Not a lot changes! Over two inches of rain has fallen on Manor Farm since this time last week.

The wind is still blowing and, for most of the time, the sun was reluctant to make an appearance.

I began the week with a walk down to a brook running in a grass valley between a field of barley and one of wheat. It was a sunny, but chilly, morning, with evidence of an earlier hailstorm.

The brook was flowing speedily, but was not over-flowing. I saw a pair of buzzards, starlings and a large flock of fieldfares, which seem to have spent the winter months foraging.

Next day, I went to Chuggaton Farm, Devon, to help Dominic choose tropical fish for his new tank. I left Richard doing the milking, as Ruth had the weekend off.

The weather was not bad, so Adele, Bethany, Dominic and I managed to enjoy a walk with ponies, a bicycle and Bouncer the dog. Snowdrops on banks around some fields were beautiful, heralding the coming of spring . . . We hope!

Here on Manor Farm, I am glad to be able to report that the weaned heifer calves are much better, as they have now stopped coughing.

We are left with 15 cows still to give birth, one of which is named Peach. Peach is expecting her third calf any day, having previously given birth to two heifers, one born in September 2011, the other in August 2012.

Peach’s first heifer calf calved in September 2013 and is giving about 36 litres of milk a day. Her second heifer calf will give birth for the first time this September.

Peach has done two lactations (ie, two 305-day periods in milk). In her first, she produced 8,421 litres of milk and 11,602 litres in her second.

The butterfat content of her milk averaged 3.57 per cent and protein 3.19 per cent; a little lower than we would like, but her cell count average (a measure of infection) is low, which is good. At the end of the week, Ian had to take the loader tractor to Knockdown, so an oil leak could be repaired. We were lent a teleporter while the repair was being done, to enable us to feed all the cattle. Richard also replaced a headlight bulb in our little tractor, used to scrape the slurry from the yards, and fixed loose roof lining.

We had to apply for a derogation to be able to spread slurry on to our over-wintered stubble. A derogation is required where a minor and temporary change from the agreed management prescriptions in our Entry Level Stewardship Agreement is needed on a single occasion.

We needed this as our slurry store was almost full, so in danger of over-flowing, and we don’t have many acres we can travel right now.

Contractors were called to reduce the level of slurry in the store, managing to use the terragator and tankers for two days, while ground conditions were at least a little more favourable.

The terragator has large, wide tyres with directional mechanisms which allow them to travel over ground in a way that causes the least possible damage to the soil.

Tankers filled the tank on the terragator, while remaining on roads and tracks, so these transporting vehicles did not have to move across the fields doing damage.

The terragator spread the slurry on the field from a wide, low boom at the back. This has to be recorded with field identification, date spread and amount, which must not exceed a specified number of cubic metres per hectare.

On Stowell Farm, Kevin has finished “crutching” all the ewes, a back-breaking job. After this, most of the week was taken up mucking out and bedding up all the barns where the ewes are being housed.