a bit of Brit grit

Keeping calm and carrying on is what the British farmers do best and the current winter remains no exception.

Earlier this week we discovered the council’s salt shortage has reached our locality with the big hill in and out of the village temporarily renamed the Cresta run. Yesteday we had thick fog and rain, pouring gutters  and huge puddles on top of the ice and Jethro may by the weekend  have to swop his crampons [currently attached to his wellies] for flippers.

The daily round of fresh food and water to every animal continues and there are almost 1000 head of different livestock to see to.

The business side carries on too with tonnes of grain collected yesterday for sale but after the second lorry got stuck and had to be pulled out by a tractor, all further collections have been cancelled by Jethro while we have this thick, thick ice.

Finally tonight we have running water for the pigs and for the first time in ages have not had to take the water bowser out to them. It will make the weekend duties easier and hopefully next week we can go back to selling some lambs and pigs as we have orders waiting for them.

The icy conditions made it impossible on welfare grounds  for both animals and staff to move them to sort out the best ones. The sheepdogs have just had normal walks to keep them cheery as running full tilt around an icy field to get the sheep in was too dangerous and crossing the road with these lambs on a stretch that was too slippery for people to stand on was not on either.

Roll on normal service, until the next storm comes.. winter has a long way to go yet… and yet I dream of spring already.

the nation feels the strain

It is not just the farmers that are feeling the strain. The whole nation appears to be ice bound.. see this picture … However the good news is that the farmers have actually been mentioned on sky news albeit in terms of a potential milk shortage as some milk tankers can’t get through. At the end of the TV news story the work the farmers do was actually mentioned in a positive way. Hooray!

We have snow flurries and increased wind which is now starting to move the existing snow in little bursts across the fields. Not a good sign.

I grew up under the tutelage of a mother with a siege mentality over kitchen supplies, and this has rubbed off on to me to a certain extent.  It is useful, but even in the 80’s we all kept much bigger supplies than we do now.

This arctic interlude [it has gone on far too long to call a snap] may change the nations shopping habits for a while as the memory of this will linger for quite a while and may become the stuff of legends as the 1947 storm did.

One late and dear farmer friend had two daughters, one born in the storm of 1947, and the other in the storm of 1963. ” That’s it” he was heard to say ” I’m having no more daughters”, tragically all the people in this story are gone now and yet the memory of the story of their births and his absolute delight in their safe arrival lingers, even now.

What tales will eventually be told of this meteorological challenge that has affected Britain?

In ‘blogland’ they can be told immediately and also very widely read. In the earlier mentioned storms it took weeks and weeks before any stories could be told. Telephones were still not common in 1947 in rural areas and there were not any gatherings at the markets because everyone was stuck.  What I remember from the tales of ‘47 is the depth of the snow, frequently up to telegraph pole height. Tunnels were dug from farm houses to the buildings to see to the livestock. Somehow the weeks from January to March were endured and the stories have lasted too for two generations.

I had often thought that a similar scenario in the 21st Century would be easier to cope with on account of modern machinery and technology and yet I think the pictures on the news from 1963 look remarkably similar to the pictures of 2010.

We do however have the 24 hr TV news so long as we have electricity. I do feel for those enduring long power cuts as I once lived at a farm where the power went off several times every winter, sometimes for days [in those days we had an Aga and open fires in every room] and I still keep a cellar full of gas lamps, just in case.

mulepower

A printed version of THIS ARTICLE has been kicking around on my desk for ages. I am having a major tidy and sort and after putting the magazine [The Furrow] into the recycling box I have found an electronic version for you to read, and another You tube video to watch.

Some things in farming change a lot and some things never change. This is the modern equivalent  of the mule combine, and costs at least as much as much as a decent house.

about the video

Following one of my regular readers suggestions I have investigated this blog. It will give you further information about the ‘Bank Aid’ video I posted yesterday.

We have snow but not as much as some parts of the UK but enough to cause major disruption on the farm.

you have to see this

This just arrived by email.. a real tonic and the singing is possibly even worse than Jethro in the shower. I have only stopped laughing long enough to post on here, enjoy and Happy New Year.

hay ho

It is a bit embarrasing to admit this, as we are professional livestock farmers, but I have had to buy in some extra hay for Swift on account of the terrible weather. The big bale of hay we are currently using is too coarse and not very palatable and I was becoming concerned that Swift was not getting enough to eat in this very hard weather, as he kept leaving a lot of the hay that was put out for him. A very kind friend with horses of her own collected some small  bales yesterday from one of our local farming friends who makes good horse hay every year in June and sells a lot of hay to all the horsey folk. He will no doubt dine out on the fact that he sold hay to me too.. not very good for our credibility, however under the Stewardship Scheme we are tied into we are not allowed to cut hay or silage until after 15th July and this is not very good for horses as it is not as nourishing.

Jethro has kindly put up a hay rack on the fence so that my top notch hay will not be gobbled up by his erstwhile companions [sheep] in the field and I can also see now Swift happily munching his hay from the office window. This pleases me enormously as I feel very stuck in the house and cut off from my normally very active life.

Swift is the boss of his field and up to now any eating of ‘his’ hay could only be done when he isn’t looking or grazing, at least in the rack it will be there for him whenever he feels the need to eat. It makes me feel a whole lot better too because until I had the fracture I was bringing him in for extra hay most days to be sure he had enough and to keep handling him often as he is only young. This way I feel better knowing that he is now getting as much as he wants of the ‘good stuff’. At approx £1 a day that must be worth it for his wellbeing and my peace of mind. I am calculating 1/3 bale a day but Jethro will keep me posted on actually how much we do use, and it will depend on how much snow and frost we have..

Horses eat for about 20 – 22 hours a day. Their stomachs are small, about a 1.5 kilo capacity for feed, and their whole digestive systems are are designed for continous eating, yet as a prey animal they maintain the ability to flee at speed if danger arises and their guts fit in with this. This is completely different to a sheep or a cow who have a rumen. The rumen acts as a store for food and also in this bad weather as a central heating boiler. Swift seems warm enough in his thick quilted rug which reaches from his ears to his tail. As a Quarter Horse  cross Appaloosa he does not grow a thick woolly coat like New Forest ponies do. He has also lived outdoors for all of his life and until this year he lived in Scotland, first near Aberdeen and then in Dumfries, and he will certainly have experienced hard winters before.

something to cheer us

This is to cheer us through the chill and help us think of warmer climes

planning for next winter

The house is gradually emptying as the young generation go back to Uni and prepare for work on Monday.

The deep overnight frost has led to Jethro carting water out again to the pigs’ frozen water troughs. Tomorrow, he will move some huge storage tanks down there from another farm as it is already looking like a long fierce winter and this will save both time and effort.

The pigs are happy enough in their warm arks but the pig keepers’ are finding it a huge struggle to cope with a very wet and very cold winter so plans are already being made for bringing all the pigs into the sheds, and stables for the worst 4  months of winter from next year.  Another pig farm brings their pigs  in every winter and it seems to work well. Of course this action plan will almost guarantee a mild winter.

The pigs don’t mind the deep mud at all but it is extremely treacherous for the man with the bucket to wade through deep mud twice per day while a batch of pigs are pushing at him to get at the food and the dangers of ending face down either in cold thick mud, or on hard frozen ground [as per today] are all too real.

Funny how talk of global warming has ceased ever since the powers that be met in Copenhagen for their talks. You’d have thought they’d have mentioned something about their obvious and immediate success, wouldn’t you?

2010 and beyond..

Happy New Year!

The New Year has to be a time to think about life and a time to reflect. In these last few weeks I have  suddenly far more spare time than I am used to to reflect on everything: what we know have done well and what we should change for the better both at home and at work. I have also started knitting again as this is one occupation that can be done with a lower limb raised. The filing on my desk will have to wait a bit longer.

The last year has been so hectic for everyone in the household that we know it is time to try to change things. The daily workload has in all honesty become too much and I believe it has been good to step back [even on crutches] and actually acknowledge this.

Life events happen too and they can make one think even more and I belong to an online community called Purple Coo and this community has suffered a great sadness as one of the original members Woozle passed away peacefully in hospital yesterday evening after a major operation on 16th December.

