ONCE again the motorway has become silent with chilly autumn breezes coming from a northerly direction. The weather continues to give us a mixture of sunny and cloudy days with foggy mornings and ground frosts mid-week reminding us all that winter is fast approaching.

Hedge-trimming on Manor Farm is now complete, so hopefully next spring the hedgerows on the farm will show the benefit of the best tidy up they have experienced for a number of years.

The cows in-calf to selected Friesian/Holstein bulls have finished calving, with the last two calves, both bulls, born at the end of the week.

These calves will go to join others on Stowell Farm, where Kevin is rearing them for bull beef.

We now have a total of 32 heifer calves, which will join the milking herd in two years' time. The remaining cows due to calve in the next few months will be giving birth to Aberdeen Angus x calves. The sire of the first ones due is a selected AI Angus bull and the sire of the later ones is our own bull Faithful.

A few of the cows have already given birth to Angus x calves, which seem increasingly to have a variety of white markings.

The favourable weather is allowing field work to continue, so Nathan and James have been spreading more manure onto fields to be planted with spring barley and maize next year. They have also managed to cultivate the fields after spreading the manure to incorporate it into the ground.

The straw bedded barn being used as the 'maternity wing' has been mucked out and re-bedded, as it is essential to keep it as clean as possible to prevent the cows picking up infections at a time when they are particularly vulnerable.

Ian has been doing some spraying. On the advice of our agronomist, he has sprayed three fields of winter wheat with a herbicide to try and control the blackgrass.

Blackgrass poses one of the biggest challenges faced by growers and it has been shown that a combination of chemical and cultural methods of control can reduce the problem by up to 97 per cent.

In recent years, in common with other farmers, we have altered some of our farming practices to try and alleviate the prevalence of this invasive weed.

On Manor Farm we have altered our cropping by growing some spring cereal, wheat and oilseed rape in the rotation.

We are planting some of the crops later, carrying out a variety of cultivations and leaving some fields fallow. These fallow fields can then be regularly cultivated during the spring and summer to try and reduce the weed burden, especially targeting the blackgrass. This will reduce our reliance on herbicides, many of which have been withdrawn from use for regulatory reasons.

I am now returning to the Marlborough Downs Nature Improvement Partnership AGM, which took place recently. One of the presentations was about dew ponds, one of the features that have been added to the farms making up the MDNIP.

A dew pond is an artificial pond usually sited on the top of a hill. It was intended to be used for the watering of livestock where surface water was not available, filling naturally with rainwater.

If a dew pond is not managed it will move naturally from open water to tree cover, but if tended it will support a large variety of flora and fauna.

Plants and animals will naturally colonise the pond, but native plants growing locally may be added to speed up the process.

Contamination must be prevented, so vegetation has to be controlled or it will decay in the pond depleting the supply of oxygen in the water and grazing around it is also important. Dew ponds now provide habitats for wildlife and a visual return to a historic landscape.