Not Renting Land Anymore And Where Are The Sheep...

Something I've been putting off writing is how last year, towards the end of the summer, I sold the sheep.

Removing gates and other bits from the rented field

I've been feeling guilty about not blogging about it but also I've not been sure what to write.

Overgrown Or Trimmed?

My neighbours have had their hedges trimmed and they look very smart.

But I'm going to continue to let the side down (something I do very well when it comes to tidiness) and mine aren't going to be touched until the end of the winter. 

My hedges on the left compared to the ones of my neighbours on the right

At the moment my hedges are absolutely full of berries, haws, and hips, things that will keep the birds fed all through winter. 

My hedges are bursting with life

  Now I'm not going to come across "better than thou" here, I can understand that commercial farmers need to trim the hedges when they haven't got crops in the ground and the end of summer is the time to do that if they are planting in the autumn. But my grass fields only have sheep grazing them so I think it's best, for me, to just leave the hedges a little longer. 

Full of food for the birds for winter

Trimming hedges, is a good thing I think in general as it promotes growth, but I do think that it sometimes leaves all the growth at the top of the hedge, not ideal for nesting birds. My hedges are properly overgrown and have plenty of hiding places for them. In a perfect world I'd pleach them every so many years - but there is no way I've got time for that (or the skill currently).

How do you like it? 

Nice and tidy like the neighbours or an overgrown mess like mine!?

Renting Land

There was some excitement this week (from me anyway) as I managed to do a deal to rent out some fields next door to our homestead. 

The top patch. The oak trees in the middle mark where an old hedge used to be and I'll probably run an electric fence up there to divide it up again.

 It's about 8 acres split into two fields although they'd be easily split into three. We're renting it as grass keep so have to be off the land for two months a year and although it's only eight acres it should help in producing more food for us and more to sell. 

It literally couldn't be any nearer to us as they were once part of the same estate, the fields are much better drained than ours and slope south rather than north. . 

Looking up from the bottom of the top patch.

the bottom patch, really lush grass here.

Road access is poor to the bottom field but most tractors can fit through.

I also made a call to a shepherd that I used to help as a child/teenager and he's going to hopefully purchase us some ewes with lambs at foot to put on to the fields. It'll be quite an investment but hopefully it should pay off in the long run. It'll be nice to put my knowledge of sheep back into practice - so long as I haven't forgotten it all! 

If we don't get sheep soon then I might have to make hay on the bottom patch as it's so lush. 

I'll do more information on the fields in another post. 

I'm really excited about this - should be a lot of work but a lot of fun as well.