April - Cullimores Organics Farm News
April brought about a massive change in the weather, a real surprise and treat for everyone, warm sunny days (but still cold at night). What a real treat it is to be able to wear a t-shirt after all the cold of the winter, this now seemed like a distant memory as daytime temperatures reached 20c.
Lambing was nearing the end in April and it had been a successful year with all the lambs out at grass and growing at an alarming rate. Just 1 triplet hanging on until nearly the end of April, she had 3 very large and strong lambs.
The weather was absolutely perfect in April for grass growth with warm sunny days and some warm rain at night. This meant that we now had enough grass to let all the cattle out into the fields on the 14th April, about 2 weeks later than usual. This is my favourite time of year, seeing all your hard work of the winter flourishing in large open spaces is truly a very special feeling.
With mainly dry weather throughout April, markets were very busy especially around Easter with record sales being achieved, lamb proving ever popular for that extra special Easter meal.
Looking ahead to May, we hope to be able to shear all of our ewes, and possibly start to make some silage, all weather dependant though and for this we keep our fingers firmly crossed.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
March - Cullimores Organics Farm News
March brought about a change in the weather as we moved from much colder conditions to much wetter conditions (and when I say wet I mean wet, the rain just fell and fell all through March).
March is traditionally a very tense time on the farm as all the ewes are now very heavily pregnant and are close to lambing, they need constant supervision prior to lambing to see that all there needs are met. During lambing they are supervised up to 22hours a day and assisted in birth as necessary. John, our senior partner starts his shift at 4am and works through the day until 7pm, when Jamie takes over and works through until around 1am depending on how busy things are. This system works very well and you get very few lambing between 1am and 4am.
March / April lambing is by far the best way – the grass is always there at this time and the ewes and lambs can go straight out to grass when they are strong enough, this also keeps the milk coming to feed the lambs.
Should you want to know more about lambing why not check out our video diary which can be found following this link.
http://www.mikelusmore.com/lambing.html
Elsewhere on the farm, farmers markets have to continue during lambing and an extra special effort is needed to keep everything going, markets remained very busy despite the weather. We had a very busy end to the month with unprecedented levels of orders coming in for Easter, which is now only a week away.
March brought about a change in the weather as we moved from much colder conditions to much wetter conditions (and when I say wet I mean wet, the rain just fell and fell all through March).
March is traditionally a very tense time on the farm as all the ewes are now very heavily pregnant and are close to lambing, they need constant supervision prior to lambing to see that all there needs are met. During lambing they are supervised up to 22hours a day and assisted in birth as necessary. John, our senior partner starts his shift at 4am and works through the day until 7pm, when Jamie takes over and works through until around 1am depending on how busy things are. This system works very well and you get very few lambing between 1am and 4am.
March / April lambing is by far the best way – the grass is always there at this time and the ewes and lambs can go straight out to grass when they are strong enough, this also keeps the milk coming to feed the lambs.
Should you want to know more about lambing why not check out our video diary which can be found following this link.
http://www.mikelusmore.com/lambing.html
Elsewhere on the farm, farmers markets have to continue during lambing and an extra special effort is needed to keep everything going, markets remained very busy despite the weather. We had a very busy end to the month with unprecedented levels of orders coming in for Easter, which is now only a week away.
February - Cullimores Farm News
Cold and windy weather continued to dominate through February, with lots of cold dry days and one particular day of horrendous snow storms, which caused chaos on the roads for making deliveries.
February is traditionally the month when we look towards housing our sheep in anticipation of lambing time, they are all pregnancy scanned to tell us how many lambs each ewe is carrying. This is a vital management tool for us, so that we can feed the correct amount of cake to each ewe and avoid the lambs being very large or very small. When they are scanned they are then separated into pens according to how many lambs they are carrying and housed indoors until they give birth. The ewes scanned and around 190% which is exceptional.
Meanwhile the cows continue to calve with minimal assistance, but it is vital that there is someone on hand to assist if necessary. We have had up to date one of the best calving periods ever – with the calves being very strong and healthy right from the word go, and we have had 3 sets of twins which is very rare.
Farmers markets continue to be very busy and trade is brisk. Our beef and lamb burgers continue to be as popular as ever on the cross on Fridays. Stroud farmers market has also gone from strength to strength with Maggie continuing to strengthen sales and fulfilling all of our customers needs.
Cold and windy weather continued to dominate through February, with lots of cold dry days and one particular day of horrendous snow storms, which caused chaos on the roads for making deliveries.
February is traditionally the month when we look towards housing our sheep in anticipation of lambing time, they are all pregnancy scanned to tell us how many lambs each ewe is carrying. This is a vital management tool for us, so that we can feed the correct amount of cake to each ewe and avoid the lambs being very large or very small. When they are scanned they are then separated into pens according to how many lambs they are carrying and housed indoors until they give birth. The ewes scanned and around 190% which is exceptional.
Meanwhile the cows continue to calve with minimal assistance, but it is vital that there is someone on hand to assist if necessary. We have had up to date one of the best calving periods ever – with the calves being very strong and healthy right from the word go, and we have had 3 sets of twins which is very rare.
Farmers markets continue to be very busy and trade is brisk. Our beef and lamb burgers continue to be as popular as ever on the cross on Fridays. Stroud farmers market has also gone from strength to strength with Maggie continuing to strengthen sales and fulfilling all of our customers needs.
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