A 2 Week Holiday

All sowing has now finished with the last field of organic wheat sown at the end of the month. This field is ear marked for Scotland the Bread to make organic flour.
The rest of the crops are looking amazingly well, with no patches that have failed to establish. It’s been a long time since we have had such a mild and dry autumn long may it continue. Robert has got most of the winter ploughing done, with only a couple of fields left. We are going to use them to out winter some cows. The Combine, Baler, Seeder and 7 furrow Plough have all been washed and oiled, then stored inside for the winter.
Andy has been busy in the workshop repairing gates and some implements. He has also checked both cattle handling systems, and all cattle courts to make sure all gates and doors open and close properly.

Ally and Ross have been busy this month vaccinating all the ewe’s pre-mating to protect against diseases later on in the winter. The rest of the ewes have all been checked for lameness, udders and teeth. The rams were put with the first batch of ewes on the 10th of this month. This batch of 215 ewes will start lambing around the 2nd week of March next year, all lambed inside at Greenside. We have also been busy with the cattle this month. The cows and calves have been brought into the courts at North Baldutho, we do this to help introduce the calves to silage, straw and the feeder wagon. This we think helps to reduce stress when they are weaned next month and moved to the courts at Lochty. All the finishing cattle are now inside at Lochty and we will go through them next month to weigh them and record how well they did through the summer.
Ally, Ross and I also had a couple of days away at the livestock markets, to purchase 6 new Rams for the sheep flock. 2 Suffolk’s 3 Texel’s and a Beltex. We also purchased 10 Pure Luing heifers as replacements for the cow herd.
All this and I still managed to squeeze in 2 weeks holiday in Crete….. Perfect!!