BY RICHARD TORY

The sun is finally shining and the glimmers of spring showing through.

There is a great display of Snowdrops on the farm at the moments, and the daffodils have spouted out of the ground. Hopefully we will not get any severe cold weather now so that these can continue growing.

We have recently had a litter of eight piglets from Mavis, four fully white piglets and four black ones with the white saddleback rings. Mavis is a saddleback sow and has been running with Boris, the large white boar who is the father of the piglets. I find it interesting how the skin pigment on the piglets seems to follow one of the parents so closely and not come out in all different concoctions. 

Being a wet winter it is now the time of year that hay and straw are in short supply. We are fortunate to have a surplus left this year and have entered some into an auction in February to enable us to clear the barns and start afresh this summer.

Auctions are a risky way of selling and over the last four or so years returns from fodder auction values have been fairly poor, but with the wet weather we have had we are hopeful for better this year. The signs are that prices should be higher, this though does have a knock-on effect on the price of store cattle as buyers don’t tend to buy in extra livestock when feed and bedding costs are up.

We have had a busy winter with our logging side of the business, which has taken up more time than expected, but this is a good problem to have!

It was expected that this would be our quiet down time and that we could repair a few buildings with leaking roofs and prepare the site for the up-coming 'Teddy-Rocks' charity music festival, but rather than being quiet, we have just changed roles with the seasons and been busier than ever. We will be able to catch up on our repairs around the farm as the ground dries and prepare for the festival as the pressure of it gets nearer. 

We are also excited to have been invited to a local Open Farm Sunday in June to tell the public about our pigs, the values of the traditional breed and how we look after them and to taste the end result from them.

It seems ages away at the moment but we find the summer comes and goes in a flash.