I know during these reports I am always writing about the weather well 36mm of rain during the first week of the month and a monthly total of 96mm does show a very wet spring.

We have still not ploughed the Drive Field to sow the spring cereals as it has been just too wet and the grassland is under water in places.

We have however been clearing a 300mm drain on the Left Hand Meadow to help this problem and here am I soaked through as we did it (it rained heavily at the time) but the drain was full with river silt and willow tree roots for about 6m. Having cleared it the land has dried up quicker.

Also Dorothy's father (above right) has been clearing the ditch between the Drive and Long fields out with this "Back Actor" machine to increase the drainage flow, here he is in action.

All is not doom and gloom with the water as we have spent some time plumbing the cubical shed roof water into a storage tank for the cows to drink click for a more detailed link.

Our first cows went out into the field on the 12th but they are still in the cubical shed at night and all the youngstock are still inside.

Due to this we became low on our supplies of straw so we split a load with our Chris our next door neighbour here he is unloading as you can see it is in "Big Bales".

 

We have had 3 calves born this month 2 black and white bulls and 1 black and white heifer, one bull was born with his ears facing forward and he looked rather strange although they had begun to straighten when Paul took this photo, mum too has a distinctive marking we call her "Negative 7" for obvious reasons.

Cattle can do the strangest of things as this picture shows of one of our bull beef who forgot he has grown and got his head stuck through the gate I rescued him with a car jack to bend the bars open.

We are now getting stuck for space to put our calves as this picture of some we have put in the veterinary stalls shows. Foot and Mouth seems to be easing but I feel we know this for sure when all the country's cattle are out in the fields and we don't see an increase in cases.

Since our feature in the Magazines Farmers Guardian and Dairy Farmer we have had a good many emails from fellow farmers some with their own sites so we hope to update our contact pages very soon.

Also hello to Carol from the Greenwood Elementary School in the USA thank you for your email and I have visited your site at www.kcsd.org/gwweb.

Finally the Swallows have returned so hopefully warmer weather is not too far away. Don't forget to visit our spring nature report and view the update on the Thrush's nest.

See you next month Phil

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