We put in a new piece of road-side fencing at Ty’n Coed, which has gone in well despite the lack of rain, which makes knocking in posts a challenge. At the beginning of June the cattle all came home, ready for visits from the AI man; by the end of the month, three cows and three heifers had been given semen from two bulls, a pedigree Welsh Black for the cows and an easy-calving Aberdeen Angus bull for the heifers.

The AI man remarked on the condition of the cows – their coats are shining and they look a picture of health; but also raised a note of caution: their diet, especially come winter, needs to be carefully regulated so that they don’t get too fat.

On the sheep front we had an aggravating loss, partly due to a mix-up over who was checking them. One ewe was unable to get up after heavy rain had soaked her fleece; she seems to have had a heart attack. A second ewe got stuck a few days later in identical circumstances, but we got to her in time. As a result of this tragedy, shearing was brought forward, and the sheep now look cool and a great deal thinner.

This has been the sunniest June, and two of the warmest, sunniest months I can remember, which has played well with the livestock, poorly with the grass, and variably with the vegetables. Two fields have been cut for hay, but the crop is very thin, so we hope we will get a decent crop off two more fields to tide us through the winter. Rabbits have decimated peas and cabbages, but we are now enjoying good crops of garlic and early potatoes.

Putting in the new trough

We have been getting fences and troughs ready for the arrival of our organic grazier’s cattle on 01 May.

Our cows and calves went into a large, grassy field, while the rest of the herd went off to our land a mile away to do some important ‘conservation management’, clearing the old grass from our flower-rich hay meadow and grazing a rush ‘rhos pasture’. This part of the farm has been the scene of some spectacular feats in fencing! Contractors supported by the Anglesey Grazing Animals Partnership (website) have secured the boundaries of the rough so that the plant communities in need of grazing can be grazed; the idea is that the meat from these animals will be marketed as ‘wildlife friendly’.

The asparagus in the poly tunnel is producing about half a kilo of spears a day, and it is stretching our imagination to find new things to do with it! But we haven’t tired of the flavour or the luxury of having our own organic asparagus straight from the ground to the fork via the oven. As we failed to eat all the beetroot last winter, it’s still in the ground. We have discovered that the shooting young leaves are delicious in salads, to go with the abundant rocket and early lettuce.

To go with the asparagus and salads, we have had rabbit! They are very pretty scampering around the vegetable garden but very tasty on the plate. Unfortunately none of us likes converting them from the former to the latter but we had them casseroled, barbequed and diced!

We have dug out an old length of flexi-netting and fixed it around the vegetable garden. One rabbit ran straight through it, but at least it keeps the chickens out. One solution would be a rabbit-hunting cat, and we have seen a neighbour’s cat stalking rabbits near the house; the count of rabbits in the chicken enclosure each morning is currently four. If it drops to two or less, we can relax, perhaps because the cat’s been at work.

Finally, work on ‘dismantling’ the two fallen beech trees continued after we bought a tractor mounted log splitter. We now have multiple piles of logs ready for next winter.

Log splitting

Throughout the month, we managed to catch up with some much needed maintenance. At Ty’n y Coed, two lengths of fence have gone in along an old, previously unfenced boundary so that ponies can be moved in to restore our wonderful ‘rough’, which had been heading towards a bramble jungle in recent years. At the top of Ty’n y Coed, a mature roadside hedge has been re-laid, leaving several robust-looking Wych elms which we hope will escape beetle-borne Dutch elm disease.

At Tyddyn Adda, a hazel hedge which we planted seven years ago has been laid for the first time and a small plantation thinned.

The animals all look well. The sheep are thriving, with none of the foot troubles and signs of stress so common in pregnant ewes – having a year off has done them a favour. The cattle are in their end-of-winter state, and it will take a good bite of fresh grass and a couple of weeks outside to restore their coats to shiny perfection. The hens are laying well, and getting everywhere. We will have to do something about the rabbit population, which has exploded.

Spring is taking its time, but the daffodils are now well out, along with primroses on the banks and the first violets and chiff chaffs.

A good, cleansing winter with hard frosts is very welcome in the vegetable garden, knocking back slugs and other pests; beetroot and parsnips continued to keep well and the leeks were superb, tightly furled and free from splits.

When the ground was dry and hard, we opened the gate and let the cattle kick around in the field. In recent years, we have become accustomed to seeing several inches of lush grass growth by the end of February, but this year the fields did not even look green.  We are low on hay, and high on muck!

