R is for Rain, Rest & Relaxing after Harvest

It is raining! 4.15pm on Thursday 26th June after what seems like endless weeks of sunshine the weather has broken and we can all take a deep sigh and relax having had an incredibly busy time literally making hay while the sun shines.
The Farmer & the Sons seem to have taken up full-time residence in their tractor cabs as they have been doing many hundreds of hours & acres getting in the silage crops around the neighbourhood as well as our own. After the mild spring the grass crop is superb for everyone and we have even been able to make hay as the weather has been so good for days on end.

On one of the few days when the Farmer was not required to drive a tractor he brought the sheep in for shearing.He did our small flock of about 50 ewes in one day on his own. It seems there an increased demand for organic wool this year which is very good news. We shall take our wool up the collection centre in Brecon before too long & hopefully will get a reasonable price for it.

Despite the pressure of silage making the Farmer & I were able (or should I say allowed!) to go away for two days last weekend to attend the wedding of the Farmer's god-son, in Devon. We had lovely time catching up with old friends. The wedding was great fun, very simple and informal. Someone described it as being like a mini festival, with really great live music playing and fire-jugglers, stilt walkers and a fire to sit round in the gloaming of the longest day in a field on the edge of Dartmoor. A very happy & enjoyable occasion.


On our return it was back into the fray with the Farmer immediately being summoned to drive again and take over the milking as required. Today he has been painting the tin of our curved-roof barn...he is up there quite safely I hasten to add... with a knapsack sprayer transforming what was a very shabby roof into a bright red-oxide coloured curve of corrugated tin which will last another ten years or so.

The soft rain which is now falling is much needed. The fields will now recover well and there will be a lovely growth of aftermath for the cows. The gardens were beginning to show signs of dehydration so they will perk up now and the dust will wash away from the borders and be well damped on the driveway and yard. While the sunshine is wonderful it does mean such hard work for farmers and so a few damp days now will mean they can have rest and catch-up on all the other tasks that get neglected while making the most of good weather.

A Welsh Country Wedding

The first week of June and the foxgloves are coming out in their cathedral spire-like glory.
After the blaze of cerulean blue from the bluebells in the bottom of the hedges we are now lifting our eyes up to these gorgeous puce pinnacles as they fill up every corner of wild banks. They are particularly welcome on areas of disturbed ground such as the new bank behind the holiday cottage where they are giving an amazing display. Being primary colonisers they just appear in their masses with no effort on my part to create such a wonderful planting scheme!

At the weekend the Farmer & I attended the wedding of some friends which took place at the Ceridwen Centre (www.ceridwencentre.co.uk, www.welshgreenweddings.co.uk) a lovely wedding venue just ten minutes drive from the farm.
Our friends G. & R. had a perfect day (despite dire weather forecasts which fortunately proved to be very wrong)with sun shining and all their guest able to relax out of doors gazing at the stunning views across the valley.
The Ceridwen Centre has a very pretty little walled garden with a beautiful wooden structure, rather hobbit-y in appearance, for marriage ceremonies to take place in, however the registrar who it seems has the power to make such decsions said that because of the risk of rain the ceremony had to take place indoors. So we all trooped into what had been the old dairy in the days when the centre was working farm. It had of course been decorated in case of such an eventuality and was fine.
The bride came in with her father to Jimmy Durante singing 'Make Someone Happy' and then bride & groom exited to The Carpenters singing 'Top of the World'...all rather good fun & certainly original.
The bride is an expert on renovating old buildings (she is know as G...the Lime due to her encyclopaedic knowledge of the uses of lime mortar, putty, plaster etc.) and during the service the poem 'Scaffolding' by Seamus Heaney wholly apporiately, was read out. (Look it up.) The service ended with reading of a Welsh poem 'Dau berson ydych heddiw, Ag un bywyd yn eich blaen' (roughly translated as 'Two people here today At the start of their lives together'.
It was all very simple & unfussy and happy.
The wedding feast was held in the magnificent double tipi with beautiful flowers decorating each table and very good organic food & wines served.
The Farmer as well as being a wedding-guest was also part of the Entertainment with the band he plays in providing the music for some Welsh folk-dancing. The caller, who knows all there is to know about Welsh traditional dances and much else besides in the field of Welsh folk culture, has years of experience in getting people up to dance and they did so with great gusto. After an hour & a half (!) of Welsh dancing the band retired to great applause to make way for the disco...the dancers not being a whit worn out by their previous exertions continued to bop away the night to 70's disco classics.

Silage Time, Roadmenders, Goslings & Geese, Random South Korean Visitor

The hedgerows and gardens are looking just wonderful at present.Walking throught the fields the hedges are full of flowers, lovely Queen Ann's Lace, vibrant Red Campion and gleaming varnished buttercups and of course the Granny's Bonnets. This abundance of low growing flowers is crowned with magnificent tresses of the laburnum trees which are in full glory along with the lovely white blossom of the may trees.
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.

