Our first two wagon loads landed at the weekend, with another three to follow, this week hopefully.
We are stacking these outside the shed as all the space in the shed is needed for the young stock this winter.
With the price of wheat doubling over the past six months inevitably the price of all animal and poultry feed is following the same trend, luckily the dairy announced in the middle of August a 2p a litre increase for September and a promise of more to come.
But the feed representative announced a £20 a tonne rise in dairy cake feed for the milking herd, so that will take care of most of the 2p.
The cows are now eating the lush grass (which is the regrowth after second cut silage) behind the electric fence on a morning and then tuck into half the winter ration when they come into milk on a night.
Even this has not managed to get the quantity of milk back up to where it was before we took them back in in the summer, due to the horrendously wet conditions earlier this year.
I took a day at the beginning of August to look at all the ewes feet, trim them up and spray with anti foot rot spray.
The very wet weather had caused havoc with their feet just the same as it does with the cows.
They then all got a drench for worms and a dose of fly repellent as the fly doesn't wait for a bad foot to lay its eggs, as when in very hot weather the sheep just lay down all day and sweat in the sun.
The fly finds warm moist conditions in the wool either just behind the shoulder or in front of the rear leg and lays hundreds of eggs – hopefully the repellent will stop most of them.
I then took the tup from his summer residence and put him in with the ewes.
He was straight into action, so hopefully around about New Year's Day the first lambs will come along.
The fox is still paying us regular visits only he came unstuck last weekend as we caught up with him just leaving the farmyard – only thing is he has one or two pals and the following night they took off with a duck.
I've seen them the last four nights in the farmyard – only I have missed them and me being a shooting member at the rifle club for the past 30 years I am blaming not having night sights on the rifle.
That's my excuse any way.
The very nice man from the enviromental health office came back (he reads the Gazette) with his quite stringent rules and regulations to see if we now come up to scratch.
With a few more checks and little alterations here and there, he gave us a three-month conditional approval, to implement outstanding items mainly in hazard perception.
It is still ongoing and with a lot of help we will get full approval.
We started picking potatoes at the beginning of this month.
The plants should have been growing for another month yet, but at the first signs of them getting blight, even though we had sprayed them three times we took the potato tops off.
This stops the fungus going from the leaf down the stalk and into the tuba causing it to go rotten.
We are nearly up to half way picked now so fingers crossed the weather will hold up for a bit longer till we get them all in ...