I never met Woozle [although I read her posts including the last one she bravely wrote before she went to hospital] but many of the other members knew her in person and were very good friends. Woozle’s blog shines with her spirit and courage in the shadow of her illness scleroderma. She loved her husband, family, home and garden and despite her long illness was clearly a special person who enjoyed so much of her life, and she was very courageous.  Woozle particularly wrote about how working the soil in a garden connects us to the land, she was so right about that and farming is the same just on a much grander scale. We send our deepest sympathy to her husband, family and friends.

I too, am a daughter of the soil and Jethro is undoubtedly a son of the soil, this particular attribute runs in our blood and is deeply imbedded in our genes. This fact has not helped any of us get a balanced life as our work ethic and attention to detail has added to the current overload. The old adage for farming folk has always been ” Farm as if you will live forever, and live as if you will die tomorrow”. [Read it here]. There is some real common sense in this. Farms are very big and complicated businesses which depend on both the seasons and very long term planning while coping with all sorts of unknowns on a day to day basis [ such as weather and animal health]. Over the last five years my Jethro has become totally overloaded by his workload with hardly any time off and that has impacted on every generation of the family, and it cannot be good for his long term health.

The challenge of the new decade will be finding a better life/work balance for all of us, and we do not yet know how we will achieve this but the journey we will take will no doubt be interesting.

However, we will have to learn to walk normally again before we can all run into a new regime. The first steps for me will be abandoning the crutches and then the aircast boot and getting my normal life back because at the moment Jethro has to do many of my jobs [dogs, horse, chickens, and driving] as well as his own. Cooking is getting easier as I can weight bear for short distances, but as ever in a full household the dishwasher always seems to need emptying. Why is that?

Goodbye to 2009

Goodbye to 2009.

The last few days have been very busy and hard as life on crutches is very hampering, espeically on a farm in the winter. We are hoping 2010 will be much easier.

Since my accident 3 weeks ago we have had:

water through a bedroom ceiling from melting snow, leading to evacuation of  said room and entire contents of walk-in cupboard,

a car in the pond, while watching Cranford after some good whisky and it was nothing to do with us, except Jethro is the pond keeper so then the three fire engines, Police, ambulance, and several recovery vehicles  suddenly became a lot to do with us,

frozen and burst water pipes and troughs, leading to a full set of 9 new ballcocks and de-frosting of hands in between each trough,

a winter’s worth of snow for the second time this year leading to joyriders pulling sledges behind 4wd vehicles on private fields full of sheep, and the driver being certain it was ok for him to do this,

a lost [newly arrived, and not yet settled in] sheepdog on Chrismas Day after she touched her nose on the pig electric fencing, got a shock and unurprisingly ran off, to be thankfully retrieved 30 minutes later after she luckily had joined up with a local dog walker and his two dogs,

so it is no surpirise that we wonder what will be next?

That’s the thing about farming every day is different and there is always a lot to sort out… and having married a farmer, many years ago,  and as mother to another successful farmer it is no suprise to me to read that the most influential figure in farming over the last 75 years is none other than THE FARMER’S WIFE with 49% of the vote. Read here.

Happy New Year and all the best for the next decade and beyond.

beauty and the beast

This morning is bitterly cold and absolutely beautiful – the ultimate wintry scene and I hope someone will have time to take the camera out again to record it all later.

Unfortunately it remains an awful beast for those with farm animals and there seems to be no let up in this cold snap. No one has time to enjoy it. Contingency plans over the Christmas period now mean that all the staff will work some of every day as there is too much to do for one man. The normal plan at this time of year is that between Christmas Eve and the first Monday of the New Year only the essential jobs are done ie: the livestock and everyone takes turns on duty so everyone has time off. This year because of the weather conditions two men will work every morning and one working every afternoon.

The hens have stopped laying presumably in protest from the cold so we may have to run out to buy eggs. Or more likely do without as the roads in this locality are still too bad for a normal car and Jethro is much too busy to do any more of my tasks.

Swift is eating loads of hay and is warm in his gucci style rug. These rugs are very expensive but well worth it. I prefer to keep horses out in their natural environment and as it turned out it is just as well owing to my injury. The snow and the cold is much better for animals than relentless cold rain. Ruby has come inside and is in with the cows and young calves and more importantly in with the bull so we hope she will calve again next September.

We wish every one a safe and happy Christmas season, and wonder what this year’s unexpected challenge will be. Last year we had no electricity to work the water pump at the bore hole. Every year is different and this year will be no exception.

an interesting Christmas

The landscape may look like a Christmas card, but inside the house at Prosperous Farm, apart from having plenty of delicious food in store, it is nothing at all like Christmas.

A trip to the supermarket in Granpa’s old wheelchair last night saw the last of the seasonal provisions bought. It is a life lesson perhaps we should all take. The view from a wheelchair, as many people already know, is different, but it is something that should  be experienced at first hand to really understand. Free choice is not easily attained when one has to ask to be pushed up to every shelf, or to keep asking for this, that and the other to be fetched. As several members of the family rumbled round the packed supermarket in convoy with the shopping trolley we met up with several people we knew, all doing their last food shopping.  On leaving the shop we found we were in a very heavy snowstorm and today we have several more inches and a lot more ice.

There is no real tree this year, just a mini artificial one, and very few presents as shopping on crutches in heavy snow and ice is simply not going to happen. We will however still be able to concentrate on the food, with a few cheats such as ready-made cranberry sauce in mulled wine, and a few bought puddings, and of course the good company. We have home cured ham to cook tomorrow, home reared rib of beef to roast on Christmas Eve and no doubt a good turkey will arrive in due course for the big day. The breadcrumbs for the bread sauce are already in the freezer. Nature has buried the carefully grown veggies in snow and frozen ground, and some replacements were hastily bought from the supermarket,  however Jethro remains confident he can produce a swede and some sprouts for the big day.

We will be warm by the fire and together as a family, and be able to have lots of good things to eat. Thankfully we are not trying to cross the channel or are stuck far from home. Jethro will be very busy and we hope  for a thaw [but not too rapid a one, as that causes other problems] as the extra workload from all the livestock in this freezing and snowy weather grinds on. We even have made a contingency plan for other members of the family originally due to have Christmas elsewhere, if they can’t get to their planned destination on Thursday, we will have plenty of room and food.

Carols and the Christmas tradition will be courtesy of Kings College on Christmas Eve on the radio. We missed the village carol service on Sunday owing to the snow and ice and taking further unnecessary risks, and it is unlikely we will make it on the day itself  owing to the weather, workload and my plastered leg. In these winter conditions all the animals must be fed and watered daily.

Jethro said at breakfast that the meeting of world leaders in Copenhagen clearly achieved its aim as the weather has been dire and very cold ever since. Why has no-one else thought of this?

iced up once again

The joy of the young over waking to a covering of snow does not last long in livestock farming. The reality of keeping animals adequately fed and watered in difficult conditions sadly removes the initial glow of pleasure of a white landscape at an early age.

Already we are struggling to water all the livestock out doors and indoors as the pipes freeze and the water troughs ice up. Jethro takes the water bowser out with him to some of the animals twice a day but even the pipes on this ice up and have to be thawed. The cattle are better off  as in February this year we bought very large troughs which do not have to be filled daily as they have such a large capacity for water. Sheep actually drink less in these conditions as they eat some of the snow while grazing, it is the pigs who are always the thirstiest However they do not mind the cold and are happy living in their family groups sleeping and keeping warm in the straw filled arks. They lie in a heap together, often side by side, just like sausages in a pan.

The cold snap is early and combined with the dry summer and the fact that we have less grass than normal it is looking like it could be a long and tiring winter for both animals and men. You can imagine that we are all serious sceptics of global warming in this house.

An accident 2 weeks ago has put me on crutches so I am not able to help at all, and indeed all my jobs: Swift, the dogs and the chickens have been added to Jethro’s heavy workload. As the snow and ice reach right to the house I am banned from going outdoors in case of another fall.

