THE 19 mm of rain that fell on Manor Farm over the last week was often light and prolonged, so gave us some dull, damp miserable days. The temperature has remained fairly constant, but certainly did not feel much like summer.

Like many other farmers we are waiting for a break in the weather so that we can make some more grass silage, but the forecast looks to be giving us more of the same. I do not think that anyone wanting to make hay will be doing so for some time.

Over the last week Ian and Jenny have been away for a well-earned holiday, so Richard, Ruth and Nathan have been doing all the routine work involved with twice daily milking of the cows.

Nathan has been arriving to get the cows in from the field for the start of morning milking, 5am, so I have been giving him and Richard a full English breakfast once the cows had been milked and all the young stock checked.

The rest of the days have been taken up with fencing and roguing. Roguing is the removing of plants with undesirable characteristics from agricultural fields. By doing this the quality of the crop being grown can be preserved.

The undesirable plant being removed from some of our cropped fields is the wild oat. At this time wild oat plants are easily identified, usually being much taller than the cereal crops they are growing in. It is very difficult and expensive to control wild oats with a herbicide, as like the cereal crops they grow in, they are all members of the grass family. The best option is to carefully walk through the crops where they are evident, pull them up, take them away and destroy them.

At the beginning of the week I attended a Wildlife Trust seminar held in the village of Bishopstone. On day one the attendees met for a tour of Helen Browning's Eastbrook Farm. It is a mixed farm consisting of about 1,500 acres, running from the Marlborough Downs at 800 feet, to heavy soils in the Vale of the White Horse.

The farm is organic focusing on efficient production from grassland, some of which is permanent, the rest leys, containing a number of nitrogen fixing plants such as clovers, sanfoin and lucerne.

Livestock enterprises include dairy, beef, pigs, sheep and arable, with the herd of outdoor British Saddleback pigs being the focus. As with non-organic systems, outdoor pigs present challenges as does weed control in arable crops, also pest and disease control in livestock.

Helen guided us on a walk around part of the farm including the valley with steep escarpments each side, where spotted and pyramid orchids were growing. I also managed to photograph a corn bunting.

On Stowell Farm, the ewe-lambs and their lambs have been treated with a pour-on chemical, to prevent them getting flystrike. Flystrike is caused by blowflies, especially active during warm, damp weather when they will lay their eggs particularly in patches of mucky fleece. The hatching maggots will then make their way through the wool to the sheep's flesh, which they will feed on. If not detected early flystrike can often be fatal.

The rams recently registered with The Lleyn Sheep Society are also recorded with Signet Breeding Services. Signet analyse pedigree and performance data to provide an independent assessment of the breeding potential of Llyen sheep for a range of economically important traits including lamb growth rate, carcass conformation and ewe mature size. The data is collected in two stages, with stage one recording weights at birth, at eight weeks and at six months of age. When the sheep are six months old each animal has a muscle and fat scan, to check that these are in the correct proportions to meet the demands of the marketplace. The second stage is to record maternal and other factors. All the data collected will help to maintain and improve lamb quality.