February has been a very busy month, and we have been lucky to be blessed with lovely weather. It has been exceptionally dry for this time of year, and this has enabled us to get out in the fields, and get crops sprayed and nitrogen fertiliser spread on our barley.
Hedge cutting is ongoing, but sadly, we farmers can often be given a bad name for cutting the hedges at this time of year. It can be viewed that we are destroying the bird’s natural food sources, however we always rotate a third of the hedges we cut each year, to ensure the uncut hedges provide enough winter berries for the birds and wildlife. We also use some of our own wheat as bird and duck feed at the pond on the farm when the weather is wintry and cold.
Machinery maintenance continues and this week, we have been servicing the muck spreader to get it ready to spread chicken muck onto our oilseed rape fields. This is a wonderful sustainable way to help our crops grow, because the manure will give the crop a good feed of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. The boys also got some welcome respite from the workshop and escaped to work at Sunderland Docks, where they used our tractors and trailers to help unload the cargo ships, which certainly made a change from the norm!
Surprisingly, preparation for Christmas has already begun, with Tanza working hard in the kitchen, developing new ideas and recipes for our KellyBronze turkey. She has also been experimenting milling our own wheat into flour and has been baking lots of wonderful fresh loaves of bread, and cakes which are going down a treat!
Judith’s sheep are thriving and enjoying oats for breakfast daily. Their appetite has certainly picked up, so hopefully in a few weeks’ time, we will have Spring lambs at Murton Moor Farm.
Wishing everyone all the best,
Martin, Judith, Richard, Tanza & George