Nothing quite like a quiet Bank Holiday weekend!

I expect the Tamworth gilt to have her very first piglets by tomorrow so I am spending the day trotting between the garden and her pen and to cheer her up along the way I am bearing little gifts of weeds [fat hen] and shot lettuces.

In the meanwhile my Jethro has just resorted to the largest scale farm machinery he has in order to prepare the brassica bed for planting out of the many seedlings. The untilled ground in the veg garden has set like cement and the rotavator, which he normally uses could not cope with the rock hard ground. I hope to post a picture later it is really too funny to see!

However, the total lack of precipitation is beginning to look very serious with yields of grain, hay, silage and British grown vegetables all predicted to be well down. We may enjoy the dry weather to work in every day but by golly the land needs the rain. Even if we get a lot of rain now it may actually be too late for some crops. A very dry April AND May is unusual.