Mrs Down's Diary - Nov 25 2009

Suddenly, in the midst of November, a field, permanent pasture for years, maybe even since the last war and certainly since we have been on the farm, is covered in pale fungi.

Delicious. And at this time of year quite a surprise.

The field has been grazed by the cows all summer and has occasionally yielded a mushroom or two.

But never as many as this. And certainly not this late in the year.

The happy discovery came about as John is working close to that field to fill in a dike that is obsolete now from work on a drainage scheme in the summer.

The dike always needed to be cleaned out every winter as cattle paddled the sides in as they grazed the field.

Now, to support the drainage scheme, this dike can be potted, stoned and filled in.

It's John's winter project. An excuse to have an important job to do whenever I ask for a domestic project to be completed.

And the sort of job the dogs love John to be working on as they can accompany him in the Landrover and have plenty of opportunities to either laze around in the back and watch a man at work, or sniff around and see what he is turning up as he digs.

All other land work has finished now. It will soon be too wet for us to get on. Crops are thriving this autumn.

Everywhere, not only on our farm.

Winter wheat especially has germinated well and following it's application of herbicide, in good health.

Ironically, a forty acre field of beans looks almost too good. Last year our beans had a dreadful problem with slugs. In places the beans were not thick enough as the slugs ate off many plants and the crop was too thin.

This year John increased the rate of seed application and the slugs apparently lost their appetite for the young plants. Result?

The crop is too thick in places. You can't win.

In the yards, a midnight excursion for some of the stock that had been weaned led to a lot of excitement and an excess of mooing.

We woke to such a bellowing and bawling that at first we thought there had been a mass break out.

A peep out the bedroom window showed no cattle milling around outside so we left it till this morning to discover the cause of noise.

Somehow the young weaned stock must have opened the gate from their yard and got into the main foldyard with the cows.

The most recently weaned were back with Mum. They had had quite a reunion party.

So first job today was to get everyone back to their rightful homes.

Even accounting for Mum's charms and grub, the calves could be tempted by the sight of their favourite bag of rolled barley making it's appearance at breakfast time.

Most of them followed John straight back home for their morning feed.

And mine will soon be frying up in the pan alongside a rasher or two of bacon. Yum yum.