Christmas will therefore be a rather funny affair too, a trip with a borrowed wheelchair to a local supermarket soon should see us get the last few things we need. I have not sent cards this year and luckily gave all the extended family home cured ham and bacon in October to freeze for the big day ahead. There will  have to be a lot of IOU’s written for the members of this household as I cannot get to a shop and the sudden snow and ice have made things far worse, in that respect. The day the accident happened I had planned to go shopping in the afternoon… instead I was in the hospital. The road is now only passable in the 4WD and apart from booking Jethro to take us food shopping, after a return trip to the hospital, there  is no spare time to take us to do anything else on account of the  conditions.  Annoyingly, I wont be able to drive for at least 6 weeks.

Still I can enjoy  a quieter life too. I will be making sausage rolls later, something I can do sitting down, even if someone else has to put the trays in and out of the oven. This afternoon I shall be in front of a snug fire with  my feet up watching Mamma Mia again, a present from last Christmas. And I get the chance to read books, lots of them, wicked! And when I have run out of good books there is some knitting started long ago to be finished, it was originally planned for a baby who is now 3, so if  I can actually finish it I will have something for the next baby in the family whenever that may be.

while shepherds watched…

Jethro has been sent this, ’tis surely the silly season!

While Shepherds Watched

While shepherds watched

Their flocks by night

All seated on the ground

The angel of the Lord came down

And glory shone around

The Union of Shepherd’s has complained that it breaches health and safety regulations to insist that shepherds watch their flocks without appropriate seating arrangements being provided, therefore  benches, stools and orthopaedic chairs are now available.

Shepherds have also requested that due to the inclement weather conditions at this time of year that they should watch their flocks via CCTV cameras from centrally heated shepherd observation huts.

Please note, the Angel of the Lord is reminded that before shining his/her glory all around she/he must ascertain that all shepherds have been issued with glasses capable of filtering out the harmful effects of UVA, UVB and Glory.

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas to all. A little funny to help get through the darkest part of winter. ENJOY

Swift and the sheep

Swift has just done his first job on the farm. About ten days ago I rode out over two separate days for short rides and at a ridden walk quietly moved some sheep around the fields. He seemed to like this which I found encouraging.

Since then over the last week he has been spotted from the house playing games by moving the two sheep who share his grazing around by walking, and occasionally trotting  after them, making faces and generally calling the shots.

This week, I had to pick out a lamb to send tomorrow for an order for a restaurant for next week. As we still have no useful sheepdog I decided it was time to see if Swift and I could get quietly gather them to the gate to save time and effort.  We went through the three fields to the far end to collect any stragglers and found a ram, on his own. Luckily for me the ram was more scared of us and after turning once to look at me and stamping his foot he scarpered off to find his ladies. So we gathered up the little group of stragglers and set off across the next empty field.

Swift gave a little squeal and mini jump half way across this field and I carefully calmed him back down not wanting him to do a bronc act or anything remotely risky. He settled once more and we very gradually at a sedate walking pace pushed all the sheep to the gate and then I rang Jethro [ the wonders of mobiles] to say time for reinforcements please and the gate to be opened.

At just the wrong moment a power walker, talking loudly on a mobile phone, went past the gate scattering the sheep and making them run, completely in the wrong direction. By this point, in order to save the day and actually get the sheep in, I decided I would risk a trot so we set off in pursuit of the scrambling sheep. I was very aware that a canter would be better from a strategic point of view but I am not yet too sure of our brakes [with the Dually halter]  and I did not want to set off any sudden hi-jinks from Swift. Anyway at a steady trot we managed to get behind the sheep, turn them and bring them back to the gate.

Once on the road we had to trot down the lane to turn an escapee while avoiding the van that had also stopped. After this final dash I jumped off and led him from the ground to push the last few lambs in. Jethro was flapping his coat and everyone else was shouting and I felt that Swift had done really well and we needed to end on a good note.

We will see if he continues to play games with the sheep out in his field. He knows he can easily move the cow so we need to build his confidence with larger groups of cattle. He has got quite used to the cattle in the sheds, and even accepted the  calves who were weaned from their mothers only 48 hours ago and despite eating barley and silage are still mooing for their Mums.

a [very] funny film but beware the [very] bad language

We have just been sent this and feels it needs a much wider audience, however if you are sensitive to bad language, then please do not watch. Complaints will not be accepted, watching is your choice.

Will you ever look at a chicken in the same light again, and did you really know that wheat grows in the ground?

all change

Well, this week the first of the cattle came in for the winter, and the very last of the rams went out with the ewes but not before one of our best rams died suddenly as he waited in the shed.

As an older member of the team the anticipation must have been too much, or at least that is the reason we prefer most to believe. His place out with a particular batch of ewes was immediately taken by another home bred ram, and finally the rush of shepherding work at this time of the year is over and Jethro can settle back into a quieter routine.

Next to come in will be the calves, born this year. Those that were born in the spring and are old enough will be separated from their mothers and housed, the youngest calves will come in to another shed but their mothers will  come in too, and one of the bulls. The main herd of spring calving cows will remain outside on the drier chalk grassland.

Poor Ruby has slipped her calf, it was due to be born around the end of January, and was completely formed, a bull calf but without all his hair. The legs and the head were the same colour as Ruby, but the rest was still bald. It was a very sad sight when the vet pulled it out, and she was so very keen to mother this stillborn bundle of a calf.

It means no milking for us until she calves again, perhaps in the autumn next year. The vet says that around 1% of cattle sponatneously abort, there does not have to be a reason. I think in 5 years we have only had 3 slipped calves so we must be under the average but still it is hard particularly as Ruby is the family’s only cow whereas the rest belong to the farm business. It is not quite the same.  Unusually for farmers we do admit that Ruby is a pet, she leads from a headcollar and ties up and is so quiet even visiting children can milk her. I daresay when she is recovered and after she runs with the main herd and the bull for the winter she will take a bit of gentling again.

busy busy

What a day we’ve had – weighing lambs and pigs and selecting the best for boxes and a farmers market, vaccinating cattle with all manner of other visitors coming and going all day on farm business. No wonder we struggle so much with the shorter day length at this time of the year.

Last night haircuts were fitted in for the men after an early supper and our hairdresser’s life seems currently every bit as crazy as ours. Is it the planets or something else causing such chaos and too much work in all our lives?

Swift’s remaining three horseshoes were removed today too, just as well as it looked like whoever shod him before had tried to make his feet fit the shoes rather than the other way around. The trimmer was very patient as Swift is not yet very used to having this done. We got there in the end and although he sometimes puts his foot down sharpish a few times there was no malice in him whatsover. She will be back in three weeks time to properly trim his feet and we hope in a few months with regular trimming and work that his feet will harden and he will be able to remain ‘barefoot‘.

We also fitted in a sausage tasting this week to choose another variety to sell at our upcoming public events. Eight new  varieties of seasonings were made into patties and fried… remembering which is which on the plate as we taste them around the kitchen table is quite taxing and we all ended up with scribbled diagrams at the side to give us a clue. Everyone’s taste is so different but we eventually chose a new variety for lamb sausage and another new one for pork. We never have trouble selling bangers,  it may be a cliche but variety surely is the spice of life, or rather sausages. 

It is national sausage week this week but we were not able to have any events on to coincide. Perhaps next year we will make it fit with all the big promotions?

tell the pigs it’s not cricket

We received a frantic  telephone call this afternoon… three pigs causing havoc in a lovely garden and heading towards a very well tended cricket pitch with their noses primed in the dig position.

We asked for a bit more description of this terrible sounding trio and then we breathed a huge sigh of relief, they were not our pigs. Some quick telephoning to other pig keepers in the area produced a mobile phone number and a name and eventually the pigs were corralled [not sure about the spelling] and then owner was traced.

The relief to know it was NOT our problem was huge, that in itself is a teensy bit worrying!

Swift is getting used to large machines, the loader full of planks and old doors has gone past his byre several times this afternoon. The barefoot trimmer comes tomorrow to assess his feet, and take the remaining 3 shoes off. He has only had one set of shoes on in his life, and he has lost one this week and I am going to try to keep him ‘barefoot’ while he is only in light work.

I rode him again for a short while in the Dually halter after long lining with a friend’s help for half an hour in his field.

a dark and stormy Sunday morning

Well, we managed to dust the pigs last night in their stable and waking up today to such a wet and stormy morning means that there is absolutely no sign of the white powder on these girls anywhere. I should have photographed them last night as they were really WHITE! Let’s hope it’s worked and relieved their discomfort, hard to tell so far as nothing ever puts them off their food!

