Finally ..... an Indian summer.  This last week has seen our holiday cottage guests basking in some lovely sunshine with the team here making preparations for a busy winter season.

It's also allowed time for some external roofing and painting work, including the refurbishment of the beaters' "hut" (and installation of a woodburner) to ensure that everything looks bright and refreshed as Autumn approaches.

Every day that the weather keeps up is another day that our cattle can enjoy being outside before being cooped up inside for the winter and the pheasant and partridge poults have similarly enjoyed the warmer days and the absence of rain.

The baking hot temperatures we saw at the beginning of this month proved the swimming pool to be an even bigger hit with our guests as they were able to use our new sun loungers.  Despite the fact that we seem to have reverted back to the traditional wet English weather, we are optimistic that August will see the loungers being used a great deal more.

With our holiday cottages now just about to enter the peak season we have a couple of new additions to entertain our younger guests.  Apple and Crumble have established their home in one of our top barns adjacent to the seven pigs.  Far more gentle than the pigs at feeding time these big fluffy things should prove a hit with young holiday visitors.

Toby, our gamekeeper is busily preparing for the arrival of the rest of our pheasants for this year, the first of which have just hatched in our incubator and are coming along nicely.  Our ducklings are due to hatch next week and the first of the pheasant poult deliveries is due the last week in June.  Any holiday guests that will be here in August will undoubtedly meet our pheasant population on our country lanes!

We had some new arrivals this afternoon fresh from the market at Sedgmoor. Seven new pigs (Doc, Grumpy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Bashful, Happy and Dopey) moved into new quarters that had been prepared for them over the last few weeks. Absolutely exhausted from their stressful day at the market they quickly settled in and after a troughfull of grub they were soon snoring peacefully in the thick bed of straw that had been prepared for them. Their new home is easily accessed from the holiday cottages and away from the more machinery focused areas of the farming operation providing a safe environment for our younger guests to learn about animal husbandry.     

With the calving season now well underway, with 20 successful births to date, yesterday saw the arrival of our first new-born lambs with a pair and a singleton born to two proud mothers. Thankfully the weather over the next few days is forecast to be pretty kind as we're expecting a pretty busy period over the next few days with multiple new births of lambs and calves.