If there is a theme to life on the farm in 2009 it is definitely water. In January we suffered an extreme freeze which burst a pipe in our boiler room causing untold damage and in June we had a mini heatwave/drought, which dried up our pond and burnt off our grass roof over the meeting room. Now we are in July and we seem to be suffering a smallish monsoon.

On the upside, the pond (which is cleverly replenished by harvested rainwater from the cow barn) is back to normal and the grass roof is beginning to show the green shoots of recovery.

The downside (apart from having to continually grimace to the hardy campers who are here at the moment) is the number of farm jobs in July that are weather dependent.

Because we are organic (and use no artificial fertilizers) and because we are a hill farm (with very poor acid soil) we like to make our hay and silage much later than our conventional farming neighbours down in the valley. Whilst the ensuing fodder is of a poorer quality (the sugar levels in grass fall quite dramatically after spring) it does give the flora a chance to flower which is good for the insects and the cover is also excellent for ground nesting birds such as Snipe.

This is all positive stuff but it does mean we rely on a spell of goodish weather from about the 10th July onwards to make the hay and finish up the shearing of the ewes with lambs. Once we get into August then both of these jobs become urgent with the days becoming much shorter making wilting the hay much more problematical and with the sheep desperate to lose their winter coats.

These are testing times and with the school holidays quickly approaching I am glad to note that the Met Office is giving me a glimmer of hope of ‘more settled conditions’ for the last week of July – not before time!