New Calves! Plus Autumn Fair Fun...

Once again, more time has elapsed than intended between blogs - some significant events in the farm calendar took up quite a lot of our brain-space! 

The first was the Autumn Fayre, which we briefly mentioned in our last blog. The forecast for the day was projected to be 12C and raining, but in the end we had glorious sunshine from start to finish. Huge draws included the tractor rides around the farm, apple pressing and tasting, live pizza demos, and the local fire brigade brought their truck in!

Another highlight of the day was a previous woofer, Tom, returned to help us out for the weekend. After spending the summer in Scotland, Tom was on his return journey home to Cambridgeshire, but made a detour to see us. We've missed having him around helping in the cafe and around the farm, so it was a pleasure to see him, and without him the day would not have gone nearly so well! On the back of our lambing day, this has given us a real boost in confidence for hosting more of these in the future, to allow more people the opportunity to come and see everything that goes on not just at Rush Farm, but the entirety of Stockwood Business Park. 

Some of our lovely visitors at the Autumn Fair.

The other significant event in the last few weeks was a farm inspection. Those two words will set even the most stalwart of farmers quaking in their boots. It doesn't matter how well you look after your animals or organise your desk, there is always the fear that you fail to tick off something important on the checklist! For us it was a particularly intense inspection as it was for both the Red Tractor and the Soil Association, so we had double the paperwork to prepare.

After several late nights in the lead up to the big day, we were all feeling a little nervous, and the inspector was very thorough (as they should be, of course). We think this was perhaps a record for our longest ever inspection, running from 9:30-5:30. Chris needed a strong, sugary tea by the end of it all! However, our hard work paid off, and we passed with flying colours. The inspector was very pleased with how well the animals were looking, which is very gratifying to hear from someone who sees lots of farms around the country. With this behind us now, there are no major (planned!) events for the rest of the year now, so we can start to decompress after a busy summer. 

The Ram Lambs enjoy a hedgerow forage!

Even while we are starting to unwind, the animals always need attention, of course. We are still rotating each group at least twice a week to keep the pressure on the pastures light after such a difficult summer. We have had a flurry of calves, the first from our new bull Colin (or Nanhoron Victor to give him his full name). They are bonny and bright, and it's a relief to see them all looking so well after the difficulties we had with our calvings last autumn. Five have been delivered so far, and looking at the rotund tummies of some of the other cows, we expect a few more will appear before too long. 

The sheep are also doing well, enjoying the cooler weather and the flush of autumn grass we've had. The ewes are positively skipping around the fields, while the rams are starting to make themselves ready for tupping season. This means that they are getting very smelly! Presumably the smell is very enticing to the lady sheep, but for passers-by it can be rather overpowering!

We have also sold our first batch of lambs to Fordhall Farm. The lambs have been doing really well this year, looking very healthy and bouncy. After a good start at lambing and a summer that meant a very low parasite burden, the lambs have grown very well. We are hopeful that our new pasture management and growth rate monitoring have helped! An added bonus of getting a big group of lambs off the farm is that we have fewer mouths to feed going into winter, which is very good news. While the grass is growing, once again the rains have moved on and growth has definitely slowed down, and soon will stop all together as the temperatures drop, so we want to try and move off any animals that we can before the pastures become over-grazed. 

Until next time,

The Rush Farm team

Left to Right: Blackthorn, Brendan, Bandit.