After months of drought, some desperately-needed September rainfall has rejuvenated the land at Eves Hill Farm near Reepham - the subject of our monthly "year in the life of a Norfolk farm" features.
September's rain has transformed dusty, drought-hit fields into healthy autumnal greenery - much to the relief of Norfolk farmer Jeremy Buxton.
"It is like England is back," he said. "It was like living in another country for a while, with those roasting droughty conditions, a brittle environment and fire risks and everything was all brown - but now the green fields of England are back, which is really nice.
"Things are growing and everything is in good health. And obviously for our livestock to have grass growing again is a weight off my mind."
Mr Buxton, of Eves Hill Farm near Reepham, said the last month had brought perfect farming weather for a time of year which marks a "re-set" in the farming calendar.
With the summer harvest complete, attention has moved onto preparing the ground for next year's crops.
Winter wheat will be sown next week, and the farm has also finally been able to plant cover crops, designed to protect and improve the soil while providing forage for cattle over the winter, on land earmarked for spring-cropping next year.
Green shoots are already emerging from the seeds planted on September 13.
"Ideally I wanted the cover crops in directly behind the combine, because in my regenerative way of managing things we want a growing root in the ground for the longest time possible," said Mr Buxton.
"But without any rain it would have been a waste of money putting seed in the ground.
"It is always nice when the seeds is in the ground, because it is one less thing to worry about.
"That is a job done and you can hand it over to Mother Nature and turn your attention to something else."
Mother Nature is not always helpful, though - as Mr Buxton discovered when he was stung on the top lip after disturbing a wasps' nest while collecting wood in a pasture.
"Within moments my whole face was swollen - it looked like Botox gone wrong," he said.
"I did about an hour's work then started to feel really odd so I had to come home and fell asleep on the sofa.
"Then my wife Katherine came in and just started laughing. It was a moment of hilarity.
"Luckily we have got some really good antihistamines here."
Pig herd's new arrivals
The rain was not the only welcome arrival at Eves Hill Farm in September, after a new litter of Saddleback piglets was born.
"Katherine stayed up all night with them and delivered 11 piglets on September 8," said Mr Buxton. "We have now got 30 on the farm."
Butchers have also delivered the first consignment of meat from the original batch of the free-range animals which arrived on the farm in March.
"It is good to finally get some return on them," said Mr Buxton.
"The Saddleback is a good native breed, and we are getting very positive feedback from customers really enjoying the flavour of the meat.
"Our pigs are not intensively farmed, they don't just have a mono diet of concentrate. They have nuts, whatever they can forage, and we are feeding them waste from a greengrocer, so loads of fruit and vegetables.
"We are selling the meat direct off the farm and a lot of people are coming on board now and buying beef, pork and eggs together, which is great.
"It is interesting, people seem to be creating spaces and filling their freezers with food, whether that is because they are worried that food prices will go up even more at the supermarkets, I don't know."
Farm shop optimism
The farm's beef, pork and eggs will be a central part of the local food range at Eves Hill's new farm shop which, after a couple of delays, is finally due to open in the coming weeks.
It is being constructed inside a grain store building, with a separate tea room planned to follow.
"It is my intention that the farm shop will be open by the end of October," said Mr Buxton. "This week I will be putting up my 'opening soon' sign.
"We have wanted to do this for a long time. We have always been enthusiastic about selling food directly to the consumer, food of a high quality, produced under the practices that we believe in.
"It is locally-produced food, for the local community. That fits in with all of our philosophies of low food miles and sustainable food production, and being a part of the local economy."
Rising energy bills
Like everywhere else, rising energy costs have been a concern at Eves Hill Farm - particularly because the farmhouse is part of the business, and therefore powered under a commercial contract which was not subject to the domestic energy cap.
Mr Buxton hopes the government support announced last week for commercial electricity users will help.
But meanwhile a specific energy issue has emerged on the farm's campsite.
"We've got electric hook-ups on the campsite and it has caused us some difficulties because people are charging their electric cars off their hook-ups - and one charge of their car is more than the pitch rate for a night's stay," he said. "We've only just cottoned on to this.
"Now we are going to have to change our whole pricing structure if people want to charge their cars, and there are more and more electric vehicles about.
"As farms go we're not like these big commercial farms that have huge grain dryers running all the time, but we certainly are worried about energy in terms of our farmhouse.
"We are not turning our heating on, like everyone else, and we are really conscious of how we can reduce our energy bills and what the government can do to help with our business.
"Now that we are producing more meat for the farm shop we have got more fridges and freezers so there is a cost in opening the shop and we have got to be mindful of that in our pricing to get produce to the consumer."
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