Ewes “in lamb” on the footpath to Stuchbury. Photograph: Colin Wootton
Richard Fonge writes:
What is so noticeable for this time of year is how green and healthy the countryside looks. Why? After our long hot summer, when the light rains came in early September they fell on a warm soil, resulting in rapid growth not only on the grass fields, but also when the oilseed rape and winter corn were planted the seeds germinated quickly and the new crops were soon established. This can be seen clearly from all footpaths and roads out of the village.
No better example of how these conditions have benefited a crop is the winter wheat direct drilled into the fields of wild flowers on the Stuchbury footpath. The old crop was sprayed out and with the manure which was spread will now rot down into the soil. A good farming practice, adding humous to the soil to produce a valuable crop.
A farmer has to take each season as it comes, taking the good with the bad, and this year has been a very challenging one, with a sodden start, followed by a dry spring and summer, resulting in a poor harvest and livestock being fed winter rations in July and August. However the silver lining is that it’s been a great autumn to establish crops and cattle have been able to stay out longer with the extra grass growth, as witnessed in the Manor field and up the Moreton road.
The sixty ewes on the Stuchbury path are now in lamb hopefully, as I see the two rams have been taken out. Two rams to sixty is a generous ratio,so when scanned for pregnancy at seventy five days or thereabouts all should be satisfactory.
I mentioned how challenging as a farmer it can be working along side the weather and therefore nature. This inevitably can cause severe stress, alongside the financial and at times loneliness of the occupation. The farming community are very good at supporting those with these difficulties through a number of voluntary and charitable organisations.
One of the first was Gloucestershire Farming Friends started by a generous and caring farmer called Malcolm Whittaker in the 1980s. An inspirational man.
I became involved in setting up a similar helpline in Warwickshire some thirty years ago guiding people to the right sort of help. From these smaller helplines, Farm Crisis Network was born, a national organisation doing great work in the countryside but still with volunteers to help.
The philosophical attitude so typical of his type. A Dales farmer was asked how he was going to manage after losing sheep in a blizzard. ‘ Us’ll have to find another hole in the belt”!
Richard Fonge