Stories from the farm Augsut 26

Seeing the cows in our diverse fields never tires me....

Link to the order form below the newsletter.

NThere are lots of things one doesn’t like, but that are just plain necessary. Rain for example. I’m looking at the grey skies, that are not even offering the consolation prize of a dramatic skyline but just look a boring sombre grey, and am already missing the burning sunshine I cursed a few days ago. But the land is ever so grateful for it and the grass is undeniably livening up, its colours turning bright green. The other thing one tends not to really enjoy is making mistakes. But every once a while, one will unavoidingly get something wrong and the main consolation is simple: mistakes are often a great way of acquiring new knowledge. Or they make for a good story and a laugh later on. (those that have met me at a farmers market might already know I often have a few good stories of mishaps at hand) But back to the one where mistakes are part of a learning journey. Or better phrased: where challenges create lots of learning opportunities. As most of you already know, in the past months, we joined our sheep and cattle into a ‘flerd’, moving them through rotational grazing. But for the next one and a half month, our ‘flerd’ is no longer. The next 6 weeks, our cattle are split up in two separate breeding groups, each with their own bull, and a non-breeding group. On paper, that sounds pretty straight forward. In practise, it’s a bit of a nightmare. At a moment that we felt we were just coming to grips with the system of moving the entire group daily, we are now having to rethink our grass and grass reserves entirely. Previously carefully thought out planning of field subdivisions are having to be re-engineered completely, including water supplies and instead of keeping an eye on one group, there’s now 3 groups to watch and evaluate daily. But as we stumble through this chaos, seeing how different types of groups (smaller vs larger groups of cattle, smaller vs larger field divisions, sheep with cattle or not, …) work in different context, our knowledge of impact and grazing systems will deepen, and next year and the years following, we’ll continuously get better at this. In the meantime, I will go sit in our glass garden room and hone in on the bright colours in our landscape, which, come to think of it, actually contrast very prettily against the boring sky. I guess there might be an immediate silver lining after all….

UPDATED ORDER FORM ONLINE NOW

The August order form is now updated and online. You can find the link below to the order form with all our different meat cuts available, along with practical info about delivery/collection dates.