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.

Temporary Water Job

 The one field I rent hasn't got a water supply. 

To combat this I use a "water cube", which holds a fair amount of water, but I have to pick it up with the tractor, fill it up, then take it back down to the sheep. A bit of a hassle and they seem to be drinking a fair bit at the moment, what with the hot weather and still having their woolly jumpers!

Water cube

 The field next door has a water trough but it's some distance away from where I want it (the other field also has a brook but it's fenced one side so this field has no access. So I decided the other night to run a temporary water line to the cube to save using the tractor and make things a bit quicker and easier. 

The hose pipe goes over the bridge to the brook

Runs up the field 40 yards

Changes over to alkathene pipe (as I did't have enough pipe of either).

The alkathene then runs up the field some more

To the other water trove that's been disconnected. 

I normally hate temporary jobs, but this is one that should save me a lot of time in the long run. If I owned the field then I'd add water straight away, but as it's rented it's really not worth it. 

Anyone else make do with temporary jobs to provide water to their stock or crops?

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.