Bog Myrtle & Peat

  I can hardly resist a quick post about heather on the Chayne. Long term readers will remember the “heather laboratory” which was set up in 2010 to explore the level of grazing pressure on a small area of our hill. I routinely publish updates on how the plant life has fared over the last… Continue reading

The vet came and could not help. She had never seen a calf like this one, and she proposed trying for another week. Another week came, feeding five times a day. Dawn blurred into dusk and the days rolled together in constant fretful labour. I was flattened by the weight of it, and my head… Continue reading

  This blog is consumed with farming, but in fairness so am I. I can hardly resist the briefest post to record that the bull is now out and has started working, albeit with a single heifer. She was an offering to calm him down after the excitement of his recent escape, and the sacrifice… Continue reading

The plans I had to cut and dry my oats in the autumn are beginning to fall apart. The crop is ripening fast in the heat, and now two thirds of it are yellow gold. This is far ahead of schedule, and the dry summer has played havoc with my plans. This would hardly matter… Continue reading

The final calf came at last and he is a thing of beauty. Unlike his siblings, he is almost a riggit; black and white markings swirl around him like a pint of guinness. His eyelashes are ludicrously long, and whiskers trail from his chin like threads of black silk. Of course we loved him from the outset.… Continue reading

We found our buck sailing on the edge of the forest. The sun was gone, and the birds were up to roost. He drifted in silence through webs of deep grass like a boat in the twilight, stirring up a bow wave of moths and froth which glittered around him like spray. He was in… Continue reading

Nobody can remember a summer like this. Old folk draw comparisons with dry summers they knew in their youth, but none can match this rough, dusting decline which has run for weeks in Galloway. We have had three showers and one wet night since the oats went in at the end of April. It is… Continue reading

The oats grow every day, and the work I put into them is repaid by the extraordinary quantity and variety of birds which now hang around the rising crop. We have linnets and redpolls on constant rotation, and suddenly there are yellowhammers where before there were none. They must have come over from a nearby… Continue reading

The hayfield is turning green again. The rain came and soaked out the rooty yellow stubble which was left after the baler came, and now the field shows a shimmer of life again. The baler came and it has stayed – I ended up buying it; a New Holland Hayliner 276. This machine might just… Continue reading

If there was ever a time to write this blog, now would be it. We are still swooning with delight at the arrival of our first calf, and the yard smells sweetly of freshly mown hay, tucked up under the rafters and safe from the rain. But work and life conspire to consume my spare… Continue reading