BUS INE S S ON THE FARM


96


ON THE FARM WITH RICH AT RISBURY


Each month Richard Thomas will join us to talk about life on his family farm in North Herefordshire, where they farm beef, sheep, arable and apples. Their ethos is to try to farm in a more regenerative style for the benefit of future generations.


It feels like spring is almost here. Brighter and drier weather is very welcome at the start of March, and whilst you often don’t get everything you wish for, there is talk of it warming up as we approach lambing and calving in April.


We pregnancy scanned our ewes back in late January and had the poorest scan we’ve ever had. Fewer lambs can though, be a good thing. On the back of the wet, cold and poor year that was 2024, with less sunshine, grass quality was worse than usual and the ewes were not in the condition they should have been. This lower scan was a fairly general trend across the board, certainly from the farmers in my network anyway. So, heading into spring and summer 2025, with less lambs and therefore less work to do, maybe the ewes will bounce and expected lamb numbers will increase in 2026. It’s a positive spin anyway!


I’ve finished hedge planting and am well on with fencing. I expect that I will have time to finish the last bit of fencing while we are lambing, because I hope it will go well, with little need for intervention. I’ve saved grass over winter and providing it does warm up in the next two or three weeks, grass will also


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start to grow. In an ideal world grass will be growing well by mid April, so that cows and ewes will have enough to eat as their milk demand increases. There is a method to it all you see!


I took part in the big farmland bird count recently and was really pleased with the birds I saw, not only from the count, but that I see on my general day to day work on the farm.


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