The Rawsons celebrate the birth of Charlotte Olivia

It has certainly been an strange week. It started with the sudden passing of our last remaining grandparent, Betty. Four days later however, we were all cheered up when Catherine gave birth to our daughter, Charlotte Olivia.


As we were leaving the ward, one of the midwives suggested that I should be the next into hospital for a certain little operation. So I had to explain it would be a repeat of a famous bible story about cutting hair and losing strength, and that I wouldn’t risk that outcome.


It seems every year Evolution Farming undertakes a big project; this year we have taken on a contract farming agreement at York. Working with the farm owners, Jim and Nicola, Mark Cash has moved up to this 100ha property from the farm at Wrexham to help convert it from a 90-cow mixed farm to a 250-cow block-calving operation. We have sourced a nice herd of spring-calving crossbreds and they were dropped off at the farm within 48 hours of us agreeing to buy them – “time waits for no man”.


It is certainly a great start to the season, with all cows grazing very high dry matter pastures; a bit of rain in the long-term forecast would be appreciated, though. A couple of months ago I wrote about us trying some nitrogen in January – this worked very well with grass growth on these fields, growing at double of the later spread paddocks.



Tom and Catherine Rawson are involved in three separate dairy farming businesses. The core activity is milking 1,250 cows on four units. Tom is also a partner in a dairy consultancy company.



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