My little Farm cheat…

Post published: 18/01/2024
Reading time: 3 mins read

*|MC:SUBJECT|*

overfarm.co.uk

View this email in your browser

What does January look like on a working farm?

Discover my little cheat and find out why I secretly LOVE the frost!

Between storms, floods and a whole lot of frost, it’s been an “interesting” time to do some farming here in Gloucester…

While the rest of the world goes into hibernation mode, my team and I have been making the most of this quietest and coldest of months to get a LOT done.

As you can probably guess, it takes a ton of work to keep Over Farm and Countryside Adventure going. But what you might not so readily guess, is that the frost is actually a secret friend to farmers. Here’s why…

1. We can do some January de-cluttering

Everyone likes to declutter in January and it’s no different on a farm. So in true Marie Kondo style we make the most of our farm park being closed due to the weather and get busy tidying up the sheds and cleaning up the back of Over Farm Market.

2. We give the wedding barn a little refresh

We wrap up warm on weekdays and get the little refresher jobs done between weekend weddings.

Here’s Wendi touching up our planters – those cushions are very much needed to keep our knees from freezing!

(Didn’t know we had a wedding barn? It’s pretty gorgeous! Used to store grain in the 19^th century, Over Barn is such a fun, laid-back and stonkingly beautiful wedding and event venue – click here to find out more.)

3. We can finally drive our tractors anywhere!

You might think we’re driving our tractors around day in day out, but actually, the last few months have been pretty tractor-free at Over Farm.

(If you visited Countryside Adventure during the Christmas holidays, you’ll have noticed the tractor trailer rides weren’t running – and that’s for this same reason.)

Super soil lesson incoming in 5-4-3-2-1...
You see, when the ground is wet, driving a tractor over the soil squidges it right down, squishing the air out of the soil. And what that does is make the bacteria in the soil start to digest anything it can in naughty ways, producing the wrong kind of microbes and all sorts of little things that decrease the overall health of the soil.

Not a huge problem on ground that’s being used for car parks and the like. But for fields where we want to grow crops? That’s a BIG problem!

And if you visited our PYO Pumpkins events, you’ll remember the ground got VERY wet indeed in some places!

Which means we haven’t been able to drive a tractor in that area for months! But when the frosts happened, the soil froze and we were able to drive over it without damaging the soil structure.

Frost’s like a little cheat for farmers – super handy for fetching things from fields in the middle of winter...

Hopefully you can now appreciate why we’ve only JUST got the last of our bits and pieces from Halloween away and safely stored for next year’s events!

There you have it – the soil lesson you never knew you needed. But enough about us, what little jobs have you been getting done on these dark days?!

Looking forward to having everything spick and span in time for half term’s reopening of Countryside Adventure in three weeks’ time! (More on that below!)

Much love,

P.S. Let me know if you want any more info about soil - I've got plenty more where that came from!!

Speaking of Countryside Adventure,
here's what's coming up...

We're working all year round to make sure your family has the very BEST day out when you visit Countryside Adventure - that's why you can expect all this and more in every ticket...