Good, bad and lessons learned

This is the strangest season I've known  we are by my reckoning four weeks behind what we have come to regard as normal. By far the most demanding of years as almost everything has been negatively affected.
The vegetables such as carrots parsnips leeks and beetroot have been slowed down but should hopefully produce a crop they require relativity low growing temperatures. All the most marginal crops however have effectively lost a month of their growing season. While we may get some tomatoes, courgettes, fine beans and squash the shorter growing season will  dramatically reduce the harvest.

The bees have had it rough I've not lost any colonies but have had to feed once in June. The swarming this year has been phenomenal. In one apiary I had all 14 colonies swarming in July and even had a swarm issue in the last week of July.      

The sheep have enjoyed the good grass growth and we have one the best crop of lambs. The hay though still has not been cut as our contractor was away during our only (so far) good week. We're sweating on three or four consecutive rain free days, none in sight so far.

So what have we learned this year?
We have an urgent need to build diversity into our systems. the climate now can produce drought or flood, poor light levels or searing heat. To produce economic crops in these variable conditions there has to be a range of crops able to cope with these extremes.
The poor growing conditions have highlighted a fertility problem here. When there are low temperatures and poor light, fertility needs to be high in order to take advantage of  what warmth there is. Our green manure system will be incorporated with the animals (hens and sheep) to boost nitrogen and phosphate levels.   

Keeping the bees with young queens is vital in poor years, to loose half your bees and the stores to a swarm can spell disaster for the honey crop. This year has been the worst for swarming by an order of magnitude Next year we will be raising queens for all the colonies from the earliest possible date regardless of the
 age of the queen. We are aiming for each colony to have a queen of the current year and a partner nucleus hive with a young queen.

The sheep this year have done well, lambs are looking good with no signs of the fly and worm problem of last year. We have developed a comprehensive health plan with the vet and so far it seems to have produced the desired results.

We may have to look into our own hay making equipment this year, the opportunity to make good hay can have a  tiny window that small hay producers like us need to be able to respond quickly before the chance is gone.