In spring 2023, after another long conveyancing process, we were lucky to complete the purchase of an additional 20 acres of fields and woodland adjacent to the farmhouse and our existing land. This simultaneously opened up a range of new opportunities and significantly added to the jobs list!
Securing the boundaries
The first job was to secure the boundaries with neighbouring land where dry stone walls had fallen down and not been repaired or the stock fence was sagging. We could then set about planning how to divide the three large fields into more usable paddocks to allow better stock rotation and patch up the existing internal fences sufficiently for the time being.
New field shelters for the goats had to be built, header tanks to allow water distribution across the new paddocks needed to be dug in and fenced off, and a cattle handling pen was renovated (fortuitously just in time for calving).
Cutting the meadow
One of the biggest gains the new land brought was the option to take a crop from a large meadow that has historically been mowed for years. Luckily a local farmer was available to do this for us and, although the weather proved a major challenge, we ended up with a huge stack of round bales to feed the stock through winter.
Moving fully over to large bales meant our original little 30hp tractor wasn't going to be up to the job anymore. There was also the need to think about being able to carry out some of the land management work, like muck spreading, ourselves in future, particularly as we had a decent heap developing from having the cattle on site.
This was a major decision - tractors are far from cheap! But after long deliberation and advice from friends we decided it just had to be done and we traded in the Siromer for something altogether more capable. It's still small compared to many farms, but for a holding like ours it has been absolutely vital.
The future
There's still much to be done and we have plans for new woodland planting along the brook, new hedgerows to provide habitat and shelter, and improvements to the land drainage to safeguard the soil from erosion and poaching. But there are years ahead to accomplish this! In the meantime just having our stock grazing up to the garden wall on warm summer evenings is sufficient reward.
