Early autumn is a wonderful time of year on a farm. The busy spring and summer are long past and the fruits of our labour are known and hopefully all gathered in and the often frantic pace that occurs on farm is few and far between.

The land and hedgerows are full of bonus goodies, such as mushrooms, blackberries and hazelnuts among others. As a child, I remember collecting these bounties to bring home, often times all was eaten as we walked through the farm in search of more to fill our buckets.

So with these memories in mind, I brought our kids out to do a little foraging in nature’s pantry. Spending the time to show the kids the different plants in the hedgerows along with what is safe to eat is something I really enjoyed doing, but I must say my knowledge is a bit rusty and something I must brush up on.

The lambs continue to thrive well here on the farm with just over half sold at this stage.

Most of the ewe lambs suitable for breeding have either been retained here or sold to other farmers, with the remainder to be sent to the factory.

I have a chosen few which are destined for the freezer to keep us stocked for the year ahead. I look forward to having a bit of fresh lamb’s liver for dinner. When I collect these lambs, they are freezer-ready. Liver is such a cheap, healthy part of the lamb and so tasty and easy to cook.

The ram lambs are starting to get scarce on the ground with the majority sold. The remainder of these will be introduced to meal this week to keep them moving on.

I find introducing about 300g/head/day at this stage beneficial, as if these lambs get a setback of any sort they can be hard to get thriving again and end up costing me more in terms of feed later in the year.

With grass still growing well at 60kg DM/ha, I have grouped the mature ewes together to take out a few paddocks that have gotten slightly ahead of where I would like them.

In general, I don’t flush the ewes premating any more. They are on a good plane of nutrition, with quality grass since being dried off early in the year, in order to build body condition.

Given that it takes time to build body condition, I can’t see how this can be done in the short period of time flushing usually occurs.

With things ticking along nicely on the farm, I plan, as many of you are also doing, on making my annual trip to the National Ploughing Championships this week.

As always, I have a list of companies and people to meet on the day. Although given the amount of recent investment on the farm, I might leave the chequebook behind me this year. Alison has put in her order for a few nice pens though.

Drew and Mia were watching a programme about ploughing this weekend and were looking to go, but I think they need another year or two in their legs to be able to have the stamina for the day. I might have to take two days though whenever that happens!