Spring and early summer is one of the busiest times of the year at Sharpham Park farm. As we’re a mixed economy organic enterprise it means we have to constantly circulate our crops and livestock year by year around our farmland, so that we keep our soil fertility strong and our crops and animals get the best benefit they can.

In April everything starts to grow like mad, which includes our spelt crop and our clover and grass lays that are putting nitrogen back into the soil for future spelt crops. Unfortunately all this growing is not all good as there’s competition! Weeds are the bane of all organic farmers as we cannot spray with weed killer and they have to be either hand ‘rogued’ or chewed off by the cattle and sheep. There are a few that really drive us to distraction such as Charlock and bull thistles, both of which can outcompete spelt for sunlight and reduce our yield. So in February before the crop grows very tall we send in the sheep who very kindly ‘mow the lawn’ and with luck will stunt the weeds before they get a chance to grow. This is a trick we picked up from an old farmer in deepest Somerset!

Our flock of Hebriddean and Manx Loghtan sheep are at bursting point in April with their lambs and once the lambing starts, we’re out at all hours checking them out. They tend to be very self-sufficient, and we inevitably lose some stillborn, but they generally produce 1.5 lambs per ewe. Monty’s alpacas act as a good guard against prying fox and badgers who fancy a stray lamb or two.

We’ll also start culling the first of our hoggets which are 12 month old lambs. We grow them out to this size as they taste delicious and reach the same size in a year as a modern fat lamb does in three months. They’re fed on grass, haylage and of course spelt! This is slow food at its best. 

Spring brings our first White Park calves, adorable with black ears and nose and white bodies. These are magnificent ancient British cattle that have adorned park land for centuries and may well have been here at Sharpham Park in the middle ages. It’s also when Harold, our stag, drops his antlers. They literally fall off within minutes of each other and he looks rather surprised as he no longer has this magnificent set of hat racks. He very quickly grows his new set with little buds soon forming into velvet antlers. By June his harem of hinds will be having their first calves - we have to really watch them carefully as they’re completely camouflaged in the grass. 

Come May we will be hoping the rain and sun have done their job in creating a great crop of hay for us and we’ll be watching the weather like a hawk to catch the perfect sweet moment when the hay is at its best. We then bale it to store for the winter for our animals to feed on. The animals will be lacklustre and indifferent to poor hay but get very excited when it’s a spring first cut! We’ll be watching the spelt grow in abundance and hoping for a long hot summer to give us a good harvestkeep your fingers crossed for us.