May continued much in the same vein as April weather wise, with long hot days and very little rain fall. With all the Bank Holidays in May it’s always nice to take things slightly easier after the busy lambing period. But there’s always something to be done on the farm and as you will see, May is still a busy month.
The ewes all need trimming around their tails at some point in May (this is known as dagging), to keep the sheep clean. This is very labour intensive as it all needs to be done by hand.
We managed to get all of the sheep sheared early in the month, which is always a big relief as the hot humid weather makes the ewes lie down a lot and the lambs can’t feed from them, which in turn means the lambs don’t grow fast enough.
We also managed to gain permission to cut some rushes early on our Countryside Stewardship land. Usually you can’t cut any until 1st July, because of nesting birds, but we made the case that to control the rushes we needed to cut them early. We walked the land prior to cutting it to check that there were no nesting birds. In addition to cutting this rush land, we also managed to make 20 acres of good quality silage which will prove crucial to feed the cattle indoors during the winter months – this is just the start of the hay / silage making operations.
Meanwhile we continue to move sheep on a regular basis to keep them on fresh pastures and prevent any disease problems. This often means moving electric fences, to stop sheep getting into the ditches.
The weather continued to be hot and dry throughout the month with very little rainfall and looking ahead to June we hope for some rain to make the grass growing for hay making, but not too much to saturate the ground. Farmers are never happy with the weather.
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