ESCAPE!

Imagine my horror when, as I wandered into the yard at about 4.30 this morning, I was met by the sight of a detachment of our young heifers loitering out on a public highway; their paddock fencing left in a parlous state thanks to their hormonal jumpings.

Of course my first move, rooted as I was to the spot by fear, was to call for back-up. However, my wingman - the tractor driver - was eating first breakfast at home at the time. Thus, grabbing a couple of buckets of calf nuts (the bovine equivalent of picking up a couple of buckets of chocolate bars), I slowly walked up to the heiffered road.

In a scene chillingly similar to the final scene in Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds', the calves did not scatter off to Lamyatt and on to start a new life at Wyke Cheddar but instead stayed very calm as I walked through their ranks without a single one of them paying me any heed. The laden buckets were the Rod Taylor to my psychologically broken and weepy Tippi Hedren, our child represented by the calves….but hang on, the calves were the birds? Okay. Rod Taylor was the buckets, I was Tippi Hedren and we had an invisible child and the calves were the birds. There we are. That analogy now works perfectly.

Once they knew what was up, the greedy little beasts came spilling off the road and onto the side of the hill. Which is the moment captured in this photograph.

In the background of this photograph is the handsomely refurbished farmhouse Anna and I will be imminently moving into, which will be a location affording us better scope for spying on these escape artists. Each evening I shall sit Anna by the window with a bucket of chocolate bars and tell her to wake me if the farm's youth are causing a nuisance. The cowherd must have his rest!

END OF FIRST MOB GRAZING EXPERIMENT

Today the milking cows of Milton Farm are having their final strip of grazing in Rick field, 12 days after I turned them in there. This photo shows them a couple of days ago when Somerset was once a sun blessed realm.

Opinion is divided on how well the experiment went, but overall I am very pleased with how the cows did, having never been grazed in such a manner and on such a botanically diverse grass ley before. I honestly thought that they'd refuse to go in there after day one and would eat around all the "funny" plants, particularly the herbs like chicory, plantain, burnet, sheeps parsley, yarrow, etc.

We had hoped that we’d be able to reduce the amount of food we gave them in the sheds at night, but no matter how much I allocated them in the field, they were still licking the shed’s troughs clean, and if I gave them too much grazing then they wouldn’t graze it down properly.

Their milk solids were more erratic than when they were set stocked and their milk urea levels roved about too, the latter indicating a drop in their protein intake, which was very perplexing because they were grazing huge quantities of protein-dense clovers! Hmmm.

We’re keeping the night time feed the same and we’ll see how milk is affected in the coming weeks when they return to their set stocking field rotation tomorrow morning.

This is all a very long term experiment and strip grazing the herbal ley is as much about biodiversity for cheese flavour as it is for doing our bit for improving the farm’s biodiversity (15 or so grassland species vs. three or four). It is also about building resilience into our soils by growing & grazing crops so that they put down deep complex root systems so that the land is better able to cope with extremes of weather – both drought and high rainfall – and also to act as a carbon sink (more organic matter in the soil = more carbon drawn out of the atmosphere).

This afternoon, I shall shut-up Rick field to let the plants to regrow and we’ll be back in there sometime in July for the next round of grazing.

CROP WALK VISITORS

Yesterday, boss Tom, boss Richard and I went on a routine crop walk. This time, however, it was a bit different because we had a rotation of company. First up were Julius and his film crew (pictured here with father and son Richard and Tom).

Later on we were joined by our 2^nd Neal’s Yard Dairy delegation in a week, this one was led by the lovely Gemma. The morning of field stomping culminated in an always delightful lunch laid-on by boss Tessa, which itself culminated in bowls of beautiful, silken roasted strawberry ice cream, made by Westcombe’s resident ice cream maker: Rob of Brickell’s ice cream. 

The main focus of our crop walk was to assess which grass to cut for a snatched 2^nd part of the 2^nd cut silage harvest, before the weather turns. There was also time spent poring over the brave new frontiers for the farming side of Westcombe Dairy and, for the most part, it was a floral scent of optimism and excitement that suffused the air, as we gazed over some of our experiments. The two-year-old herbal leys were looking good and our red clover silage leys were looking excellent and bounteous. Our organically-managed Maris Widgeon heritage wheat was looking seriously impressive and inspiring, which is just as well considering we are growing it for the seriously impressive and inspiring Westcombe sister business: Landrace Bakery of Bath. 

The Lucerne was a bit of a stain on the day and accordingly we’re finding Lucerne growing to be a great ego leveller. Nonetheless, the field looks very pretty, filled as it is with all manner of wild flowers (it is so 20^th century to refer to them as “weeds”) that have decided to spring forth and upset the Lucerne. 

We also looked at the Milton cows grazing the herbal ley in Rick field. It was Tom and Richard’s first opportunity to see this grand new experiment in action and be dazzled by my grazing management phone app (I wear a space suit when using it, to get me in the right and proper spiritual pyramid for such futuristic technologies. The more I use the app, the more I hope for the day that Tina, our cheese turning robot, will have congress with my grazing app, for the possibilities of such a union are endless). I shall write more on the strip/mob grazing at a later date, for there is much to talk about regarding that particular paradox.

A COW CALLED PIXIE, part the fourth

The time is fast approaching when our rotund cheesemaking cow idol, Pixie, is dried-off, thus bringing to a close her first lactation. Here she is in her penultimate morning milking, this morning, emanating the usual beams of suspicion from those Pixie eyes.

Yes, 1st lactation means that Pixie is a heifer and will remain so until she has her next calf, an event that is due to occur in July, at which point she will become a fully-fledged dairy cow.

Although Pixie has a good record of milk quality – averaging 4.95% fat, 3.55% protein and a somatic cell count of 75 over the first 305 days and 6,602 litres of her lactation – she hasn’t got quite such a good track record with fertility. She didn’t hold to artificial insemination as a maiden heifer, and only got pregnant having run with Jason, our Aberdeen Angus “sweeper” bull. This meant her first calving fell towards the end of the calving block, having calved-down in January last year and, having not held to the first two services of her first lactation she was “held round” for service last Autumn.

To be “held round” is to sit on mine and boss Richard’s mental naughty step. So, while most of the herd calving-down in the summer months this year will be having Holstein, Ayrshire and - glory be! - Dairy Shorthorn heifers and thus forming Westcombe Dairy's very own elite Evolutionary Guard whose eyes shine down rays of gold, diamonds, rare tapestries and intricately painted spinets upon all who fall under their gaze, poor little Pixie will have the shame of giving birth to yet another beef-sired calf.

Still, even though Pixie’s ovaries perhaps aren’t quite firing on all cylinders, along with her rich milk, she brings me a great deal of delight when she primly trots into the parlour, her fascinating character filling the barn. Next time you see a picture of Pixie, she’ll be holidaying on the side of the hill.