Today we had both our 4-acre and our bottom 3-acre fields 'topped'. Before we began this smallholding malarkey, we (Jack) thought 'topping' meant covering the 'top' of the ground with fertilizer or similar. What it actually means is taking the 'tops' off long grass et al in order to prevent seed growth and distribution and so encourage re-growth from the base again. Both the fields we topped had been sprayed to eradicate weeds (docks and rushes predominantly) and our hope is that now the weeds are much reduced and the flowers from the grass have been cut back, we should start to see a real spurt of growth. Both fields look better simply for having had all this work done and where the docks and reeds have died back, we can already see the grass making a comeback. This photo is of the bottom 3-acre field which was sprayed two weeks ago and so is now safe for the animals to graze again. We allowed the cows and sheep back in once the topping had been done and they were more than happy with the fresh grass they found.
We are really pleased with how the land management is going this year. Our grazing regime resulted in zero round and tapeworm counts for the lambs and kids in the spring and our weed control and now topping is such that we should not run out of grass (hopefully) until winter really sets in.
Of course we are all beholden to the weather and what would now actually be perfect is a bit of rain to really encourage the new grass shoots to grow. We’ve been hot again the last couple of days but although it is going to be a tad cooler as we head towards the weekend, none of the wet stuff is as yet forecast!!!
We are VERY, VERY lucky living here...