Well after the continued good weather of September we have now seen Autumn fully arrive with october. For us here at Nethertown Farm the first indicator is the changing of colour of the leaves on the Goat and Sheep building from Green to Red.

Also the with the start of October means that we can do some maintenance works on the Hedges. This is a job that has been somewhat neglected by us over the last few years but the dry summer has meant that it has been possible to get the tractor and the hedge cutter onto the ground without causing damage.

With all of our hedges it has been key to look at what the priorities need to be. For us the first priority had to be dealing with the points where the footpaths cross through the hedges and then onto the hedges of the fields that we will be moving the sheep onto.

Having not done the hedges for a couple of years they have encroached into the field quite abit so pushing them back almost 2 metres means that we are only just getting back to where we were 2 years ago.

The aim is not to get too brutal with the hedge but do enough this year to get it back so that next year I can go again and push it back in manageable stages. The other side of this is to see how much the sheep work on pushing the hedge back as well.

The only down side is that in places we have had to reinforced a few gaps that have appeared in the hedge that might allow sheep to get in particularly if the sheep decided to open up the weak areas. Hopefully we have all of the areas covered and all ready to move the sheep over to east fields in the next few days.