It is so wet and so windy the trees seem to have lost half their leaves overnight and are  now piled on what pretends to be a  lawn no doubt the rest will follow by nightfall? Still it is 1st November and the leaves have lasted a long time this year. It is however still mild.

Swift is happy enough out in the field in his waterproof rug, no riding today on account of the storm, not a good idea on a young horse. I will change his rug for a drier one later on if the rain persists all day, but he is ok for now. He is still wearing the thinnest weight rug, I tried him in the warmer one when he got so wet yesterday but it is too warm and he sweated up underneath it which was no good so I changed it back.

So I shall retire to the kitchen and have a baking session: pasties, cake and some other delicious goodies to see us all through the week. It will undoubtedly cheer Jethro up when he returns very wet and bedraggled [a certainty today] from his daily sortie to check all the animals in all the fields. Sunday remains a working day on a farm, but a glance at  the Sunday papers and a roaring log fire to keep out the damp will make for a pleasant few hours after lunch until it is feeding time for the livestock once more.

4.45 pm Here is the photgraphc evidence of my labours in the kitchen.. a case of now you see it, now you don’t delicious… mmmmnn. “Any more” said Jethro?

Gone in a moment.. but golly they were good!

itchy and scratchy

Animals! The wordly wise know very well never to work with animals.. but we are somewhat stuck with hundreds of them.

The latest  problem is the young sow, no use to us for breeding anymore and shortly destined for sausages has gone down with lice or mites just a few days before she was due to be sent away.  

This is a big problem. We cannot give her the usual veterinary treatment for external and internal parasites as there is a 28 day minimum meat withdrawal on this stuff. [We always go well over the minimum]. She must go this week as we need the sausages for a market later in the month.

We have consulted with our vet and collected from the vet’s an organic herbal powder  [similar to this] with which to anoint her with. There is no withdrawal period on this as it is made with natural products and it should help considerably. The only problem is we will need to use a whole lot of this powder to take effect and will have to don goggles and face masks in order not to suffocate ourselves in the process. The pig as you can imagine will not like this particularly and not stay still, so I expect a complete whiteout, or a re-run of the black and white minstrel show, but much more pungent. At least we shouldn’t catch any bugs.

PS Swift and I had a 15 minute ridden meander in the field today. So far so good.

twister

The back man cometh, well actually he goeth. Today Swift has been sorted out in a big way and I hope to ride him really soon. I think the horse must have been playing Twister as he was in a bit of a mess. Now I will get the saddle fitter out as soon as I can, I had not done this already as I was not sure how long to give Swift off while his sore back was mending.

I know the saddle is wide enough, but because Swift has sadly already had a back issues, I want to be really sure that the saddle is just right. Of course he may get fatter and thinner depending on the time of year and how much work he is having, but my saddle has different width plates for the gullet and air flocking in the padding which can be adjusted by the specialist fitter and we have one quite close by, which is one of the reasons I originally chose this saddle.

In the meantime we have done more leading out and investigation of big machines, tyres and other typical farm hazards. Some times he takes a minute or two to relax if there is a lot of noise but on the whole appears to have an ‘am I bothered’  type reaction which is great considering he has only been here just over 2 weeks, although on account of his age he is still rather green. He is unmoved now by the pigs and looks over the wall at them while they sleep. When the pigs wake up they study each other in depth, the horse over the wall and all the eight pigs looking right up at him, it is too funny to watch. Swift however is totally relaxed as he does this, which to me is the most important aspect.

The back man is returning on two weeks to sort out one of the suckler cows who we think is not quite right and he will just check Swift again to see all is still well.

Jethro is nursing a very sore leg, he was charged by a ram yesterday when he went to feed them. There are no bruises or unusual swelling but I think the sheep caught him right on the iliotibial band on the outside of his thigh. This can be an extremely sesnsitive part of the body and the ibuprofen is helping a lot. Luckily it was not worse.

damp and dreary makes us weary

A damp and dreary morning does not help us adjust to the time change. Why do we find it hard to adjust in October and March?

I collected the cattle vaccine yesterday from the vets and we will have a busy week vaccinating all the cattle against respiratory disease. This is because last winter we had a terrible outbreak in the animals of sniffley noses, coughs and fevers after housing the young cattle and treating them all and looking after so many large animals was very hard going.

We have more groups of young visitors coming to the farm soon and I hope they have waterproofs to go on the farm walk. I have finally perfected the art of buttermaking  to an audience, so that will be part of what they learn about and will be able to taste. I have to buy pasteurised cream as we are not allowed to use our own raw milk.. crazy but true. So I demonstrate the buttermaking and then later on in the visit we demonstrate the milking of Ruby followed by the cream separation as it works best with warm milk.

In the meantime I must have had over 20 phone calls from AOL about the internet subscription package we have been on, seemingly for years. It is becoming a total pantomine, they want to speak to Jethro, he is never in!  They won’t talk to anyone else about it and are ringing form some far flung place which sounds as if it is bathed in sunshine. They seem to find it extremely hard that I don’t even know when Jethro will be available… and refuse to divulge any details to me .. I have just told them that this scenario will continue for several more weeks unless they give me the details of the deal they are offfering in order that I can tell him.

Data protection is surely just a useful foil for total lack of common sense.

Must dash,  the cattle are calling.

shortening days…

I don’t think I can blame the lack of blogging just on the shortening days but I wish I could! The clocks change this w/e and I wish we could stay on BST rather than switching to GMT as we much prefer it. We would rather have darker mornings and lighter evenings, but I know there are huge debates about this issue every year. 

It is just so very busy with the autumn arable drilling thankfully finished today, and now the livestock work is upon us with a vengeance. Perhaps, methinks, this is why mixed farming became unfashionable, because with such a spread of enterprises on the farm there is never ever a respite?

It is not just the routine of daily feeding and checking of pigs, sheep and cattle, but the annual tasks of sorting the ewes into their groups to meet with the rams. And the time of the year when the vet comes to castrate the bull calves, time also to vaccinate the cattle against respiratory viruses, and then after 2 weeks following the vaccine, time to bring the younger cattle in for the winter.

We must be mad, as well as this heavy workload, and the meat sales, we have 5 educational visits in the next month for primary school children, teenagers, and one half day visit which encompasses all ages.

Thankfully, the puppy is not here at the moment, education is vitally important to all of us and since the actual owner of the dog is away studying for a degree in Agriculture at a top University, we thought a bit of proper education for the dog would be useful too. Both students are doing very well, especially the dog, who should be back home next month wagging her tail, walking to heel and always coming back when called!  Training a 9 month old puppy was just too much on top of everything else for yours truly to consider.

Every generation in this household has now either been trained in agriculture and/or land use or is in training. This fact actually makes us quite rare nowadays, and clearly shows that we are also quite, quite mad. However farming clearly runs in the blood [probably no choice with a name like Tull] and cannot be ignored, despite various members of the family trying to do other things along life’s winding journey.

There is more training to be done here too, that of the horse…. Swift arrived 10 days ago, and is being looked after by us. He is a young gelding, who hustled the mares too much in his previous home, and was a quick sale. I happened upon him by chance and was first in. He was not expensive but came without a vetting, as a gamble.  His teeth have been sorted, they were really bad, his overgrown molars had lacerated the inside of  his cheeks on both sides. The vet sedated him while the horse dentist worked.  His back has been found to be tender and tight and is now being sorted by professionals, using chiropractic methods and Equine Touch  amongst other things which I will tell you more about about another time. I was not expecting this, but I am sure he will be fine.

Swift has a very sweet nature and in a few days learnt to cope with the house cow [ he is now THE boss of a very bossy cow], some of the sheep and the pigs in the yard, oh and he has had his first encounter here with pheasants too. All these are vitally important attributes for a farm horse. On Sunday we walked slowly around to inspect all the large machinery in a quiet and deserted yard.

I am in no hurry with him and will take as long as it takes to get him used to what we expect and hope for. If his back needs a rest then he will learn his way around the farm from the end of a lead rope. If I need extra help with his schooling I have friends who will be able to help me. It is extremely therapeutic for me to escape the ringing of the phone and almost never ending streams of emails that pour into the farm office,  for an hour every so often.

