Bog Myrtle & Peat

I absolutely cannot resist a brief note on the most recent twist in my farming saga, and I am delighted to report that alongside the excitement of this year’s dalliance with belted galloways, I have found a bull for the future. My wife and I headed down to look at a promising riggit galloway calf… Continue reading

Having allowed a few days to let the dust settle, I can hardly resist a gloating post to record the fact that we made hay on Saturday with just moments to spare before the rain came. In the final few hours before the baler arrived, I kicked out the rows of hay one more time… Continue reading

The past forty eight hours have been spent in a frenzy of enthusiasm and anxiety. The prospect of making hay seemed like a remote possibility when the field was cut, but I optimistically set to the task in the reassuring knowledge that we could fall back on silage if disaster struck. In the event, we… Continue reading

Old Charlie the bull returned to his original home on Tuesday. I was glad to hear that he was so warmly regarded by his previous owners that they were willing to host him in his retirement years, and he has avoided the indignity of being cast and sent to the abattoir. In his place, the… Continue reading

Having recently grumbled about the prospect of wasting a field of grass, I was thrilled to receive a late night visit from a sympathetic neighbour on Tuesday night. The house was lit up with dazzling headlights as a tractor pulled into the steading at 11 o’clock with a mower on the back, and within half… Continue reading

The saga surrounding my galloway cattle continues to unfurl as further doubts are raised over the potency of old Charlie, the beltie bull who came to the farm last month. I have a sneaking suspicion that the old boy has worked more often than he is letting on, but the farm he came from is… Continue reading

This year more than any other I’ve been forced to pay attention to the combined impact of grass and weather. Having always had a focus on hill country and wildlife, cutting silage and making hay have often seemed like remote concerns, even though these are the founding agricultural processes which govern so much of the… Continue reading

Regular readers will know how fixated I have become on nightjars over the last few years, and I try and spend a few nights each summer looking and listening out for these weird birds at a handful of sites across the county. I was recently asked to donate a Lot to the Galloway Fisheries Trust… Continue reading

Summer continues to crash and burn with every passing day. As if from nowhere, a flock of lapwings has appeared in the fields by the river, and they flop lazily back and forth across the landscape, accompanied by teams of starlings and rooks. None of these birds were here ten days ago, and the lapwings’… Continue reading

In the confusion of a recent farm sale, my father and I both thought that the other was responsible for buying a turnip scarifier. After the heady triumph of securing both drill plough and seed drill, lines of communication broke down and the scarifier ended up going for a song to an Irishman. This was… Continue reading