Today James from JRM Countryside Services came over with his quad and chain harrow to harrow our bottom 3-acre field. Harrowing serves lots of purposes: it breaks up lumps and levels the land so is ideal when, as is the case in our 3-acre field, the ground has become a bit poached due to livestock; it also helps aerates the ground which is great when it has become a bit compacted (which clay soil such as ours does); it also removes dead grass and mosses, so allowing more space for the grass to regrow. Afterwards the field definitely looked more level and it also has quite a bit of dead ‘thatch’ lying in top which will hopefully now just start to decompose and as the grass grows, get pulled back into the land. The plan now is to leave it resting for a couple of weeks and then maybe, depending on the length of grass, put the cows back in.
The next question of course is do we buy our own harrow???