I may not be quite so thrilled when it starts to rain and never stops. We have had so little rain we are worried about having enough grass to last the stock through the winter and with the number of acres we have and the low stocking rate that should never be a problem, but this year unusually it is.

the farm that Jethro built

this is the puppy who worried the steers

This is the puppy who worried the steers..

this is the steer who chased the cat

This is the steer who chased the cat

this is the cat who killed the chicken

This is the cat who killed the chicken

this is the hen who laid the egg

This is the chicken who laid the egg

this is the egg that Jethro had for breakfast

This is the egg that Jethro had for breakfast

To be continued……….

to drill or not to drill is the big question

I am not talking about  a visit to the dentist - although that is one of my great real life phobias – but the burning question that is on all the minds of arable farmers after almost 2 months with no rain at all.

The ground is so hard that there is no way on this difficult land that a suitable seed bed can be prepared to sow the seed into. Yet the autumn days are quickly passing by and the risk of too much rain arriving all at once and making the land equally unworkable but in a different and equally challenging way is a very real threat. 

Jethro’s machines are ready, the men are ready, and the seed is in bags waiting to be loaded into the drills.

We do have a passable oil seed rape crop [ called canola for those readers from across the Atlantic] however and I am posting a picture. This was drilled in August in a manner which conserved as much moisture as possible in the seed bed. If we can keep the pigeons from stripping it all it later in the winter it may be an ok crop, which will be great.

first lambs away

As I write this post early this morning the first lambs, and a few pigs are on their way to the abattoir as we start to sell some of this year’s livestock ‘crops’.

We have taken the opportunity at the same time to wean the lambs – to take them away from their mothers – and give the ewes time to recover before the breeding season starts again for us in November.  Next week we will sort through all the lambs again, send any more that are ready away to the abattoir, because like fresh seasonal plums lambs do not keep well once matured. The remaining 300+  will be given a dose of wormer and put onto fresh grazing and then weighed again in a fortnight..

The ewes will have 2 weeks to dry up their udders and then they will be carefully sorted through and any really old girls will be taken from the flock to spend a well earned retirement on some conservation grazing. Last year’s oldies will go away on their final journey soon but we have a customer looking for old bloodlines amongst our pedigree flock and he will come and pick some first.

The rest of the flock will be checked carefully for their condition: too fat or too thin [and their diet adjusted accordingly], their udders to see it is still in full working order [no good a ewe having 2 lambs and only one side of her udder working] and finally their mouths to see they still have a full set of working teeth [ no dentures here]. The whole flock will then be sorted and treated accordingly: extra grass, less grass or a red splash on the back of the head which is their one way ticket to join the ‘old girls’. A shepherd’s year starts in Autumn and once you understand the process I find the work has an enjoyable rythmn to it, well it would only be fair to say that I have  worked with sheep for many, many years!!

The harvest is almost done, we are just waiting for the oats which were simply too green last week to cut. However we seem to have hit a sudden rainy patch so Jethro’s idea of going to the Great Dorset Steam Fair next weekend may not happen. It is absolute heaven to him to spend a day amongst the soot and the fumes watching others tinker with old machines. A few years ago he had the same idea as harvest seemed to be progressing well and guess what it rained then too. We only need 2 clear days when the oats are ready but I am not planning anything until it is all in the barn.

the down sides of keeping sheep

What sort of day have you had?

Here it is – day 2 of harvest 2009 so already Jethro is immersed in big machines. He is now gone all day driving the combine and reported this morning that he didn’t get to bed until 1 am last night, and this is only the very start of the season!

My day has been really thrilling… since the monsoon last Thursday [2 inches of rain fell in a few hours] we appear to have had an explosion of flies out in the countryside resulting in a major attack of fly-strike in the sheep, despite the long acting repellent they had sprayed on to them earlier in the season.

For the first part of today I spent several hours picking maggots and unhatched eggs off the worst of the poor sheep, after first applying a hefty dose of Crovec to kill the eggs and larvae. Later we sorted out the rams dealing with their fly attacks they’d had and while we had them in we trimmed their feet and marked a few to send away that are not good enough to breed from, or have perhaps passed their prime.

There is nothing like a really smelly finish to the day with the all pervading smell of rotten rams feet still lingering in the nostrils as one starts to cook supper, lamb burgers of course!

Tomorrow, we will get in all the rest of the sheep in and check them all over for strike. We will also be applying a preventative dose of Crovec to the whole flock and this will hopefully last the rest of the fly season out. We ordered this product urgently this morning to be delivered later today as the stocks we normally keep on the farm are enough to treat an outbreak but we do not keep enough in stock to do the whole flock as preventive treatment.

At the same time as checking them and treating them I was weighing and marking the lambs with coloured spray marker which will be ready for slaughter soon. I mark them really clearly so these lambs do not get any fly repellent sprayed on at all. As big strong animals, who remain close to their mothers who are sprayed, they should not be subjected to an attack by blowflies. The meat withdrawal times are 8 days on Crovec and I always more than double this before sending any animals away and if possible like today I simply do not use a product like this on any animal due for slaughter in the next few weeks. At this time of the year it becomes a finite balance of keeping the animals well and protected from insects and also making sure any animals sold for meat sold are totally safe and wholesome.

We have also had the vet here today for poorly pigs but I shall tell you about that tomorrow.

So much has happened here on the farm since June. Currently, we have over 50 piglets, 30 calves and several hundred lambs. Yesterday we were wrapping the last of the silage bales [cattle food for the winter] and also combining.. We were a trifle stretched, everything seems to happen at once and there is no time for anything much least of all blogging, but I am back now after a fair gap and with your support I hope to keep going.

what a week..

Well, sincere apologies for lack of blogging.  Open Farm Sunday was a resounding success with our visitor numbers reaching 4 figures…. wow, had we known that would we have done it? Anyway we all survived with the help of so many kind volunteers who gave their time and knowledge freely.

OPEN FARM SUNDAY

We had an inch of rain on Sunday morning in a very short time, I just wanted to get back into bed after waking at 6am, I was so worried about the day. I only went to bed after midnight after stuffing carrier bags for 3 hours with some very kind friends and family who joined in to help this laborious task.

However fifteen minutes before our gates were to open a streak of blue sky appeared and we actually had a fine day, which made all the difference. It was wonderful to see so many happy smiling people enjoying the animals and machines and we hope they learnt something about how their food is produced.

Well, we are already planning for next year now - 13th June 2010 – while the clearing up and taking down of displays goes on and we will have a major de-brief when we get time. 

The new piglets all arrived in time and I hope to put a pic on soon. We have more visits this week of school groups and pre-school while we are still set up for visitors and the concrete yards are so clean. It truly seems that the work of a farmer is never done and it is no longer just about producing food - sharing knowledge and improved public relations seem to be just as important.

Food for thought and food to eat, indeed!

the ladies are still waiting

The ladies-in-waiting are still waiting and I feel extremely foolish for announcing we’d have piglets last weekend, however I was guided by the date the vendor gave me for the Tamworth. I really hope one of them will oblige in time for our Open Farm Sunday next weekend.

It is another lovely sunny day and there is no sign of rain. Three hours of rain is all we have had this week and although we all love to work outside in the warm and the dry conditions it has actually been very windy and this combined with the lack of rain is now becoming worrysome.

We are waging war on the pigeons, who have homed in and attacked our well grown brassicas and netting the long strip may be the only answer. Jethro has managed to reduce numbers by shooting a few of the pesky things, but  then others come. I wonder how pigeons tell each other where the tasty greens are so that more and more come? Jethro  has even tried out a farm scale battery powered noisy bird scarer. The effect of this weird noise [like a wonky burglar alarm] was to simply upset all the sheep in the field opposite, cause the fattening cattle to stampede and irritate us and the dogs so much we eventually had to turn it off.

The beans and the squashes still need planting out hopefully today and tomorrow. Food production, we still love it but as always it remains challenging at times.

