Farming News – July 2024

The upturn in the weather in recent weeks gives anticipation that the harvest of winter barley should commence in the last few days of July. This year’s crop of grass is looking plentiful after all the rain, and a dry couple of weeks have enabled us to conserve much of the grass as hay, instead of wrapping it to make silage.

At my open studios weekends I had some unexpected visitors, when someone brought a carload of asylum seekers from a church in Stockton because one of them wants to be an artist. What lovely people they were. It was an education for myself to meet some of those who I have heard so many negative news reports about. This came as a much-needed tonic because earlier in the day I had to take Pip, my older sheepdog, to the vets to be put down because her cancer had become too much for her to tolerate. Many of you will have seen her sitting beside me in my pickup over the years as I took her with me to auction marts to sell potatoes, where she became well known.