FARM DIARY

We hope that we will be released this week (from FMD restrictions)1, and that calf sales can at last take place. We are paying the price in the South East, as Brussels allow exports to take place from the rest of the country, not trusting Defra (who would?) to have properly eliminated the disease in Surrey.

Blue tongue is also moving closer, but the drop in temperature will hopefully slow down the disease as midge activity decreases.

Things are going quite well on the farm otherwise. We have cleared all the muck from the sheds and heaps down to the maize fields ready for spreading and winter ploughing.

This week we cleaned the last cow track, after my experiment with waste paper, which was fantastically successful in dry weather, with cows walking briskly on this lovely bouncy, smooth surface. Local riders came from all around to canter up and down the tracks (which are all public rights of way); but then the wet weather came!

I thought it would be sufficiently hard to withstand quite a lot of rain, but I underestimated the power of cow poo and hundreds of hoofs!

It turned into a messy quagmire, and although it did harden again in the summer (and we rolled it), this year's wet summer was the last straw (as it were).

We did have quite a few complaints from members of the public, which was understandable, and one track was cleared last year, with the other now clean again.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette November 14