There was a new lamb last night, and there can’t really be many more to come. The lambs look well [a dry year always suits lambs] and the sheep and lambs have had their dose of clik to prevent flystrike. We had had two sheep mildly affected by maggots, and they were treated with insecticide to kill the maggots and eggs. As we deliberately lamb late in the season there is always a balance to keep between leaving the sheep in peace or rounding them up to apply the Clik. Rounding up sheep with small lambs is not easy. Every year is different but the sunnier weather has hatched a lot of flies.

a little light relief

Just a little light relief from all the chores, and how we laughed…

These brave men deserve all the applause we can give….

 

Even if you don’t like horses this is bound to raise a smile, I am still laughing now!

no news

No piglets yet! Did we put her off by cooking roast ham for Saturday lunch? The due date given was Sunday and the signs were there but she is hanging on…  Now we wonder which of the three ladies-in-waiting will be first?

The Tamworth has made a giant straw nest, this morning, and hidden herself behind this wall of straw… so we’ll keep checking.

Meanwhile it has rained for about 3 hours today and we planted all the brassicas and sweetcorn out yesterday.

We now need more rain and less pigeons who have already homed in on our little plants, shredding and consuming their growing leaves as part of a May day feast.

boys and their toys

Nothing quite like a quiet Bank Holiday weekend!

I expect the Tamworth gilt to have her very first piglets by tomorrow so I am spending the day trotting between the garden and her pen and to cheer her up along the way I am bearing little gifts of weeds [fat hen] and shot lettuces.

In the meanwhile my Jethro has just resorted to the largest scale farm machinery he has in order to prepare the brassica bed for planting out of the many seedlings. The untilled ground in the veg garden has set like cement and the rotavator, which he normally uses could not cope with the rock hard ground. I hope to post a picture later it is really too funny to see!

However, the total lack of precipitation is beginning to look very serious with yields of grain, hay, silage and British grown vegetables all predicted to be well down. We may enjoy the dry weather to work in every day but by golly the land needs the rain. Even if we get a lot of rain now it may actually be too late for some crops. A very dry April AND May is unusual.

busy as bees

We’ve had bees swarming this week and new calves born almost every day while the raging tide of new lambs has ebbed to a trickle and it will soon be time to vaccinate the lambs for bluetongue.

The-boar-that-fired-blanks has been renamed. He is now the-boar-that-works-very-well as we now have our two sows due to farrow any minute from the look of them and a Tamworth gilt bought in specially [so we'd have piglets for the open day] is due tomorrow or Monday.

So I am off this morning to ride another horse and escape this mad place for a just few hours grace.

The rest of the weekend when not seeing to these pregnant animals will be spent planting out several hundred veggie seedlings. Sweetcorn, cauli, broccoli, cabbage, red cabbage, beans, lettuce, and then we will have to water. We have a large tank which holds the run off from the grain store roofs. The onions planted some weeks back hace done nothing, it is simply too dry.

We use a Norwegian based weather forecast and they predict a lot of rain on Monday but the Met office does not. I wonder who will be themost accurate. I have a dear friend in the USA who says all the weather forecasters are simply ‘weather guessers’… Time will tell.

the long walk to life

Clearly I spoke to soon when I wrote yesterday about the lack of problems in the cows. I tempted fate. After all this time in farming I should know better!

We were checking the livestock and tagging the latest lambs out in the fields when we noticed one of the heifers calving. She appeared to be in no hurry, which is normal for a heifer, and as we meandered about the four fields nearest to her catching lambs and tagging  and tailing them we realised she really was not progressing in the usual fashion.

It is hard to explain how, after a lifetime of stockmanship, exactly how we know there is a problem, but we did. Maybe she just looked wrong, and she certainly was not getting on with the job – walking around and standing rather than lying down and pushing. Further checking at closer quarters showed we could only find one foot, a front foot. The normal presentation for a calf’s birth is two feet and a head, although almost every year we get a breech [backwards with back feet first].

Jethro and I were a mile and a half from home in a very large field with no means of either catching or restraining the heifer in a small enclosure. There was only one thing to do. Walk her gently and slowly back to the farm. We did this and she was very good and very quiet, six fields we crossed, as gate by gate was shut behind her and then we had a good half mile of open countryside and wheat fields to cross. Every so often along the way she would stop at a trough for a drink and perhaps manage a a few contractions before setting off again but her progress was good. Eventually Jethro ambled her across the last wheat field on the diagonal as I buzzed round in the vehicle to get all the right gates either open or shut back at the farm to get her straight into the yard and in to our cattle handling pens.

The heifer was very amenable to our handling of her which was fantastic and quite remarkable when you think that we bought her as a yearling and she has lived out in our fields for two years since then and she is not really used to close handling excpet for the occasional treatment for parasites and vaccinations such as bluetongue. And receiving extra  rations to supplement the grass in the winter.

The heifer did not want to go in the cattle crush so we kept her in a pen and put a rope halter on her and tied her to the gate. Jethro rolled his sleeves up and put a long veterinary glove on and we poured the lubrication gel all over his hand and arm.  It was not hard to discover why she couldn’t calve herself. The calf’s right leg was pinned back on the the far side of the cervix, and with some careful manoeuvring between contractions Jethro tweaked it forward. We now had a normal presentation for birth, however the heifer was getting tired and the calf appeared to be quite big.

The next step was to attach calving ropes to the two front legs just above the fetlock [ankle]  joints. After doing that and holding them firmly every time the cow pushed we attached the calving aid. This is a very clever machine that fits the rear end of a cow very neatly. The ropes are attached one each side of the central pole on a rachet. As the cow pushes and the calf emerges millimetre by millimetre the rachet is gently tightened. This allows the heifer to give birth naturally without the calf slipping back in every time the contractions ease.  As soon as the calf’s head is out in the outside world the ropes are taken off the rachet and the calf’s weight is supported as the heifer naturally pushes the calf out. This way the calf has the best chance to breathe on delivery and the heifer has the best chance of not being damaged internally during her first birth.

In our long farming careers Jethro and I have both seen these calving aids used on other farms in a very cavalier manner whereby the calf is forced out a  very fast rate and the potential damage done to the cow is almost unimaginable, and we think that this is a most terrible practice and one that needs stopping. We firmly believe it is a balance of helping the cow and keeping the calf alive but we also reckon that using nature and the contractions to our advantage is the best way.

If we can’t ever calve a cow, which happens occasionally, then we ask the vet to come. I think we have only had 2 or 3 Caesarians in all the years we’ve farmed, and all these cows have eventually gone on to give birth normally the next year.

The calf arrived and was laid gently on the clean concrete while we untied the cow. Although it was her first calf, the young cow immediately knew to lick the calf and loved her instantly. We fetched a thick pad of straw, peeled off the outside of a large round bale, to lay under the calf to give grip and padding for when the calf tried to stand, which would only be a matter of minutes.  Then we had a much needed cup of tea. We’d first arrived in the field at at 2pm and now it was 5.30pm

When we came back out, full of tea and biscuits, both mother and daughter were curled up, resting together on the improvised straw island. Later, after checking the other groups of cows and sheep on we found the calf had suckled and received the vital colostrum so we tucked them up together for their first night in a clean, newly strawed byre with a feed of crushed home grown barley for Mum. 

Some tasks in farming are hard work and difficult but very, very satisfying. 

Tomorrow they will go back out to grass and eventually be taken back to the herd by trailer. However, as this cow is such a sweetheart and so very placid we have decided to have her on display in a pen on Open Farm Sunday so that all the visitors can see a cow and calf, really close at hand.

raining calves

Well the rain arrived on Thursday night, in fierce bursts leaving us in a warm murky pool of humidity. Not enough rain yet, Jethro says, to do good and it fell so fast and so hard yesterday morning that it ran off the land and along the roads and is now filling up the pond. At least from the kitchen window the vegetable garden gives the impression of being damp at last and perhaps the onions planted two weeks ago will start to grow?

It is not just rain that is falling fast – new calves are arriving almost daily. So far without too much trouble [fingers crossed], one heifer [a young cow, calving for the first time] needed help, last week, late at night in the dark. The calf was almost out and swinging from her rear end with his hips held fast at the narrowest point of the heifer’s pelvis. A good pull and the bull calf was out, safe and sound. It is unusual for a calf to get stuck at this point because a calf’s head and shoulders are usually the widest and most difficult part to push through the birth passage but because we were there all was well and neither calf nor heifer were distressed. .

