Posts by Malcolm Barker

I am feeling my age. In my head I am still 22 but when I set off to run after a sheep or a cow, I feel more like 90.

If the weather dries up in the coming month, then that will be perfect. Almost all of the first crop of grass has been made into hay because it was drying out so fast in the sunshine that I just left it for hay.

I write this on the day after Scruton Fest. When I returned home, I checked the sheep because I had a nagging feeling that something was wrong.

May has been a month where the crops have grown fast because of the combination of warm weather and sufficient moisture in the ground.

I always look forward to May, a month of promise of warm summer days. An easy month when the cattle and sheep are outdoors, eating the spring grass, after the winter when they needed feeding twice a day, bedding up every second day, and mucking out every six weeks.

The dry February has become a wet March. I like to sow spring barley during the first two weeks of March but rain and snow prevented this.

Well, we’re over the bleakest months of the year. I can’t say that the coldest part is yet over because recent years have brought a cold east wind during March and April.

Last Autumn I responded to a Facebook advert which was requesting Leeds based artists.

As we leave the old year behind, I keep seeing online posts about what a horrible year 2022 was, but I think that in the next decade we may look back with nostalgia and accept that it wasn’t so bad after all.

I can take things a little easier this month. Apart from bagging and selling potatoes, I can catch up with jobs around the farm.