The Year Round: Better times at last as our grass grows

Our grassland smallholding in the high south Pennines has been battered by wind and rain.

All around stand crops waiting for harvest and we are thankful they're not ours.

The grass shortage that has plagued the entire year has at last improved, helped by selling some of last year's suckler calves and killing out a bullock.

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We sold half the carcase and took half back, spending a morning bagging it for the freezer. We almost sold the lot but there is nothing so good as your own meat, raised well and killed humanely.

We have too much of everything at the moment though.

Goose numbers have reached the mid twenties, although one managed to drown itself in a trough and another isn't so well.

It's an old bird and if it doesn't improve we won't let it go another week. Our real problem though is apples.

The trees have been in 20 years and only in the last two have they become prolific.

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We're going to have a crack at making cider but at the moment are struggling to turn the fruit into pulp for the press. A gadget needs in-venting – the food processor will never stand the strain.

Then there are the pigs. We keep three Berkshire sows and all three farrowed within weeks of each other.

We had piglets everywhere, wriggling under things and into things, one getting into a bag of milk powder.

They looked like cocaine addicts, with smart black suits and bright white noses. Now, though, two litters are weaned and ten weaners sold, one to a man who planned to have suckling pig as a centrepiece on a celebration table.

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He shouldn't have brought his daughter though. She'd named it before they got home. We expect him back for an anonymous replacement any time soon.

This episode of Year Round is written by a guest contributor, following the death of one of the original diary team Dick Addison.

CW 4/9/10