Cows are totally occupying our minds just now. With Open Farm Sunday coming up we are working on our displays and activities. We are building two model cows in order that anyone, but particularly the children, may try their hand at milking. There is however one problem the instructions have no measurements and no one here has any artistic talents. We are getting there by degrees, enlarging this cow piece by piece.. but hope that FACE may come up with the actual measurements soon. It does not even say how tall to make the beast! I am sure it will all be fine, in the end, but we all do wish at times at least one of us had the ability to pick up a pen and draw a cow or a sheep or a pig…

dry lands

I had a drive round all the grassland last night checking the sheep and the cattle before dark as we do every day at this time of the year.

It is extraordinary how the land has dried out and the grass is already burning off. The narrow sheep tracks which criss cross the chalky pastures are already browned off, and the ancient grassed roads in the old parkland are looking yellow instead of green and we are still in mid-May. Looking at the grass closely, one would guess we were in August, as the growth of new grass is not currently keeping pace with the rate at which it is grazed.

650 acres of grass seems like a lot of grazing until the rain stops falling. According to my diary, two years ago we were almost swimming at this time of the year with inches and inches of rain that never stopped falling. It sure looks like it’s already shaping to be a dry year.

the real country life

Reading last week in the Telegraph about life inthe countryside made me laugh out loud.

Why has there been such a long a gap in my blog entries .. not due to any shenanigans on my part that’s for sure.  And there it was again on Sunday - in You magazine, the very same topic .

Laugh, we haven’t stopped!  Well, in between wondering what expenses will next be charged to the public purse by over 600 professional persons and simply coping with all the after effects of all the sex and all the seeds.

Yes, I did say SEX, but sex is as normal an occupation for animals as breathing or eating. Sex, or service as it is often referred to in the farmyard, happens a lot in our herds and in our flock and Spring is the main time of the year for us to reap the consequences. It is just as well, putting it simply, if there was ‘no service’, they’d be no animals and we wouldn’t be farmers. 

So far we have had over 300 lambs and are already in double figures for calves. We have one young pig due from 24th May and another two sows now do look to be in pig [fingers crossed]. We have a lot more calves due and still about sixty sheep to lamb.

The ‘dodgy boar’ may not be dodgy after all, he can be forgiven though as he was however young when he met the ‘muddy girls’ and a complete virgin, so perhaps it took him longer to put the pieces of the jigsaw correctly together. They are after all out door, and very free range, pigs and it has become clearer to me quite why some rare breeds are so rare!  The friendly boar has has a ’stay of execution’ and will get another chance to sow his seeds again if the two sows produce good litters of piglets. We are all hoping all will be well and he will go on to be a champion sire.

And while I am on the subject of seeds I can report that the arable crops are doing well and I have a forest of tomatoes waiting to be turfed out into the unheated greenhouse from the ancient conservatory. However as the greenhouse is currently full of seedlings [caulilower, red cabbage, broccoli, leeks, lettuce, cabbage, more cauliflower and purple sprouting broccoli, and sweetcorn] ready for the large vegetable garden, and the large garden is waiting for Jethro and his rotavator it may still take some time. I have resorted to feeding fertilser to the plant plugs that look sad to avoid the work and expense of totally repotting so many plugs just before outdoor planting.

At the weekend I sowed lettuce, radish, more lettuce , basil , carrot, spinach, swiss chard and hoed all the onions and garlic. I have been late with the sunflowers and have had complete failures of certain types of courgettes and runner and dwarf beans. So bad were the failures that I have wondered if they were all sown in the same bag of compost. The beans and courgette seeds just vanished. Normally I have very green fingers and it is very unusual for germination to fail and on such a scale. The later resowing of beans are just erupting now so it looks second time lucky for them. It is too soon however to see if the new courgette seeds have worked but the one courgette plant I bought early on from a road side stall for fifty pence is almosty in production so next year I must be much earlier for the indoor ones.

We are now desperate for rain here. It appears to be the sort of year where the grey clouds come and are swept away on these strong cold easterly winds. Jethro says this is a farm that either gets all the rain or none, and after two washout years in succession this could be the latter.

porcine rodeo

Our pig saga continues. Having replaced our very rare boar that perhaps had not done as he should with an older, proven close relative of his [his Uncle], we now discover that perhaps he had actually been alright after all. 

A few more weeks should hopefully produce the evidence we desperately need. In the meantime his immediate death sentence has been lifted and he is now amusing himself in the  empty cattle shed digging for tasty treats of old barley that had fallen behind the troughs where the cattle couldn’t reach.

The cattle were turned out this week too and we had a major rodeo as we let over fifty cattle out on to the lush spring grass. Every year is reassuringly the same – the cattle trumpet their joy at being let out as they run down the road kicking their heels in the air. It never fails to lifts one’s heart especially as the task of feeding them twice daily with home grown cereals and homegrown hay or silage is lifted. One old farmer friend used to state: ” The day of bondage is ended for another year”, until November when it all starts again with the next batch of calves to be weaned.

While examining the sows who are very quiet and really quite tame for pigs I made the terrible mistake of stepping over one very friendly girl to try to read her ear tattoo. I had one leg on each side of this chattering supine pig [who always chunters away as if she is having a full conversation] this proved to be a major error. Even with my glasses on I struggled to read the number and she got a bit fed up with me turning her ear inside out and peering at her. So she stood up. As a full grown sow this meant I was now completely astride the pig, with no way for my feet to reach the ground. “Uh oh” I thought “this could be painful”.. and with my hands I pushed down on her back to try to ease myself off her. This extra pressure to her to her meant “go” and she shot off across the orchard to join her friends with me on her back. “What are you doing?” came the cry from across the pens.. “Trying to get off” said I. Shock turned to laughter, both from those on the ground and from me on top of the pig, which made it worse as I couldn’t laugh and get off at the same time.

The sow decided she’d had enough - and gave a sharp turn to the left and humped her back firmly depositing me onto my knees on the hard ground. My pride took the greatest fall, although more than a week on I still bear the bruises, and I definitely won’t being doing that again..

flora and fauna

We’ve just had a bird survey done by a RSPB volunteer. It is very interesting to read the results however  as it is done at a specific time over a 3+ hour period it can only be a snapshot of the birdlife here at Prosperous Farm.

The list includes: Blackbird, Blackcap, Black headed gull, Blue tit, Carrion crow, Chaffinch, Chiffchaff, Collared dove, Dunnock, Goldfinch, Great tit, Green woodpecker, Greenfinch, Grey partridge, House sparrow, Jackdaw, Lapwing, Linnet, Long tailed tit, Mallard, Meadow pipit, Moorhen, pheasant, Red-legged partridge, Robin, Rook, Skylark, Swallow, Whitethroat, Wood pigeon, Wren, and Yellow hammer.

In the same week that this survey was done we saw both Buzzards and Red kites, heard the Cuckoo and the Little owl call as well as the Song thrush sing in the garden. Several Canada geese also visited the pond, we heard them long before we actually saw them, and there have been so many Magpies around that the imminent arrival of the next generation in the family has worked out first to be a girl and then a boy.

It is rewarding to know that the conservation work we are doing is helping to maintain and increase the flora and fauna. We now have a whole meadow of Cowslips and have recently shut the gate to keep the livestock stock out. We will only open it for grazing later in the season  in order to preserve these delightful spring plants.

death in a public place

I hope when it is my time to leave this earth it is peaceful and quick, and not right in the middle of a public footpath.

Sheep are notorious for their ease of dying, and today one very pregnant ewe died suddenly, in the middle of the footpath, in full glare of the warm spring sun. It must have been quick, she had not struggled as the ground was not on this occasion torn up by thrashing limbs,  and there were no obvious clues as to her demise, plus she looked perfectly alright yesterday.

 However the warm sun shining on her once active body attracted flies by the multitude and the usually pleasant [if you like animals] warm sheep smell resonant of lanolin and grass is soon replaced by something very distinct that cloys in the nose and throat, and is best avoided.

It is in the nature of farming and working with livestock which inevitably leads to coping with deadstock some of the time. We have a large on-farm incinerator which we are licensed to use for sheep and as I write this she is now a cloud of smoke in the previously clear April sky.

horseless

Unfortunately after the excitement of last week and the thought that perhaps I had at last found the right horse, it was just not meant to be.

