Sheep have lambs! (Photograph: Colin Wootton)
Richard Fonge writes:
Firstly I must apologise in that I made two assumptions last month which were proved wrong. The winter beans up the concrete road were cultivated out and re planted with barley, and the land on the Stuchbury footpath and across to the Helmdon Rd was sprayed out with round up.
Why? There is an expression in business that “the first loss is the best loss”. and this was the case with the beans. They had struggled to germinate and were not looking good, hence the decision, I suspect. Also with the good weather it was a chance to establish a new crop, and how quickly has that happened. Like the barley up the Moreton Rd the seeds were sown into a good tilth of soil and rolled down straight away to preserve the moisture. Already a healthy looking crop but, like everything else, in dire need of rain.
A conservation grass mixture could still be sown on the other fields now the predominant black grass has been killed off. Black grass is the most destructive weed grass, dominating the crop it’s growing in, and restricting the yield massively of that crop and producing abundant seeds. It’s in these circumstances that the option of a conservation grass mixture with its grant aid is more viable than growing corn. There are many government schemes encouraging farmers to diversify into environmentally friendly practices and the uptake over the last twenty five years or so has been good, combining food production with nature conservation.
Communicating with people about an industry I am proud of has been part of my farming life, whether having school children to watch cows being milked, sheep lambing, or going into schools to talk about the farming life and doing show commentaries. So it gets my “goat” when I hear T.V. presenters, who are doing an excellent job otherwise, refer to a sheep having its babies. Humans have babies!, Cows have calves, sheep lambs, pigs piglets etc. Always remember that these offspring are born and reared for food.
When you are bought up on a farm the rich cycle of life is ever present and that includes the facts of life. When aged six my class was asked to write what we had done or seen over the Easter holiday. I wrote. Daddy let Mary the cow loose in the yard and the bull went for a ride.
Richard Fonge.