Well, November has been extremely wet this year and the ground is saturated. It means that we are very careful with the land and try not to drive on the grassland unless we have to. I use my gator to check the sheep as the farm cars are too heavy. All the arable land is resting until the spring when we'll be planting spring oats. It's a new variety, Elyann, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it will do. The rams are in with the ewes and lambing next year will be in April.

Well, we're in September now and the harvest went really well in the end. Even with the very wet August our contractors, Cornbury Farm Contracting, worked between the storms to get in the oats and barley. The crops are now safely stored at Rushall Organics and hopefully will be good enough to sell as seed for next year. The straw is in the barn and the ground can rest now till spring. On Sunday 25th August we held a small open day for our Wiltshire friends belonging to the RB

This month we put our bulls out with their cows. I thought I'd give you a brief history of one of our breeds as they have quite a history... White Park is a truly ancient breed of beef cattle, kept in Britain for more than 2,000 years.They are closely descended from Britain’s original wild white cattle and several herds were emparked in various parks in Britain in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Dynevor  herd continues and we are lucky enough to have

We're having a complete battle with the weather and getting the sheep sheared. We've managed to shear the commercial flock but the Manx Loaghtan and Castlemilk Moorits will have to wait till next week. The rare breeds are fine to wait as they seem to be more resistant to fly strike. Thanks to Jon Simpson of Jon's Shepherding for a lovely job, the sheep are now relieved to be rid of their winter coats and ready to grow next year's wool. Our late sown spring crops are catching

Well, the lambing has finished and all the ewes are out on fresh pasture with their lambs. Calving has just begun with a beautiful White Park heifer to start us off and then a lovely pair of Traditional Hereford twins. As our animals are rare breeds we use Artificial Insemination sometimes to preserve certain bloodlines. All our early calves are from A.I. and this year had got off to a very successful start. Also, up on the Ranges, the spring barley has germinated. We have so

Lambing is now well underway with our primitive breeds, Manx Loaghtan and Castlemilk Moorit, lambing first. These breeds have no trouble lambing and are very protective of their lambs. As it has warmed up a little we are lambing outside and so far there has been no trouble with the sheep looking very well and lambing with ease. Our commercial sheep have now begun lambing with lots of twins Our final breed, Ryeland, follow in a couple of weeks and we're looking forward to seei

The first signs of spring have arrived, probably a little early this year though. The snowdrops are all out along with crocuses and spring blossom on the trees. We've had record temperatures this February and seen early bees and butterflies. I just hope they don't suffer too much when the next cold snap arrives. In early February we trimmed all our hedges so that they can thicken up ready for the birds. As the weather has remained fine the holiday let has progressed well with

Well, the snow has arrived and put a stop to the building of the holiday let. However, at the end of last week the scaffolders arrived and erected the scaffolding. We now have the drainage in place and the scaffolding up so that Gaiger Brothers can start the build when the weather improves. We are using the original bricks, cleaning them all off to use again in the rebuilding of the old dairy building. Just as soon as we start again we'll be giving more updates. Meanwhile the

Henry Timmis Landscape and Groundworks https://www.facebook.com/LandscapingAndGroundworkshenrytimmis/ have begun the groundworks today and are already making steady progress cutting the concrete. #diversification #holidaylet #greatwestway #westlavington

Our 2019 project is the conversion of an old dairy building into a 3 bedroom holiday let. As these images show there is a lot to do but we have big plans so watch this space for more updates. #holiday #holidaylet #westlavington