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December 2025
Posted Monday 1st December, 2025
With Mike joining the butchery team recently and Ewan successfully passing his apprenticeship we'll have a full team of butchers ready for the Christmas chaos to begin!
We’ve been lucky enough to rent another 50 acres of land near to the farm this autumn which means we can expand the flock of sheep a little. This winter we’ll use the new land to grow a mixture of grass and rape/kale to graze the sheep over the colder months. This mix of forage contains a lot of energy and is very bulky to sustain the sheep and calves over winter months. Next year we will drill a herbal ley into the new ground which will be used for making hay and winter grazing.
Following this years’ drought, the new ground will help us become more resilient to weather changes and in good years we should have a surplus of forage and in bad years hopefully just enough.
The dry spell continued throughout August, and now here we are in September with a forecast promising rain every day for the next week (fingers crossed!).
This years’ Angus calves started off with a few struggling with pneumonia which set them back a bit. But with help from the vets and lots of TLC from Shawn the 2025 calves are now looking great and have been weaned off to graze on some of our reg clover grassland.
We had some fun last week when some sheep escaped! One of the advantages of growing up on a farm is that you’re able to get involved from an early age. Farmer Ben’s children love helping their Dad out and got involved to help us bring them back.
Exciting times to be a farmer at Fordhall!
