Blogs

Writing this as we enter the last week of August I am reminded of how our industry is at the mercy of the weather.

I would like to start with a heartfelt apology to the people of Scotland. Last month I mentioned that an Englishman, an Irishman and a Welshman travelled to Scotland and achieved their 400-a-day shearing goals.

This year we have all become living history, an integral part of events which will be analysed for many years to come.

Just a few days ago ‘Desert Dorset’ was a dust bowl. The milking herd has been on a full silage diet as there was just no grass and no growth as it has hardly rained for more than a month.

During my early-teen growth spurt I had skinny, matchstick legs and gigantic size-12 feet which I could barely control. This made me hopeless at football – this was in the1980s and Peter Crouch had not surfaced yet.

It is just over a week on from the incredible success of #Farm24. Huge congratulations once again to the team at Farmers Guardian for another spectacular event and massive thank you to sponsors Morrisons because without sponsors many dreams would not be realised.

With the Roundup now applied to some of the spring barley crops, we are on the short countdown to harvest.

When we were in lockdown, one of the key challenges for our agritourism business and for others was not knowing how long the lockdown would last.

Well, as per usual, July has flown by. All silage is baled and although it has been a catchy and frustrating time, we have ended up with plenty of decent crop.

We are only a few months into our venture and after setting up the milk hut in a morning, I get on with my regular farm jobs, such as calf feeding and the like.