Spring has finally arrived at Wimplebridge and the village is a hive of activity.

[huge_it_slider id=’4′] Lambs seem to be popping out everywhere, the local farms are reporting mostly twins with lots of triplets keeping wives and children busy with bottles and warmers.

Jeff has “borrowed” a bull from another farm and is using him to serve his five young heifers. This fine young man is three years old and well-proportioned but not too big. A very heavy bull would be too much for the youngsters to handle so this time they get one of the smaller boys.

Of course it’s not just the stock farmers who have been busy. Now that the soil has warmed up a bit, and didn’t we all have a nice weekend just before Easter, the fields and lanes are full of tractors racing around with fertiliser and sprays. If you stand out in the wheat fields you can practically hear it growing all around you but it could do with a drink so a couple of evenings of gentle rain would be appreciated now. We have also put in a crop of field beans which is just sitting there under the lightest covering of topsoil. A shower or two will be all it needs to get germination underway and pretty soon that too will be pushing its little green shoots up skywards.

Grass for the anaerobic digester is growing well, we hope to get two cuts off it this year. These fields have had several years of cereals growing in them so a couple of years of grass will help control the weeds as well as reduce the cultivation costs and give us a nice rich biomass by-product in the form of digest to put back on once it’s gas has been extracted.

 

All in all the farms are looking healthy, the elephant in the room of course is Brexit and like all the other farmers in the UK we are wondering what will happen when we leave the EU.