A frantic phone call on Wednesday from Dave to say that our hay was now baled and ready to be picked up from the field at the end of the village. Ideally we would have liked to have left it to the weekend, but the forecast was not good from Friday onwards. So Wednesday evening saw us packing bales of hay onto the back of our trailer. Tommy (the farmer who's hay it is) took pity on us and with his 8 bale grab, loaded the trailer for us. We managed to get 100 bales on the trailer. We roped it all down and set off home. Halfway home is a steep hill which in the tractor is a nasty gear change. The sudden jolt rocked the hay and it very slowly fell off the trailer. Thankfully no damage was done and we repacked the trailer. The problem was where Tommy had stacked the bales onto the trailer they were not "locked in" with the rest of the bales. It's one of those things. We decided that the remaining 100 bales we would collect them in 2 loads. The hay was finally collected and packed away by Friday.
Deefa helping Denise pack the hay at the top of the barn. We didn't think he could climb that high!!!
Tim moved the hay we had left from last year on top of the new hay and then put a tarp over the front near to the barn door to protect the hay from the rain etc.
We had a bit of a day off for us today. The North Yorkshire Smallholders Society that we belong to had a social get together at a smallholding not far from us. The forecast for this afternoon was not good and when we set off in heavy rain we were not sure how wet we were going to get. But once we arrived the sun was shining and apart from a sharp shower whilst we were walking in the wood at the back of the smallholding, the weather was fine. These gatherings are always good fun and it's a chance to catch up with the "gossip" which centered around the FMD outbreak and how much hay everyone had been able to cut/bale/buy.
We've had a couple of phone messages from Defra advising us about the latest movement restrictions. We can now take animals to slaughter as we are not in the restricted area. But as our lambs will not be ready until October at the very earliest this is no help to us at all. As there have been no more outbreaks since the middle of the week, hopefully by the end of August all movement restrictions for us should be lifted, and we will be able to pick up our 6 Wiltshire Horn ewe lambs, deliver the Corridale ram lamb to his new owner and sell the rest of our ewe lambs either privately or at the Rare Breeds Sale at the beginning of October.
As we are keeping Missy's two ewe lambs we have decide to call them Davina (the one with the black spot on her leg) and Demelza.
Just looked at the forecast for the coming week and just for a change severe weather warning for Tuesday & Wednesday!!!!! But it does say on the Met Office web site, to check again on Monday for the latest. Find out next week what happened
Denise
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