Good evening,

I hope you're all surviving the sweat-wave. I'm trying hard not to complain about the weather because there's not much hope of a trip down to Costa Del Sol this year, but the grass won't grow so it's not been an easy few weeks.

We're about three quarters of the way through our second and last calving season of the year and have 60 gorgeous calves on the ground. It's a sweet relief the farm has plenty of trees to keep everyone out of the suffocating sunshine.

The lack of rain has meant we are already tucking into our winter silage stores, which might leave us short later this year. The grass has also started setting seed because the days are getting shorter, which means we won't be able to catch up even when the rain does come.

The orchard has started shedding apples way before they're ripe. The husks are too dry to bother doing anything with, so I'm glad the birds have something sweet to nibble.

Plus, my trucker's tan is coming along nicely so it's definitely not all bad...

It's a relatively quiet time of year so we've been keeping busy by packaging plenty of cider this month. Kegs, 20L bag in boxes and bottles all filled with the good stuff. We were delighted to read Grace Dent's review of one of our London pubs, with Moo being referred to as "glorious British booze".

That it most certainly is, Grace.

New beef box alert

You will be pleased to see we have rejigged our beef box to now include 4 x 250g steak, 10 burgers, 1kg dice and 500g cheek.

This has spread out the steaks so that more of you will be able to order them, plus will really help us with the carcass balance and give you a little something different to try.

These will be ready to collect on 21st August.