Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

The fabulous weather continues - we have now had a week of sunny days, temperatures at times in double figures and most crucially, ground that is getting ever drier. The morning routine now consists of feeding and then getting everyone out into their respective paddocks. We had friends round this morning who said they had never seen the smallholding looking quite so good: unbelievable after the winter we have just had.
The lambs had their first day out today: we were going to wait until Mrs White had lambed before opening up the first spring paddock for them but despite looking like she is carrying at least quads she is obviously not quite ready to give birth just yet. It was fabulous to see the lambs out with mum (Mrs Brown) and both ewes wasted no time in getting stuck into the fresh grass (the lambs won't start eating it until they are four-six weeks old). The paddock they are in has been resting since October and the grass is thick and green and almost the perfect recommended 6cms tall...
Meanwhile over in the polytunnel, David spent a happy hour planting carrots and parsnips. The ground is now starting to warm up and so these tiny seeds should now find the warmth they need to begin germination. Carrot and parsnip seeds are not expensive and so can be sown quite thickly. As they grow we can then 'thin out' which means removing every other growing plant to leave space for the remaining ones to get bigger AND best of all, we can eat these as 'salad' carrots. We cannot do the same with the parsnips unfortunately as they don't like their roots to be disturbed so we will thin out here by pinching out the tops of the shoots and so stopping the growth underneath. A lot of vegetable growers follow the old advice: 'Plant three seeds for every plant you want as one plant will be eaten by slugs, a second killed by the weather (too much/too little rain or sunshine) leaving the third for you!!' The polytunnel perhaps makes these odds a little higher... (hopefully!).