Thanks to Isabel for alerting me to the Pasture for Life initiative. This might be of interest to anyone who produces and sells livestock which are fed entirely from pasture before slaughter, or indeed anyone who wishes to source lamb or beef from animals kept in this way, which provide 100% grass-fed meat.

The excellent website contains a lot of interesting information on the benefits to animals of this management approach, as well as the environmental advantages. Click here for more.

https://www.pastureforlife.org/

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In a very challenging August 2017, when our PV inverter shows that we’ve had barely more light than a typical March – in spite of the much longer day lengths – and local trees are showing signs of leaf drop and autumnal change weeks ahead of normal, it’s perhaps not surprising that many pasture fungi think it’s autumn already too.

So it’s a good time to check meadows for mushrooms, particularly the colourful Waxcaps, which are common in many of the county’s old meadows. They’re often not that easy to spot amongst longer grass, and slugs seem to devour ours very quickly, but if anyone has some good photos of them, do send  me some images. The above photos are from one of our meadows’ aftermath regrowth, a week or so ago.

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Final details for the autumnal meeting at Myddfai are given below. We hope many members will be able to come along and join us on Saturday September 23rd 2017, at Myddfai from 10.00 am to 1 pm .

We have George Peterken, author of the seminal book on meadow management, “Meadows” coming to talk to us, from Monmouthshire, along with Jacqueline Hartley talking about Dormice, which have been found in the county.

In addition there will be a small display of locally made hay samples. If you’d like to bring some along, please use a large plastic bag, and it would be interesting if you could provide a few details on when, where, and how it was made. Anyone who’s managed to make hay this this year in the challenging conditions for much of the season would be welcome to participate. If you haven’t made any yet, you could always try to dry a sample indoors for this display! There will be time to look at these samples during refreshment breaks.

Tea, coffee and biscuits will be available to purchase in the hall, as well as a light lunch afterwards.

Since the hall is manned by volunteers, if you think you’re likely to want to stay for lunch, which will provide another good opportunity to chat with other members, do let me know in advance so that I can pass this on to the hall’s catering team.

Julian Wormald (website administrator) :

Email:  website@carmarthenshiremeadows.com

Do please pass on the above posters to anyone who might be interested, and if you could print off copies to display locally that would be a great way of raising awareness of the group. Thank you.

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Thanks for reading, and remember I’m always happy to receive any suitable articles or photos to include as blog posts. Please send them to me…

Julian Wormald… website@carmarthenshiremeadows.com