As the winter draws in and the days get ever shorter the farm settles down to a much quieter place in terms of work needed to be done! our focus can be targeted to the next year in terms of crop planning & budgeting requirement. With the ever-increasing costs of fertilizer looking at ways to optimize and reduce its use is going to be the challenge.
Crop growing wise we have our winter wheat and barley in the ground, growing nicely and should yield a good harvest when harvested later next year.
On dryer days if the ground allows, we do try and keep up with “farmkeeping” such as trimming hedgerows back, keeping ditches running free and general tidying up around the farm but this is very much dictated to us by the winter weather.
With the cattle now off the fields in their warm cosy winter housing happily munching away on their diet of grass silage, this is the very grass that we harvested throughout the year.
Eric & James divide the cattle into weight groups, this is done so they are kept correctly nourished and not over or under fed and stops bullying of the smaller cattle.
The pigs are feeling the chill, so they nestle under the straw bedding to keep themselves warm, our brand new piggery is much more efficient in terms of keeping the harshness of the winter weather at bay making much happier pigs!
So as you can read winter farming is still faced with its challenges but with careful planning allows us some much needed down time, drinking tea in the office and reading farmers weekly!!