Silage-making, Wool collection , Roses and Hot Dogs

While for many people the glorious weather we are having means lazing around in the garden enjoying the sun for farmers it brings a period of intensive activity involving big complicated machinery and long hours spent in fields of grass. Mowers and balers all around the country are pressed into service and there are pleasing numbers of bales in the fields waiting to be taken in.
The Farmer and both Sons have been out for many days and sometimes well into the night mowing, tedding, raking and baling silage not just for ourselves but for a number of other farms in the district. That said Younger Son managed to take a couple of days off to go to the Glastonbury Festival even though it meant him coming home one day to bale grass and then returning to Somerset to see the last day of the festival. But the pressure is on to get as much grass processed before it has dried too much in the heat to become hay rather than silage or before the weather breaks.

This morning the Farmer and I did our annual run to deliver our wool sacks to the lorry from the Welsh Wool Board which came to our local town for the collection of wool sacks from all the sheep farmers in this area. It is a very efficient service with everyone given a time to arrive and the sacks are loaded onto the large lorry and drag by a tractor with fork lifts where they are expertly stacked and roped for their journey to the wool depot in Brecon.

This summer is giving us spectacular display of roses and as I write I am looking out onto a fountain of Kiftsgate and Rosa Mundi tumbling over the wall at the back of the house while in the front garden the old rose Wiily Lobb is rampaging through the hedge in a profusion of deep purple that will eventually fade toa soft grey before the petals fall in a confetti onto the grass.

The dogs in their black coats find this weather very trying and so spend much of the day in the shade but when I take them for a walk in late afternoon or early evening all lassitude is forgotten and they leap and bound in the cooling air with much joyousness before calming down to sit and look at the view.