This Is Starting To Get Serious

[wymberley]

Arrived on the farm this AM to walk the dog and got waylaid by one of the lads, "Has the boss got hold of you? We need the banger out as we can't move the bales and the birds have found them." The silage was baled late yesterday to be carted off this morning but then the weather made a mockery of the forcast and it hissed down all night (and is still doing so). I went on ahead to the fields to find some 20 acres of baled silage with each bale having two or more gulls sat on it. Many are pecked through. The ground is a quagmire with no chance of hauling trailers. The dog had taken care of the field we were in and when the farmer turned up with the kit, it only took a minute to programme the banger and the test shot shifted the adjacent field. However, it's still going to take a load of patching to save it.

 

It seems many of the local farmers are considering bringing the stock back indoors and some have already had to do so.

[Mangled99]

I shoot on a few farms that grow salad crops and it's the worst year they can remember. They usually plant daily from March until September and it's been that wet that they have lost weeks and weeks of planting and there are still fields that have not had a plant in them since last year. Only last week they had to throw 1/2 million lettuce away as the ground is too wet to plant. I live in Kent and I still have a hose pipe ban where I live even though the rest of the country has been lifted.

[wymberley]

On Tuesday after the silage was cut I did an all night recce around the farm to see what was where verminwise. In one of the cut fields I saw a badly injured (RTA?) fox which stayed out of the rimfire which was all I had. I went out on Thursday to see if I could sort it (no show): I reckon if I'd have had to call on anyone for help it would have been the lifeboat.