Lovely Maytime Gardens, New Silage Pit, International Holiday-makers

May is just glorious especially as this week has seen an inprovemnet in the weather. The gardens are looking wonderful with the rhododenrons & azaleas bursting into the most amazing colours all clashing with each other with exuberant vibrancy.
Last evening I went round some gardens in the loacality that are open to the public, Norwood Gardens at Llanllwni, on the way to Lampeter . Norwood is series of 'garden rooms' with sculptures and interesting plantings creating a marvellous tapestry of colour & interest. There is also a good tearoom! www.norwoodgardens.co.uk

The menfolk here on the farm have been very busy laying concrete for a new silage pit. This is an area about the size of half a tennis court, which is lot of concrete. The ready-mix lorries have been turning up and depositing their loads for the Farmer & Sons to spread and level. Fortunately they have borrowed a marvellous motorised tamping machine which makes the job much easier thought it still very heavy hot work. However, the new pit is much needed and will be well worth the effort involved.

This month sees the start of very busy season for the holiday cottage. The bookings are looking good and we are having an interesting international mix of visitors again this year. Next week I have a couple from Canada coming for 2 nights & then during the summer we expect guests from Holland & France. We have already had a family from Saudi Arabia which was very interesting. They were keen for their children to see 'rivers, mountains & lakes' and had been recommended to come to Wales which provded a huge success and they saw plenty of 'landscape' to satisfy their curiosity.

Yorkshire Dales Holiday, Bowes Museum, Silver Swan,

After almost a month since my last posting I felt it was time to bring things up to date.
I now write this using a laptop which is vast improvemnt on my old very slow pc however I am still learning my way with it & it seems it does not like to download photos onto this blog...I shall have to S.O.S my computer friend to sort me out, yet again.

The Farmer & I have had a much needed holiday this last week. After enduring heavy colds,various challenging situations on the farm and a long wet winter we made the decision to take off to somewhere with no internet, no phone and nothing to do but read, sleep & gaze at a different landscape. So we found ourselves a tiny cottage in Cumbria & near the Yorkshire Dales and it was heavenly. Having not had a break for about 2 years it was much needed and greatly appreciated (http://www.snowdropcottagecumbria.co.uk).
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The Yorkshire Dales were just wonderful and we were near enough the Lake District to venture into that land of hearty hikers in brightly coloured waterproofs all wielding their pairs of walking sticks as they tramp. Oddly we didn't see many of them actually walking in the hills, but they certainly populate the little towns & villages. Also hundreds of cyclists with their lycra-clad bodies sweeping gracefully around the bends in the roads, to say nothing of swarms of motorcyclists buzzing past past us on lonely mountain roads like angry bees.

We took time to visit the Bowes Museum(http://www.thebowesmuseum.org.uk)at Barnard Castle which was marvellous. A huge collection of paintings and porcelain & costume on display in vast Victorian palace which was purpose built to house the collection of John Bowes & his wife that they built up over a period of only 15 years. It is extraordinary & full of the most beautiful objects including the fabulous Silver Swan, an automaton dating from the mid-18th century. Once a day at 2 o'clock this glorious creature is set in motion for the 34 seconds that it takes for the swan to turn its head over its back and then turn round again to lower its bill into what appears to be rippling water and catch a small golden fish. It is stunningly beautiful.

We are now home again and back in the swing of our usual busy-ness. The silage season will be upon us before we can turn round & the holiday cottage is pretty well full from now on for the summer. Since we've been away the blossom has come out in the orchards and the hedgerows are full of bluebells & stitchworts & the countryside is just at its lovely May-time best.

Dog's Best Friend, Wood Chip & Shiitake, Bio-diesel, Route 66

Of our pack of dogs these two are the youngest & the oldest. Dottie the 18 month old terrier is a great character loved by all who meet her despite her really annoying habit of jumping up at people's knees. She endears herself through her enthusiasm at the prospect of a new best friend and probably because she is very small. Her real best friend is Poppy our venerable old lady, who at 11 yrs of age is still game for a day's shooting and she never fails to come on walks though very much at her own pace...a lot of time is spent holding gates open as she ambles along in the wake of the other dogs. She can no longer jump or climb gates with the others. Dottie feels the cold and so spends as much time as she can being a couch potato on a labrador. When the sun is shining she & Poppy can be found out on the yard in a sunny corner sound asleep with Dot slumped across Poppie's broad back. Even in the house in front of the Rayburn she will avail herself of this extemely comfortable doggy divan.

