A month behind but just finished renovating the main pen area for our Bourigeole herd. The girls will be coming in tomorrow.
Cut a small field last week that was going to seed and partly to make sure all machinery is working before the season starts. 3d printed spacers to take our drum mower from 68 to 88mm (3 1/2″) cut height to help encourage regrowth for later in the year and to limit ground evaporation. Fields are a good three weeks behind compared to last due to the late cold snap, thankfully wilted for hay.
Cattle are finally out today and enjoying the spring grazing. Dad working on fences, we’ve been replacing about 2km’s of perimeter and some new division lines to help alternate grazing this year. Separated off 16 heifers to fatten up for sale and moved over to the new HDX RFD electronic tags.
Quiet a surprise, lunch out side that afternoon to 6 inches of snow 8pm..! Its been a very wet month, excellent for the Lucerne that needs water over winter compared to grasses that generally require April showers, and rainfall throughout the year for growing. Getting ready for letting the cattle out, fence repairs and preparing for mowing hopefully last quater of April.
Quiet time of the year, cattle are contently in the barns from the rain, busy installing the last half of the new barriers, chainsaws are sharp waiting for breaks in the weather for forestry. Taking the opportunity to stone pick a few fields that i’m bringing back into mowing this year that we fenced at the start of 2017. Laborious but therapeutic, systematically working along stacking small stone cairns to collect later with the Mule!
Our cattle have now come in for the next few months with heavy showers forecast and hopefully plenty more rain to come. We’ve installed new steel posts for the existing Axial barriers with a two bay extension for separating (still to complete) and for a dedicated calf feeding/resting area using our Jourdian creep barrier. Allot of work left still for the other herd, installing Swedish mono designed clamps over the winter better suited to horns.
Finally arrived after threatening on the forecast, close to 10 cm’s of snow settled Friday night. Almost blizzard conditions Saturday afternoon and drifts in places 40 cm’s deep. Starting to melt today, should be gone tomorrow if it continues to warm up but plunging to -6 tonight.
Busy month, installing new head barriers from Jourdain in the cattle sheds, and finally started on some muck spreading. Ground is still incredibly dry, going to be a long winter, taken first delivery of straw for bedding.
An excellent example of locally grown bio produce available in November. Domaine Le Rec d’Al Four run by Bert and Marianne can be found in the markets of the region and open at there nursery Thursday evenings near Castelreng until 7:30 pm.