We were faced with sorting out the aftermath of ‘the fall of the giants’, when the winds blew down two huge beech trees. We had to take down two more for safety reasons and ended up with a huge piles of chippings and logs for several winters. We collected a large trailer-load of chippings, which we tipped above the cattle shed and shovelled onto the floor; this has given the cattle a warm, dry bed and reduced the amount of old hay and straw we need to spread to keep them dry.

Fallen Beech

Brussel Sprouts

Apart from routine jobs about the farm, this month seems to have been all about keeping warm and cooking really sustaining meals. Plums have come in handy; stewed and added to hot porridge and cream for breakfast, with a sweetening of maple syrup or a sprinkling of sultanas. Beetroot and parsnips – dug when the frosts allow – regularly accompany roast lamb; leeks have lasted well, supplementing the stored onions, and the Brussels have benefitted from the anti-rabbit netting. We are nearly through the sprouts and have started on the tops, so our own greens are in short supply.

Cows in the snow

On snowy days we felt sorry for the sheep and gave them a couple of scoops of organic nuts to warm them up; they now expect it, sounding off and running up to the gate whenever they see us, until they get their breakfast. A week or two or dry weather allowed us to let the cows out, which they really appreciate. The calves are belting around the field, enjoying the really good leg-stretch. The massive pile of big bales and the huge haystack (which we thought we’d never get through) have both dwindled to very modest proportions. Egg production has slowed but not stopped. Snowdrops are now in full splendour, cheering the spirits after what seems to have been quite a long winter already.

A sprinkling of snow

The cows are in for Winter

The first day of November started with torrential storms, and by the end of the month we had seen twice the average rainfall; all this ‘weather’, which included hail storms, quickly saturated the land. A leak in the retaining wall at the back of the cow shed made it hard to keep the cows’ bedding dry; water poured down the farm track, eroding the surface, circumventing the drains and running under the barn foundations. Weighted down by the remains of the runner bean crop, part of the fence in the vegetable garden collapsed. Tiles slipped, water made its way into roof spaces and flooded the greenhouse, and mud proliferated.

The Polytunnel in a damp and snowy December

The rain set everything back, discouraging us from carrying out important tasks. A neighbour juiced the last of our apples for us, and our ram and two lambs went on their final trip, coming back in boxes. We had expected the ram to be too strong for us to eat and he was earmarked ‘for the dog’. In fact his flavour, rather more like that of venison than lamb, was untainted, and a tribute to his Manx Loughton and Hebridean ancestry. The rabbits ignored the weather, becoming tamer by the day; they decided to construct a burrow amongst the red cabbages, which they gnawed to stumps. We had harvested most of these in time, and we netted the Brussels to save enough for Christmas Day.

Come Christmas Day, we had so many sprouts to go with the turkey (a local one, but not ours) that we had to fry them in butter with garlic the next day – a real treat! Patrick made sandwiches filled with what was left of his red cabbage casserole – chop finely,add onions, grated apple, cinnamon and nutmeg and juice and cook slowly. The whole family, it seems, is passionate about food. When you know where it comes from and how it is produced, you can’t help being interested in the stuff!

The run up to the New Year has seen an increasing amount of snow, with crisp and fresh mornings. Hopefully the sign of a new and fresh start!

Black Rocks continue to lay well, putting up with autumn weather

The sheep ‘flock’ is hardly a flock; a couple of old ewes which are more or less pets, three yearlings and our funny-looking Manx Lochtan x Hedridean ram called Bingo. Their gang of a dozen lambs, though, are enough to need marketing, so in early August we graded them and sent the best seven off.
Having committed the error of naming one of the lambs Alis (Alice), we could not send her off, even though she graded well. We took her and the other ewes down the road to our holding at Ty’n Coed, and kept the ram and two ram lambs back at the farm where we could keep an eye on them.

Three of the cows calved in September, adding Olwen, Mabon and Wynne to the herd, which now numbers fifteen. We have decided to switch to Spring calving, so we will not be bringing in a bull this winter, but waiting until early summer to get the cows into calf.

Our herd of Welsh Black Cattle

Haymaking has been as difficult this year as in the previous two; we cut two small fields in July and made small-bale hay, but the grass was not very dry, and we ended up with 700 bales of indifferent quality. We had to work like mad, and late into the night, to get the bales in, and it was such an ordeal that we may not make small bale hay again. The wet weather continued, with a short break which allowed us to make wrapped haylage.
Then in September the sun came out, the ground dried up, and we were able to cut another field and make unwrapped haylage. So we have ended up more than enough food for the cattle, and the main challenge has been finding storage space under cover for the unwrapped crop.

