THERE has been little rainfall over the past week, but many of the days were damp and murky. There was one exception to this, mid-week we had a beautiful day with uninterrupted warm autumn sunshine. Fortunately this was a day when Melissa and I were guides for two reception classes of school children from Ivy Lane Primary School, Chippenham, who spent the day at Roves Farm. We took the children for a tractor ride, stopping at fields with cattle, sheep and pigs in them. We told them a few easy to remember facts about farm animals and how we look after them. When our tractor ride was over we took the children to meet some of the animals at the centre, including goats, sheep, piglets, cows, chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs. They especially liked hand feeding the goats and stroking the rabbits and guinea pigs.

The drier week has enabled some field work to be carried out on both Manor and Chiverlins Farms. As I said last week, having reached the end of October it is becoming almost too late to plant winter barley. However Ian and Kevin were able to spray some previously cultivated stubble fields with a herbicide, before cultivating them far a second time. To get as much field work done while ground conditions allowed Jenny also helped with the cultivating. These fields were then planted with winter barley. This year we are using a variety called California, which has recently proved to be a good choice for Manor Farm. California has proved itself as a feed variety of winter barley in Recommended List Trials for many years. It consistently gives high yields of grain and straw and has good disease resistance and grain quality. It can be grown anywhere in the UK, although most of the feed barley is grown in the south west. We still have a small acreage of barley to plant, but time is against us.

Kevin is growing a variety of winter barley called Orwell, for the first time on Chiverlins Farm. Orwell is the UK's most popular variety, yielding well, with good strength of straw and disease resistance. Some of Kevin's land tends to be wetter, so he wanted to increase his acreage of winter grown cereals in order to decrease his workload in the spring when lambing. This may not happen and he may have to resort to planting some spring barley.

Here on Manor Farm we are still waiting for our livestock agent to find us a buyer for a small group of our finished Aberdeen Angus X beef cattle. Beef prices have been quite low recently, so our agent is doing his best to find us a premium market, which is taking more time. Ian is hopeful that they will be leaving the farm next week.

The herd of weaned calves, which arrived a few weeks ago are not coughing so much and have gradually been introduced to their new diet. This consists mainly of grass silage, balanced with a concentrate specialist calf food, in the form of pellets. They all look very contented in their barn bedded with a thick layer of straw.

Kevin has moved his wethers (castrated ram lambs) to fresh pasture and taken the rams from the two small flocks of elite ewes. The ewes have been moved to a fresh field and the rams are being kept in a while to prevent them escaping and allow them time to settle down.

To finish I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who donated to the two charities chosen by my family following the death of my husband Richard. The total was £2,347.64, which has been split equally between the Wiltshire Air Ambulance and The Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution.