In a year when everything seems to be late, from the bluebells, to the horse chestnuts and in particular the maize drilling, then we have to have faith that “for everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven”, as the good book says. You just can’t force the season, as John likes to say, so we do all we can, and we leave the rest to God.
“All we can” means that we have mobilized probably the biggest fleet of tractors this farm has ever seen, with slurry tanking, solid muck carting & spreading, cultivating, power harrowing and drilling all going on at once.
Clearing the slurry lagoon is quite a challenge, as everyone who beds up their cubicles with sand will know. We use a stirring pump in the lagoon, and the slurry tankers are top filled, with internal agitating augers, to help us get rid of the slurry without the sand settling out and blocking the tankers. Then we remove the solids with a digger, and take it out by trailer. We are thankfully coming to the end of this job, but we still have a few men relaying back and forth to get the last bit done.
Where the muck spreaders have finished the next team quickly follows. This year we are using a disc cultivator and subsoiler, and then doing a single pass with the power harrow, to prepare the ground for the maize drilling. This keeps the muck near the surface where it is available for the crop, and means that we aren’t ploughing up trash or wet clay soil.
John won’t be at ease until all this work is done, and it is so encouraging to see that this dedication is shared by the team, as everyone is mucking in and doing more than their fair share to get the job finished. The challenge of the late season, of course, is that once this task is done the next job will be at the door. We hope that by the time you read this we will have made the first cut of silage and be onto the next task, putting dirty water onto the silage ground. Perhaps after that we’ll be able to catch our breath!
In the livestock department things are looking to get a little quieter. Heat detection and serving for our small spring block continues, and this week we will start drying off the autumn calvers, with the first 60 cows being moved onto Pevensey marsh. We are in the process of creating a track which will connect our own land with the marsh ground which we rent from the castle. Currently the in-calf heifers and cows have to be walked along the road, with a team blocking any open entrances and pathways, and the youngstock have to be transported by trailer. This new track will help us to save on time and labour, allowing us to drive cattle on foot to several hundred extra acres of land, something we are all looking forward to in the near future.
For now we continue to do “all we can” with the field work. We try to do our best with the life given to us. We work, we eat, and we generally sleep very soundly (except for Helen, who has visions of her son and husband ending up in a ditch whenever they work late). And on the whole, despite the times of really hard work, we see that this life is a real blessing, as Solomon concluded “That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.”