Although it has seemed a long time coming this year, winter has finally arrived, with frost on the grass most mornings. Sunny but cold days, but mostly wet, wet, wet.
Caught out
I daren’t wait any longer to get the wurzels lifted and stored undercover. I left them late one year, and we got caught out with some early hard frosts. It ruined a lot of them and turned them to mush.
So, one sunny day I got wrapped up and made a start. Because of the adverse conditions we had in the spring, it has turned out to be a poor crop. We usually reckon to get around ten tons, but this year I will have clamped barely a quarter of that. Now they are up and under cover and sheeted down, I will keep them solely for the ewes once they have lambed.
I have found over the years that they seem to have plenty of milk when they get a trough full of chopped-up roots each day. I usually start feeding them after Christmas, but I will have to ration them this year. As always in farming it’s swings and roundabouts, the early hay I made this summer still smells
