Wow, what a month…. July hit records with the warmest weather ever recorded passing 40C in places in Kent. Whilst this has been great for holiday visitors that can escape to the sea, it has been tricky to work in unless in an air-conditioned tractor or truck.
We have had an incredible busy time here in July, finally we have finished shearing all our sheep (around 2,500 when you include our rams, ewes, and lambs) and we were relieved to achieve this just before the heat wave landed! We have also been really pleased with the fleeces that have come off this year which will create some beautiful products, some of our beautiful shearling fleeces (first shear) have already found their way to our enthusiastic and talented spinning customers.
We started the month with finishing off bailing the last of the hay in the fields and moving the bales into our barns, traditionally we would not be using these before the winter months but with all this dry and warm weather the grass is short and yellow with slow regrowth due to the lack of rain, and therefore in some fields we are not only feeding sheep with oats but we are also now using some of our hay to feed to ensure that they have enough food. Daily we are checking on our sheep which now also includes checking ditches which have become dry in many places and muddy with the possibility of sheep getting stuck or escaping into other boundaries. Paul has been out with the digger in places to dig deeper into the ditches and get to the water so that the sheep can retain their natural ditch water supply.
On a more positive note, the crop on the ground is looking good despite a tricky start to the year and Martin got into his combine on the 15th of July and started combining our first wheat field, yields are coming off well so far. With combining well on the way now we have also stated groundwork with discing (this is where we chop the ground into small pieces) in preparation for sewing turnips for winter sheep food as well as planting oil seed rape.
In the last week we have started weaning some of our first lambs (born March) off their mothers as they are now ‘teenagers’ and to give their mums a break (from milking) as well as put the lambs onto pastures new with better grass that we have saved for them to grow well on. Even our last sock lamb born called ‘Waffle’ who is now just over 10 weeks old has been weaned off the milk powder as he is big enough to move onto grass and hay.
We are also delighted to announce that our new Family Shepherds Hut named The Romney in honour of our Romney Sheep is now finally ready to welcome visitors here on our farm.