October

My grandfather had a saying “as a farmer you need to learn to do 6 days work in 3, and 3 days work in 6.”  In other words, work flat out in the busy times and accept the quieter times with grace.

Farming wise we’re in a watching mode,  hoping that mother nature gives us the right amount of rain to support our young plants. Not too much to drown them,  not to little so they don’t get the nutrients they need to prosper.

To keep his team busy Geoff and team have cleared behind an old hay barn,  there is so much room!  We’re going to temporarily move in a few local tradespeople with storage and skips etc.  Will keep the site active over winter, improve security and bring a little money in.

The pause in arable work also means there’s an opportunity to plan for the next few months and as always we have some big plans.  On this visit we:

• Agreed a plan for a container coffee shop to become a hub for the glamping, hopefully open to the public too (subject to all sorts of challenges,  planning etc)
• Worked out what we’re going to do with moving the power “head” so we can progress the demolition of the inside of the barn
• Discussed drainage with the brewery,  this one has been a headache for us all and we really need to fix it quickly
• Reviewed plans for the new houses.  Annoyingly we didn’t have our big meeting as we didn’t have enough information.  We’ve rescheduled though
• Continued our clear out of the old woodshed, hopefully to become part of our offering around the coffee shop
• Agreed a demo of a new mower.  A kioti zero turn will soon be coming for a trial
• Reviewed and allocated actions from our health and safety review
• Tried kitebuggying on one of our wheat fields (sorry Geoff).

I’m away on holiday soon so the next update will be late November.   In the meantime if you have any thoughts,  advice, ideas,  suggestions or simply want to find out more then please do say “Hi”.