2nd August 2007

What a few days! The flooding in Oxford is now largely gone, the mess and debris need to be cleared, and repair work will take weeks to complete. Some of the lower lying meadows are still underwater and not yet accessible; others are too wet for livestock or machinery.

Those fields that have drained have a lunar-like landscape, as all the grass is coated with a mix of silt, rubbish and general flotsam washed down from up-stream. The fields that had been cut or grazed immediately before the flooding can be nurtured back to production quickly. Once the ground is dry, a good raking with the chain harrow will let light and air back into the sward, re-growth should be quick, and the stock will be able to graze again by mid-August.

The hay meadows which were waiting for some hay-making weather and remained uncut when the floods hit, are are now a mass of contaminated, matted grass, rotting in the stagnating water. Even if the weather allowed hay-making, the resulting forage would be completely unpalatable – as every chef will say, always use good ingredients.

About 100 acres – 10% of the farm – is in this state and getting this ground back into production will mean mulching the mat of rotten grass and trying to spread it evenly, using the chain harrows to open up the sward, and grazing lightly with stock to encourage grass re-growth.

By the end of the ‘summer’ we may have these fields back into production, while keeping fingers crossed for a decent autumn.

The good news is that the first of the lambs are fit and ready to market, and those animals that are out at grass look well. The turkeys have arrived and are brooding – growing their adult feathers – before having free range to paddocks.

One thing the wet weather has meant is that the spring barley crop we have been growing for winter feed has kept growing... after all, there has been no shortage of water! Should the weather turn to sunshine, we can dare hope for a reasonable harvest.