused by the ewes being too fat, there were times when a deal of effort was put into keeping both ewes and lambs alive but on the whole lambing went well.
With the fine weather of recent days we even made our first cut of silage, the earliest we have ever done it. A number of other farms in the area also took advantage of the sunshine and did the same. Next month will see the proper start to the silage season and we, and everybody else will be flat out mowing and baling, into the early hours very often, long days and long nights of hard work hoping the weather will hold good for us all.

In two weeks time Younger Son gets married and so we are sprucing things up in readiness for an invasion of friends and family for a long weekend of jollity. The wedding itself is being held not on the farm but a couple of miles up the road at the Ceridwen Centre which is run by friends of ours who specialise in 'green weddings' and do it superbly well (). In preparation for the influx of visitors over three or four days, we are busy mowing lawns to within an inch of their lives, tidying up herbaceous borders, planting up pots with colourful flowers, touching up paint-work and I'm even hoping that the shabbiest of our spare bedrooms will be re-decorated in time (not by me, thank goodness...I have a marvellous painter-and-decorator who is very patient with my somewhat last minute requests for his services!) I'm now off to buy paint!