Wrapping up in Calmsden

My last scheduled seed harvest today with Glorious Grasslands, although some ad-hoc sites will be done in early September. There were huge logistic issues this week as the Land Rover has severely broken down and will be out of action for a while. So there was a lot of juggling to the schedule to enable the last few sites to be harvested as efficiently as possible.

So in a change of plan to my scheduled site, I headed over to Calmsden to help Lorna clear the barn that we have to vacate by the end of the month. There were a couple of trips to other locations as we juggled seed and equipment so they are in the right place to start the spreading part of the operation.

This meant we didn’t start harvesting in the field until around 11.30. However, this meadow was a classic calcareous grassland and the weather was perfect.

Although a lot of grass was coming off as well in the harvester, there was loads and loads of seed in each run.

David and I were doing the sift, and there wasn’t a lot of time before Lorna came round again with another batch. So even with the late start, we collected 4 large bags of seed by the time we packed up.

Overall, the harvest has been great this year, even though it’s been dogged with endless challenges with weather, equipment and hay cut scheduling. The targets have been met, and everything is now in place for the next part of the operation: spreading the seed to create new meadow.