Another mad week. Our plans this week, already busy, were stretched somewhat by the rare event this summer of four dry (ish)days in a row!  

Monday morning we rushed out and mowed 9 acres of grass plus 6 acres of second cut, very unusual on our normally dry farm.  Spent the afternoon sorting out our empty house number 3

Tuesday we tackled a very stressful job!  We are mid way through moulting our house number 5 hens meaning we will give them an extra year of productive life (very unusual in commercial laying hens) but this does mean we have to empty the years worth of litter and droppings (polite term) from under the house whilst still occupied!  We persuade the hens out, pull the house off into the field, not at all straightforward and involves hitching two tractors together plus a wing and a prayer, scooping up and shifting the 40 tonnes of dung and putting it all back together again before dark, huge job that fortunately went well, mad!

Then Tuesday night at about 1am Ben Wetherden rolled in and delivered 500 more lovely new hens  arrived to re-populate house number 3. Put the girls into thier new home and up to bed, towed Ben out of the dewy field and got home at about 2am

Wednesday we baled our silage and hauled it in accompanied all day by a family of five buzzards busy harvesting also, lovely to see so close.  (can just see one on the bale in the photo)

Thursday we wrapped the silage and then bailed some straw for a neighbour.

All this ontop of the general weeks duties of collecting and grading and packing eggs, feeding, delivering etc., etc., all thanks to the hardwork of the team! (see them the TEAM page)