It started dull on Wednesday (13/6) at our peak district cottages but was forecast to brighten up.  I had arranged to go to Chesterfield with one of my former cleaners and as we set off mid morning I could see they had started collecting the grass.  Our first stop in Chesterfield was the new Screwfix to pick up some bits for Chris then round to one of the charity warehouses to drop some boxes off.  Then to Bookers with my shopping list.  Only disappointment was we found the cafe now closes on Wednesday so we had to think of an alternative for lunch.  Then to Matalan where I had a bit of ‘me’ shopping and across the road to Dunelm.  A late lunch at Morrisons before home by which time it was raining lightly.  Where was the Sun?  What was more worrying was there was no sign of silaging activity.  Joanna phoned to say she might not make it to WI as she would have to do the milking (I did offer to help bring the cows in if needed) but also the collecting machine had a broken gear box and they weren’t able to start work until 4.30.  The woes were added to by a trailer that slid on some mud and ended up banging into a barn wall damaging the trailer (and the barn wall).  In the end they had to call it a day having lost most of the day to problems.  I called into Joanna’s to collect the bits to take down to WI but having been relieved of milking she was able to join us belatedly.  Our speaker gave us an interesting talk with slide show on the restoration of the Chesterfield Canal.  This runs from Chesterfield to the River Trent, well it did when in was first built in 1775!  Like  many it fell into disrepair and now thanks to volunteers and grants it is gradually being restored.  Thursday was a really nice day and luckily mid morning silaging got under way again.  I noticed when they came over to this side of the road that they had two collectors and eventually four trailers which helped them make up for lost time.  In the afternoon one of our guests reported two cows where they shouldn’t be, in a small patch of fenced grass at the bottom of our drive.  Walked down there and one jumped out straight away but the other one refused to budge so I had to call Joanna who came up with Andrew to get her out.  As they had broken the fence down he had to repair that too.   As usual for silaging I took a number of photos as well as some of the cows as I often had to go through the cows to get the pictures.  It started to look threatening late afternoon but luckily it held off until 8.30 by which time they had finished collecting on our side but still had some fields to do on their side.  A lot now depends on Friday’s weather.

Top picture shows my boot by the rowed up grass and the bottom picture shows the emptied field. Compare this to the pictures taken a few days ago.