I said at the start of my May report that we have had a wet May, June was not to disappoint and has broken (he means drowned) our records for the wettest June.

Here we have had 161mm and as I write this on the 1st of July it is raining again and there is already 12mm in the gauge.

We silaged during the first week and it mostly went well but it did take about a day longer due to Simon’s inexperience with the forager however by the end he was getting on well here is Andy the buckrake driver along with his son Sam taking a break.

The plan was to silage at Norcroft straight after the Cheshire show but it has been so wet that the one field they tried to cut remains still out totally waterlogged in the field, with Simon and Tom only being able to half fill trailers.

More rain is forecast for the coming week my theory is that the weather will clear once Simon goes on his holidays.

The 10th saw our open farm Sunday which was attended by around 100 people it stayed dry and everyone who came enjoyed their day.

Here are some of the pond dippers as photographed by Simon.

The road show has been out twice once to Brerton school this event was held indoors due to a thunderstorm and then a return trip to Bolin, again working with wet weather plans indoors.

Wimboldsley school being forced to postpone. On a personal note and remembering when our children were in primary school I really feel for the hardworking parents and staff at any school whose work has been so tested by such a washout.

Greenbank school and Comberbach school were however much luckier with the weather and they both managed dry days when they visited the farm here are Greenbank pupils studying some young stock while here are Comberbach on a pond dip.

On to the Cheshire show and this year we had some changes in the marquee and we won a rosette for our efforts.

Pictured here is Lord Plumb one of our visitors also in the picture our NFU regional director Terry a stalwart supporter for Carl myself and the rest of the team the other pictures were taken on the Monday during setting up.

This lady with the ducks is Barbara a former NFU county Chairman and great supporter of the PR committee having been the regional representative on the PR national committee.

I must as usual thank all of the team for their efforts over the three days and to other supporters for the kind donations/loans of livestock and produce from all involved.

The show days remained nearly dry except if you were a young farmer on one of the floats given the last week of the month I think we were very lucky.

Back to the building work and Mick has started on the outer brick “skin” on the front of the shed although the weather is holding us back our aim was to have it nearly finished by now.

Sarah and Becky have now finished their A2 exams and will get the results in August.

July sees three people on works experience coming from Sandbach Girls and Holmes Chapel Schools also we will have the return of Natalie our vet student from Middlewich who is now studying at Glasgow.

Finally here’s Andy’s nature report.

See you next month Phil

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