At Glensaugh we are working through one of the year’s busiest periods. Shearing our sheep coincides with silage making and a continuing maintenance programme.

Shearing is now almost complete as we work through the Blackface flock. At the same time as shearing we dose the lambs for worms, apply a topical insecticide and run all our animals through the footbath, setting the flock up for the final month before weaning in early August. Shearing is hard work and yields a lot of wool for which the market is weak. This is reflected in the fact that we still have a Wool Marketing Board (other marketing boards were long since abolished in the name of free trade), and the Board recently published adverts warning producers that the payment for the 2009 clip would be well down on last year.

The making of good silage requires us to predict the weather for about four days ahead and this is always fraught with difficulty. Failing to make a start in anticipation of bad weather, only to have a succession of dry days is almost as frustrating as making a start and being rained off. After cutting most of our crop a thunderstorm gave us 27 mm of rain in little over an hour. Our understanding contractor allowed a 48 hour layover by which time the crop had dried sufficiently for us to ensile it. It should produce a high quality feed with little or no effluent. The weather improved sufficiently for us to contemplate making our fifth and final field into hay. Modern bale wrapping technology allows a fall back option and we eventually decided to bale and wrap the crop as “haylage” which will have a dry matter content of around 60%. Why do we fret so much about making our winter fodder? The answer is simple: if we make poor quality fodder we will suffer the consequences for about 18 months into the future.

Our new water tank has been installed and is now full. The tank is filled from the bottom, which is possible because of the pressure in the feed pipe. In theory this should keep the water in the tank, which is continually welling up from below, fresh and prevent stratification. When the tank eventually overflowed it came as a huge relief and put paid to many suggestions that the scheme wouldn’t work – “trying to make water run uphill, etc.”, but common sense and an O Grade in Physics carried the day. Other work at Bows Cottage is complete.

One of the threads of our Rural Development scheme is to improve and encourage public access. Sue Barrie came up with the suggestion of holding a Glensaugh picnic for young and old and the first of these was held on 7th July. Our visitors walked up through the Agroforestry plots, out on to the hill and down to the Birnie Burn. Burns are always a great attraction for children and if you take the old fashioned view that it does children good to be allowed to fall into them once in a while the picnic was a great success (it was enjoyed for other reasons too). The next one will be one will be Thursday July 23rd. Meanwhile the development of our informal public access trail is continuing and work should be completed in the autumn.