THE first day of the last week began as a cloudy, damp and breezy one, but all that soon changed when the sun shone to give us a glorious autumn day.

However this situation did not last as the rest of the week was foggy, dull, mild and continually damp, with about an inch of rain falling over the seven days.

Work on Manor Farm has now become more routine, with twice daily milking, cows continuing to be dried off prior to calving, calves being born, feeding, cleaning and bedding up all the groups of cattle.

As the week progressed the decision was made to bring all the dry cows and yearlings into the barns for the winter. Two animals have been left out for a while, unless the weather deteriorates further, our black Aberdeen Angus bull, Faithful, not required to work for a few months, and a heifer, not due to calve until next year to keep him company.

During the week a vet had to be called to look at a cow with a nasty mastitis, but she is now well on the way to making a full recovery.

We also had a case of milk fever in a freshly calved cow, thankfully a rare occurrence with modern day management and nutrition in the dry period.

Milk fever (hypocalcaemia) is a metabolic disease, with calving cows being at particular risk when the demand on calcium is high. The symptoms are quite easy to spot, with the cow becoming lethargic and often wobbly leading to her becoming recumbent if no action is taken.

Treatment is to give calcium salts orally, subcutaneously or intravenously, with the latter being the most effective in the later stages of the disease, the cow usually making a quick recovery, which fortunately this one did.

However between helping to care for the cattle, Richard has managed to attach a new set of flails to the newly balanced rotor of the hedge-cutter, before it was re-fitted, before it was refitted.

He has therefore been able to commence hedge-cutting once again. We are in an Entry Level Stewardship Scheme with hedge management as one of our environmental options.

This means that we are not able to cut our hedges every year, so we trim a third of them each year on a rotational basis. On the one good day of the week Ian managed to spray the later sown fields of wheat and barley with a herbicide.

These fields have germinated having been planted following maize harvest . Our agronomist also found slug damage in some crops, so it has been necessary to apply slug pellets to some areas in the fields.

On Stowell Farm, there has been a Farm Assured British Beef and Lamb (FABBL) inspection.

The inspection, done by SAI Global, is to demonstrate that standards of husbandry and animal welfare on your farm meet nationally agreed levels of best practice and gives assurance to consumers the product is safe and traceable. The standard also covers environmental protection, medicine and feed.

The inspector on Stowell Farm spent some time wandering around the farm, to get an overall impression, before going into greater depths of inspection.

He then checked the medicine store, health plan, movement records, feed records and licences required, then took a close look at some of the sheep and cattle.

An arable inspection then followed, which included checking the sprayer, fertiliser spinner, chemical store, soil testing and all related paperwork.

He asked many questions, including the rodent control policy, and checking if there were folders for complaints and employees training .

The highlight of my week was a day at Roves Farm. On this particular day 86 children, aged between seven and nine, came from a school in Swindon, to build dens and make camp fires.

We were lucky with the weather as it rained during lunch time and then again as they left to go back to school. The four dens were built using willow, moss and leaves were very good structures and we managed, with the help of some dry kindling to light three small fires on which the children toasted marsh mallows, delicious.