The main task as Autumn draws in is to harvest what we have left in the garden – onions, potatoes, pumpkins – before the wet weather ruins the crops. Large quantities of the vegetables have been transported off with the children who are returning back to university and work this time of the year. It’s always a great way to offload lots of the veg!

We took all the cattle to our fields at Ty’n y Coed. Since being there they have brought the wet, crubby and undergrazed pasture into much better shape, without harming its wildlife value. They have established their routine of moving between the fields, and hiding in the scrub while watching us top the thistles and admire the wildflowers.

Cows at Ty'n y coed

We managed to get some good quality haylage cut and baled while the weather held in June, but ended the month with three fields still to cut. We are in the same worrying situation which we have faced for the last two years.

The big plus this year is that two of the hayfields are full of common spotted orchids; they are just the tip of the floristic and insect rich iceberg as the slow reversion of once fertilised and re-seeded pasture progresses.

Common spotted orchid

After two more trips away – to Barcelona and Poland – the vegetable garden has needed serious work. Somehow we found the time to clear and plant a good range of crops, from early potatoes and broad beans to onions and leeks, cabbages and parsnips, beetroot and fennel. They have all done well, in spite of the attentions of a rabbit!

The strawberry bed has begun to give us another good crop, and blackcurrants and gooseberries will be ready in July. In the orchard the birds have had the cherries as usual, but the plums are looking very promising. Several practical projects have got under way including a replacement fence, clearing the silage pit for small hay bales, completion of the hard standing behind the new yard, the Soil Association annual inspection and wheeling out the newly refurbished hen house.

We have helped the Beaumaris Farmers’ Market coordinator with stalls for their fortnightly event over the summer; the next markets are on 26 July and 09 and 30 August for all those interested. You can find out more here.

With the ‘hungry gap’ nearing it’s end, it’s coming up harvest time, and the freezer will be full once more and the preserving pan fully occupied!

The sheep are getting a few nuts each morning, just so they present themselves at the gate for a good check-over.

Black Rock Chicken

The Black Rocks don’t seem to mind the cold in the least, and ran out with enthusiasm each morning onto their frost-hardened, white run. Snow was a different matter – they looked distinctly puzzled when one day they found that grass and potential food had disappeared under a carpet of snow. Egg production steadily increased, meeting regular orders and the needs of the house.

We spent February in Western Australia visiting our daughter and exploring the fabulous forests and coast of the south west corner of this enormous country. We left the farm in very capable hands (and paws, in the case of Non the sheepdog).

On our return in early March the pressure was on to catch up with jobs on the farm and in the garden which had been neglected. Blackcurrants and apple trees had to be pruned, gates needed painting, and in one case some serious welding. The vegetable garden needed digging over, so broad beans, potatoes and parsnips could be planted.

The fields which we plan to shut for hay have been waiting for a dose of muck from last year’s heap for some time. The fields have dried out well, and we managed to spread it all over one weekend, before the rain came.

New lambs

The main excitement has been the arrival of the first lambs fathered by our new ram, Bingo. One of the two old ewes which we kept when we sold the flock (she was ‘past it’ commercially) had triplets on 20^th March! However with special treatment, her own paddock and three feeds of nuts a day, she has done wonders with them, and they are bouncy bundles of fun. One of the ‘first timers’ lambed on 26^th, her first lamb being white, and her second black. As there is plenty of rich grass in the lambing field, they are all doing well. They do say, at this time of year cattle and sheep only have to lick the grass to thrive!

The end of the month brought cold, dry, sunny weather, ideal for carrying the remaining silage bales from the far field to the farmyard. The downside was frozen pipes. There was plenty of holly with berries at Ty’n Coed to decorate the house for Christmas.

Holly at Ty'n Coed (click for larger version)

Luke, the bull, seems to have done his job and was returned to his owner at the end of the month. We have been feeding the cows a couple of large bales of silage each week, supplemented by hay, to warm them up! The calves have a daily scoop of organic nuts to keep them fit.
The sheep have also had a taste of organic feed, to bring them to the gate and keep them in good condition.

The end of the year is a good time to reflect on the farming cycle. Although our farming policy has changed, and each year is different from the last, there are also continuities from year to year – lambing, shearing, calving, hay & silage-making, sending away finished stock and so on. To avoid repeating ourselves, we have decided to post a seasonal diary of highlights in 2009, so the diary will appear quarterly, in March, June, September and December.

Happy New year to you all!