FOLLOWING a dip in air pressure over the weekend, which brought wet and windy weather, it rose to a flat line position on our barograph for the remaining five days.

When the sun shone it felt quite warm, but at other times the cloud cover and chilly breeze brought the temperature down. Nevertheless, there has been plenty of activity on the farms.

On Manor Farm, Ian has applied a fungicide to the winter wheat, our students Nathan and James have been spreading the remainder of the slurry from the store and Richard has cut some grass.

The grass was in a field that we regularly turn our young heifers into the first time they leave the barn.

This year turnout has been delayed due to the weather, as a result of this the grass became too long. Ian and Richard decided the best thing to do was to cut the grass, then leave it to wilt for three days before employing a contractor to bale it into large square bales.

The bales were then wrapped in shrink wrap plastic to make sure no air could get into them, so hopefully the naturally occurring Lactobacilli will break down the sugars in the grass to produce some good bales of silage.

The bales were then taken back to the farm for storage. As long as the weather remains favourable we should be able to turn the young heifers out within the next few days. The milking cows are at last out night and day, which will lessen the workload with no more daily mucking out to do.

During the week two of our tractors needed some attention.

One was making a rather strange noise, so Richard took it to a workshop to enable an engineer to locate and fix the problem. The other tractor needed a new door, which Richard was able to install.

Early in the week I took a walk around some of the farm. It was a lovely sunny day and the cows were coming in for afternoon milking. I walked across one of our new leys, which had recently been cut for silage, then past a field of winter barley. the crop of barley looked particularly well, but when I told Richard he said: "Things can soon change."

But we hope not for the worst. The hedgerows were full of life with bird-song, insects, also a great variety of flowers.

What really struck me was the sudden abundance of cow parsley along the field margins and verges, also the hedgerows, white with May blossom, which filled the air with a sweet scent. May flowers are found on Hawthorn, a prickly shrub commonly found in hedgerows and heralds the coming of spring.

The red berries, called haws, which develop following flowering provide a useful autumn food for native birds such as thrushes, starlings and blackbirds. Hawthorn provides a safe nesting site for many birds, as well as supporting 150 species of insects, the food of wrens and blue tits.

On Stowell Farm Kevin, like Ian, has put some fungicide on his crops of winter wheat.

He has also ensiled 33 acres of a lucerne / grass mix. The crop was cut and raked into rows by Kevin before a contractor arrived with a forage harvester to pick up and chop the crop.

It was taken to a silage clamp at the farm, where it was made into a wedge, rolled and covered with a thick plastic sheet.

It has been a busy week doing sheep work. The March born lambs have all had their first vaccination, to protect them against a number of clostridial diseases.

They were also wormed and given protection against fly-strike, which is when blow-flies lay their eggs in damp, mucky wool. The hatching maggots then eat through the flesh of the sheep, causing great distress and death if not spotted quickly.

The ewes with the lambs were also treated for fly-strike and had their feet trimmed if necessary.