Winter is certainly on its way. The daylight hours are getting fewer and the nights colder. This puts your time on the farm at a premium as there are still jobs to be done but less daylight opportunities for doing some of them, such as fencing, animal care and generally any jobs that are not in lit barns.

We have been busy shipping out logs this last month. We operate a forestry maintenance on the farm whereby any fallen trees and some other by selection if they are weak or sick are processed into logs over the course of the year and delivered out to customers over the winter for their woodburners and open fires. At the turn of the year we will then look at how many trees we have processed and replace them accordingly for the future.

We have also had our last influx of turkey poults which are being reared for Christmas. The poults arrive at approximately six weeks old and we rear approximately 2000 to supply local butchers as well as the general public who come and collect their Christmas turkey from the farm. We have a mixture of barn reared and free range, but they all get shut indoors at night time to protect them from predators.

On the arable side of the farm the crops are all drilled for the winter now, the wheat having gone in the ground a fortnight ago and the Oilseed rape being planted back in September. The crops will be monitored for slug damage, which can wipe out vast areas of crops overnight. Crops are also vulnerable to disease – we try and mitigate this by spraying and also by drilling early enough to grow and survive the winter frosts.

We have a small flock of Mule ewes which have just been introduced to the ram. Sheep have a gestation period of about five months, and so with the ram introduced we are hoping for some lambs from March next year. We sell a few of our lambs live to friends as lawnmowers and the rest are reared on to sell from the farm gate.