What a difference a month makes. With lambs arriving daily we are nearly through our early lambers. With the fine weather we have been able to move mums and babies outdoors without too much trouble. A well fed new born lamb can survive the cold much better than wind and rain. The next lot of lambers are about to come inside by the end of February ready to start lambing around the 20th of March. The suckler cows are also due to start calving at the same time, over 100 in the space of 10weeks. Our son Paul and his partner Abi are expecting twins in March. A population explosion at Park House! They are all looking good so all should be well.

As we move through 2015 the new buzz expression ‘market volatility’ makes forward planning very difficult-It’s like looking into a crystal ball! Most changes in farming take 4 to 5 years to come through. By that time everything has changed and the world demand is for something else. The world commodity market now rules. We have seen our reliance on the home market drop from 78% to nearly 60%. With all the strife in the world at the moment our food markets are not so secure. Maybe it’s time we talked to the politicians and others in power and get the message across during election fever, as they will be chasing all the votes they can get. Maybe, just for once they need to think about consumers and what will happen when food is not so plentiful.

The move from winter into spring brings warmer days and lighter evenings with the dawn chorus welcoming the new day. We hear much about the decline of farmland birds but that is not the case here. As part of our environmental scheme we have provided nest boxes for tree sparrows, areas for lapwings and winter seed mix especially for winter residents. We have noticed a marked increase in predatory birds such as buzzards, carrion crows and magpies. Perhaps the loss of small birds is not all the fault of farmers. T