A cold winter morning on Oathall Farm
Twelve months, four seasons, one farm, welcome to Oathall.
January
- Bulbs begin to push through the ground.
- Early in the month the sheep scanner comes to tell us whether our ewes are carrying single, twin or triplet lambs.
- We must prune our fruit trees on frost free days.
February
- Our normal lambing percentage is around 175
- Freezing conditions can make providing water for the livestock difficult
- We usually have at least one litter of piglets born in each calendar month
- Careful planning takes place now in order to produce lots of lovely hanging baskets, tubs and other displays for farm open day in May.
March
- Our ewes give birth in what is known as ‘lambing season’. They spend 2 or 3 days in individual pens before transferring to the lean-to barn.
- Around 60/70 lambs will be born this month
- March is a very busy month for visitors with groups from playgroups, nurseries and primary schools flocking to see the new additions down on the farm.
- Normally we have a ‘Come and see the Lambs’ Sunday event
- Agricultural entries have to be made for most of the major summer shows at this time
- The polytunnel is starting to come alive with growth
April
- The lambs go out to pasture with their mothers on rented ground either in Burgess Hill, Horsted Keynes, or Lindfield.
- The outdoor paddock which housed the pigs during the winter months is rotovated, rolled and reseeded to bring it back into good condition.
- We move the cows back outside towards the end of the month
- Our outdoor bulbs are at their best
May
- Our annual Farm Open Day takes place on the third Sunday in May
- We sell hanging baskets plus bedding plus arrangements grown by the NVQ students to the public.
- Sheep shearing takes place for our forty adult sheep depending on the weather – they must be completely dry before they can be shorn.
- We attend the Heathfield Show on the last Saturday of May with our sheep and cattle
- Preparations for the South of England Show begin, this involves lots of washing, trimming, or grooming (of the animals and humans!)
- Apple blossom makes a wonderful display in the orchard
June
- The South of England Show falls around the second weekend in June, we exhibit our cattle, sheep and pigs there and students take part in the open classes. We also enter the small garden design competition.
- We run a stall at the school fair where we sell most of our remaining plants excepting those stock plants which will be used to take cuttings.
- Much of our grassland is cut back with a topper this month to remove grass stalks and seed heads, encouraging new leafy growth. It also cuts down weeds such as thistle, dock and nettle – we do not use herbicides on our farm.
- We hold a calf show at the college to identify our champion handler
July
- We take our cattle to the Kent Show where we enter various cattle handling competitions
- Lambs are ‘drenched’ every three weeks over the summer to destroy internal worms which disrupt their digestion and slow their growth. They are also sprayed to discourage fly-strike.
- Haymaking may begin to take place now in preparation for the winter months
- Our borders and raised beds are tidied in preparation for the South East in Bloom competition. RHS judges will visit to see the floral displays and talk to students.
- Our early potatoes and vegetables are harvested
- Sweet peas from the garden freshen many a school office or classroom
- Ewes that lambed in March are weaned off their lambs, they will live separately from now on.
- The equivalent of 1000 conventional wheat and barley straw bales are delivered to provide winter bedding for the animals, this is kept in the lean-to barn. Sometimes we have much larger bales.
- Our students participate in the Edenbridge Show on Bank Holiday Sunday and Monday.
- Our compost is turned and organic matter is added to further accelerate the decomposition process.
September
- Dahlias are making a fantastic display in the gardens
- We go through the March born lambs selecting future breeding stock and drafting out those ready for slaughter. This process will continue until the end of March next year.
- In the gardens we are harvesting vegetable produce and starting to take cuttings from perennials such as fuchsias or pelargoniums.
- We also start to pick and store our Bramley apples from the orchard. Soft fruits continue to ripen.
- We check the teeth, feet and udders of our breeding ewes, culling any with problems
October
- The barn is thoroughly cleaned out and prepared for the cattle coming indoors towards the end of this month for winter.
- The tups are put in with the cross-bred lambs to produce lambs in March, avoiding the Easter holidays.
- We begin to supplement the diet of our lambs with concentrate or bagged food as winter begins to set in.
- Bruised windfall apples make a wonderful addition to the diet of our pigs
November
- Our cattle are now indoors and are fed on winter rations of pickled grass or silage
- Loads of well-rotted manure from the farm are delivered to local gardens and allotments which is available to order via the farm shop.
December
- As it gets colder we make sure all our livestock have a warm dry bed
- Lots of maintenance work takes place in the greenhouse as it is our quietest time
- The annual carol concert is held in the barn in the midst of the sheep and cattle
- During the winter months some of our adult pigs live in outdoor paddocks where they use their powerful snout to root up the ground thereby ridding it of perennial weeds.
See photos of the farm, inhabitants and produce here via our Flickr pages
