Farm Update - August 2016
James Florey
Beef Availability
We have beef available for deliver throughout the UK on Thursday 8th September. Visit our shop here and choose from our delicious selection of cuts. We have our range of set beef boxes to choose from or alternatively you can make up your own Pick 'n Mix selection box. For those opting to collect order fro the farm these will be available to pick up on Wednesday 7th September.
Cattle
The cattle continue to enjoy the recent warm weather and sunshine we've been having with the calves seemingly growing by the day! Many of our fields have drinking areas in the various steams which run through the farm however this time of year some of these start to dry up so in places we have been filling up additional water tanks on ensure the cattle always have drinking water available. The calves which were born last October have been weaned this month. They were brought back into the farm buildings for a few days to get them used to being away from their mothers but have now been put back out into a field where they have settled down nicely. This gives their mothers a couple of months off before calving again later this year.
Arable
Harvest is now well underway here at Rectory Farm thanks to a decent run of fine, sunny weather. We have finished harvesting our Spring Barley and have had seven lorry loads collected from the farm already. This barley is destined for Budweiser, it initially goes off to Norfolk where it is malted before then being taken down to the Budweiser brewery in South Wales. Our barley yield has been slightly down on last year but the quality of the grain appears to be good and meets the requirements for producing Budweiser. We are often asked whether we are paid in beer for our barley - unfortunately not!
We have made a start on our Spring Wheat harvest however the rain over the weekend means that the moisture levels are a little high at the moment. Ideally we need it to be under 14% and last night it was still above 17%. Hopefully it will be dry enough to start again later today.
Once the wheat is done that will just leave the beans to harvest. These won't be ready for a couple of weeks so fingers crossed we've still got some nice sunny weather come the middle of September!
Other News
At the start of the month we attended Countryfile Live at Blenheim Palace with one of our animals - he became known as Dilwyn for the show! We had a great time at the show as part of the 'Ask the Farmer' Team in the Adams Farm Livestock Area and met so many people with a real interest in learning about farming and how their food is produced. We're very much looking forward to being part of the show again next year!