June

June has come bringing with it an awful ot of rain! On the 22nd we had about 57mm on top of the many centimetres that had already rained down upon us! There has been so much rain that also on the 22nd we had to bring one lot of cattle inside, as they were poaching the ground so much. They however are disgruntled as they think they should be outside at this time of year! On the 25th, Jordan Castle experienced rivers forming in new places around the farm and most of our drive being washed away. More cows were brought in, although difficult as the cows are a bit perplexed about this weather!

Sydney mowed a field of hay about 2 weeks ago and since then has been rained on so much that we think that it wont be able to be saved, although he says that early hay is difficult to spoil. This means that there has been not much progress on the arable side as the rain has precluded anyone going on the land as it is so wet!

We did however have two visits from our local school, Wellow House, who brought their Year 8 and Year 5 geographers along to see our farm. They seemed very interested in the farm and the processes that we were describing. These were our youngest visitors as we had thought that we were going to cater for older secondary school students. The year 5s especially were vey responsive to what we were talking to them about and learned an awful lot about where their food comes from.

Our most exciting event this June was Open Farm Sunday on June 10th. We had decided to do two pre-booked farmer led walks on the day, however we ended up splitting the afternoon walk due to popular demand! During the day we had about 80 people visit our farm, and it seemed like it was a success. Most of our visitors knew a little about the countryside but were interested in finding out more about how a farm works. We had very good coverage in the local newspaper, which encouraged people from Newark to make the journey to see us. People did seem genuinely interested and asked some really good questions, which made us feel satisfied that communication with the public was the way to go!

Let's hope that the weather clears up soon and we can proceed with making some kind of hay.