The driest April since we began keeping our records with only 19mm of rain.

This has been great for getting the spring fieldwork done and the fertilizer is sown as are the oats on the Rancho. This year we have had the time to sow them ourselves using our own small seed drill.

The cows went out in the day on the 6th and at night on the 12th and are now settling into summer routine. The only thing we couldn’t do was roll the fields as the dry weather meant the land has dried out so quick so I will need to remember where some of those winter spreader marks are come silaging.

Simon is now nearly 20 Peter is just 18 and so this year Graham and myself have decided to try silaging for ourselves and we have bought this forage harvester. We’ll see how it goes and guess who gets to drive it.

Back at the shed and three out of the four doors are now fitted and we had our first visitors on the 13th this group from Cledford school. Here they are showing off their little red tractor bags. 

The brickwork for the outside of the shed is slowly carrying on as you see there are three layers (courses as they are called) we now aim to bank soil against what are the lower layers of blocks to give the finish.

At the far end we hope to have as an outdoor seating area for our visitors and to avoid unwanted cows we are putting up this fence aided by Tom and Mark from Middlewich high school (yet more works experience victims) also these large sections of tree trunk provided by our friends at J&B skips will provide seating/features. Well done lads on your newly aquired fencing skills.

Simon, Sarah, Hannah and Becky are all hard at work finishing their projects/assignments and revising for their exams which start next month so stress levels are on the climb.

As you may be aware we have Andy’s archeological find down by the river Dane and early this month I as visited by one of our estate managers to inform me that there is a preliminary survey taking place for a 1.2m wide gas pipeline crossing the farm through the exact spot.

May should bring us some rain (the oat crop needs it) a final concrete floor for the shed and our preparations for LEAF open farm Sunday on JUNE 10TH.

Finally don't forget to take a look at our nature page

I’ll see you all next month and hopefully some of you at the Cheshire show.