We are very very wet and the land is really starting to suffer. We have the usual problems of muddy gateways and growing gullies where the water takes the path of least resistance. The poultry area is its usual muddy puddle self which of course the ducks and geese adore but we have a bit of concrete, slabs, woodchip and grass mats that are making it workable – just... The photo is of the entrance to the cow compost heap which we usually visit twice a day - no doubt it will get worse before it gets better!!! Our focus is ensuring that all animals have somewhere dry to escape to if they need it and we are lucky that we can provide this. The main issue we have is trying to ensure we don’t have to wade through too much mud to get to them all.
We are contemplating bringing the cows down to the new barn and putting the goats back in the main barn. The cows won’t have as much space overall although the barn space itself is over half as big again as the shelter in the current Cow Pad. Having them in the barn though will actually be less work for us plus the woodchip outside their shed is getting a little saturated and we are mindful of the feet problems we had last year. This decision may be helped by selling Caraway with one or both calves – we have someone potentially interested but we are not massively hopeful they will end up being firm buyers. We wait and see!!