We had a few dry days last week...wasn't it lovely?... and the Farmer took advantage of the fine weather to tidy up the brash left from relaying a hedge. Out friend G. the shiitake mushroom grower (www.maesymush.co.uk), hired a wood chipper and he & the Farmer spent a long day pushing branches of ash, oak & elm through a violent & powerful machine which reduced the wood to vast quantiities of small chip. This is a perfect medium for growing shiitake mushrooms once it has been formed into blocks and impregnated with the shiitake spores.

We have been running our 4x4 on bio-diesel for some years now & last week the Farmer made one of his regular trips to our local chip shop & a neighbouring pub to collect their old chip oil. It is quite disgusting & really puts one off eating chips but it does convert into a fuel that will run our vehicle very efficiently. The process required to convert vile chip oil into a usable & clean product takes several hours but the equipment that we have installed is relatively simple and so long as a careful eye is kept on it thoughout the process it works very well. We & a few friends (including G. the mushroom grower) joined together to buy the equipment and whenever anyone in the group needs to make another batch of fuel they come to the farm for the day.
The process involves drying the oil by heating & bubbling air through it, then titrate to establish how much potassium hydroxide is needed. This with methanol is mixed with the oil for about 1/2 an hour then allowed to settle. The resulting by-product glycerol, is removed. The mixture is then re-heated & the methanol recovered and what is left is bio-diesel.

Man power on the farm is depleted at present as Younger Son went of to America last week. He & his girl-friend are driving across the States on Route 66 (www.historic66.com) for the next three weeks. They flew out to Chicago, picked up a hire-car and set off to drive the 2,000+ miles to California. It should be an amazing trip. The route passes through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico & Arizona, ending in Santa Monica, California. It was the major way west for the migrants during the Dust Bowl of the 1930's & of course gained fame through Chuck Berry's great song.

Spring Flowers, Lambing Finished, Dairy Industry

The first primroses are flowering in the hidden corners of the garden and hedge banks. They look so modest and retiring compared to the flamboyancy of the daffodils which are trumpeting their presence everywhere. After a night of strong winds & heavy rain many of the daffs are looked a bit worse for wear this morning...quite literally hung over as the rain has knocked many of them to the ground unable to lift their heads to the sunshine. Those that have have actaully bent or snapped their stems I bring into the house and they look so cheerful in a blue vase on the kitchen table.

Lambing is over now and the Farmer is happy with the result. Inevitably there were a few losses but the vast majority of births resulted in good strong lambs with mothers producing plenty of milk. They are now all out roaming in the fields enjoying the freedom & the sunshine. I came across a group of about 10 lambs all lying stretched out on a sunny bank looking for all the world as though they were on a tropical beach somewhere, all that was lacking were the sunglasses!

With the spring weather the cows are milking well although our cows are not out yet. We called on friend yesterday who with his son has just gone back into milk after a break of several years. They have invested in a new parlour and a herd of Jersey x British Friesian cows and are very optimistic about the future of dairy farming in Britain. At the moment there is huge demand for dairy product from China, India & Brazil which is keeping the dairy industry here bouyant.
I was very pleased to read this week that organic sales in the UK are on the rise at long last. It has been a hard couple of years for the organic sector but things are beginning to look up.

Livestock Market, Nikolai Demidenko, Lambing

The first guests in the gypsy wagon have been here for the weekend and its been gorgeous weather for them. We have had several days of lovely sunshine that is reasonably warm and it has cheered everyone up.

Last week we met up with the boys from the high school in Cardiff who visit the farm on a fairly regular basis in Carmarthen. The Farmer had a calf to sell & the mart day coincided with the boy's visit so as something different for them we suggested they come to the mart. They were fascinated by the whole thing...the atmosphere,the noise, the speed of the auctioneers selling patter & the calves & dairy cows being unloaded from trailers inot pens before going into the seling rings. It is unlike anything else they would have seen and gave another insight into what farming & food production involves.

On Friday evening the Farmer & I had a real treat. We went to Rhosygilwen, a country house in Pembrokeshire that hosts world class music making of all kinds in a beautiful purpose built concert hall (www.rhosygilwen.co.uk.)
We went to see the acclaimed Russian painist Nikolai Demidenko (www.demidenko.net) play a programme of Russian music including Glinka, Rachmaninov & ending with a dazzling performance of Mussorsky's 'Pictures in an Exhibition'. It was wonderful evening in the lovely Oak Hall with an audience who were so appreciative of having such a renowned musician come to west Wales. We were given the added bonus of three encores. It is a very intimate venue and the audience was probably less that 100 people but was truly special evening. There really is nothing like live music.

After that cultural interlude the routine of lambing continues going well. We are only lambing about 40 ewes this year and are now about 2/3 through them. With the sunny weather rrecently it has been great to put the ewes & their babies out in large field knowing that they will be content lying in the susnshine without risk of miserable rain