A delightful ride out, unaccompanied, which made my heart sing while my head firmly told me that this delightful little horse was too green to be considered. If he had had another 6 months riding out then the result would probably be just what I am looking for.

I have also sadly discounted the other one who had up to now run a close second. My head told me she was good and steady but my heart wasn’t really interested in her.. funny how vitally important it is for the two to be in unison. 

As I have said before finding a good horse is like finding a good husband or wife… very difficult but it can be done.  Although unfortunately for many it is not always first time, and there is always the settling down period for all parties whether they have four legs or two.

Good sheepdogs fall into this same category and right now we are still looking for one of those as our good old girl has finally retired from the field, she is still very fit in body but her mind is not as it was. Her life span is not however guaranteed as she has taken to chasing vehicles and biting tyres in a big way and can no longer be easily stopped. The Manitou wheels are her favourite this week and just when she has a big chunk of tyre in her teeth, the machine often goes into reverse. We have tried everything we can to prevent her doing this but we do still allow her out in the yard when we are there to take her chance otherwise she’d be shut in all day and she’d hate that.

Anyway, I am not too downhearted over horses and am just off to ride another one today. What could be better than riding in the glorious sunshine? Even with over two hours to drive each way.

Like before, on the phone, this horse sounds good and could be what we are looking for,  but I no longer read too much into what people tell me. I ride it and handle it before deciding what to do next.

Sleeping on a difficult decision is always useful too. When young I was particularly hopeless at this, but age has helped to temper my impetuous nature a little, and I am optimistic that there is a little horse out there somewhere with our name on it.

The lambs continue to arrive in a steady flow, helped along by the glorious weather, and Ruby is over her mastitis and providing us with milk once more.

POSTSCRIPT: this is my 100th Post! When I started to blog I had no idea how quickly 100 posts would come around. Time passes quickly in our busy lives and the words seem to flow from the fingers quickly too. Thank you to all my readers and particularly those who are kind enough to take the time to comment.

hens…

Another two calves and a lot more lambs have been born today. Lovely sunshine here but still a  cold wind.

The plants in the greenhouse are doing really well. If we don’t get a move on in the actual veg garden they will be huge by the time we are able to plant them. Even the first 24 sweetcorn plants have popped up in their individual pots yesterday, it is wonderful to see new growth and new life all around and to be part of it.

However, before we can plant out my seedlings we must do something about some of the hens.  A few of them laugh at the electric fence and spend all day in the veg garden. I tried to shut them in last night and planned take the scissors to their wings this morning and up the charge on the electric fence as well. We also need to find where two are laying because it is not in the snug nest box and I know I am short of eggs. 

Mmmmm…  my plans did  not go very well. I’d cleaned out and disinfected one hen house yesterday using Jeyes fluid as we seem to have an outbreak of red mite and I have opened up the other hen house for them. I use these two houses in rotation with a major disinfection and long rest period in between each use.

At bed time I find four out of the five hens sitting on the disinfected hen house in a huddle. In the dark I manage to take three of them [one at a time] to the ’clean’ house. One hen was missing, not sure where she slept despite shining torches in all the trees, and the other naughty hen refused to be caught.  But there were still five hens scavenging this morning and yes you’ve guessed it – two of them [ the two I can't catch] back in the veggie garden.. this led to the word “gun” being mentioned by Jethro at breakfast.. this usually comes out for pigeons and rabbits.

the stuff of dreams

Almost a week has passed since I last blogged and it has been another really busy week. Lambing is now properly underway, and we have had another calf born safely. We’ve had three calves so far this spring and it is lovely to see them skipping in the sunshine.

Unusually, I have driven almost 1000 miles this week either viewing and riding horses to replace the previous horse who didn’t settle, or undertaking farm business. I am quite glad to be at home today for once even though I have been working flat out since 6am..

I think I have found a suitable horse for riding around the farm and hope to return on Monday for one more ride on him before agreeing to one month’s trial. It has been very hard to choose between two particular horses [ and of course they were 200 miles apart] after looking at and riding many equines over the last few weeks.

Only two were not as described in their particulars, or by their owner [with one, I should have remembered to ask about feet before doing a 250 mile round trip], and we have seen a huge variety of types and breeds, but it has finally come down to a choice of two and after next week I hope to be able to write more about the experience. 

I have however met some lovely people along the way. The trust that has been shown to us, to take horses out unaccompanied and alone by someone that they don’t really know [or have any idea if we can ride] has been amazing and a very important part of the process. One little horse was almost discounted as when rode her for the first time, in the company of other horses, she almost went to sleep. Taking her out on her own, a month later, was much better, however I think she will probably be the last losser… but I am trying to be very objective about the whole process and have also taken advice. If the two finalists could have merged together I believe we’d truly have the perfect steed, but I guess that only happens in dreams.

We have also had a farm walk this week with fifty visitors of all ages. These educational visits are brilliant for making us have a major tidy up around all the buildings. Perhaps it is time for visitors in the farmhouse too… but since the Dining room is already overflowing with educational material for OPEN FARM SUNDAY, perhaps it will have to wait. It is always very interesting to us to hear new questions from the public about what we do, and to see how they act when visiting a farm. There are always a few people who think they can go anywhere they like on the premises and others who make the day for us by being so polite, patient and so very interesting.

All the plants that were potted on last weekend have grown on well, and I still hope to plant the onion setts very soon but must be careful not to over do the bending.. all our backs are creaking right now and we are all queuing up for the chiropractor. The cauliflower seeds have come up in record time but I am slightly confused by the instructions in the  gardening book and no longer sure if we are growing late summer ones or early winter ones.. so long as we can eat them in due course that is all that matters.

PS: Poor Ruby has mastitis again, and is back on the intramammary tubes. We had to rush out and buy milk for the house, and hope she will be better soon. She has been turned out with the bull by day and is back in her byre at night. We hope to be back on her milk by Wednesday as we always go over the reccommended withdrawal period for all medicines.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter!

Once again the days seem to have have flown and I have a gap in my regular blogging. This is partly due to the workload  here and also from a much needed few days away from the farm.

The grass and crops are growing well and the sheep start lambing this week. We’ve had 2 calves born so far, and more due very soon. The greenhouse and conservatory are very full of plants waiting for the milder weather to plant out. 500 onion setts await immediate planting [ they only arrived last week by post] but since it has rained all over the weekend I have caught up with transplanting tomato and cucumber seedlings and sowing the sweetcorn, courgette, pumpkin and squash seeds under cover of glass instead.

We are also deep into planning for Open Farm Sunday and LEAF have sent us many packets of seeds to distribute to the children when they visit the farm. These seed packets are provided by DEFRA and in our large batch seem to be predominantly red pepper seeds. There is also Rocket, Cress and Basil but as a seasoned gardener and grower of veg from seed I am very surprised by the choice of seeds since these packets are meant to encourage children to grow things. How many children actually like Rocket and how many will have the patience to try to grow peppers?

The day itself is not until 7th June, and that to my mind is late in the season for growing peppers. I have some grown from seed planted earlier this year that are ready to finally pot on now and I have planted the Defra pepper and basil seeds which arrived this week in the hope that we will at least have  plants on display. Nearer the time I shall sow cress and rocket for the BIG DAY. I now have even more seed packets coming from another source, quick growing lettuce this time. If we don’t use them all I shall send them in to the local schools so they will be used up. I expect the numbers of visitors we will get on the day will depend almost entirely on the weather.

There is so much to think about for this big open day from First Aid cover to portaloos to catering and just what will interest our visitors and most worryingly will we have enough helpers? We will all be adding events management to our CV’s and do seem to be managing all this quite well without having a degree in the subject.  Between us we just have several lifetimes of experience, an understanding of Health and Safety and buckets of common sense!

ewe just HAVE to see this….

I thought I had not time to blog today [ I will explain why in another post] but then I was sent this you tube clip.

Watch, enjoy and be awed.

rain stopped weigh in

I am able to update the blog now as we were literally just about to go out to weigh the cattle from the sheds and administer their bluetongue vaccine booster but the heavens have opened in a  sudden deluge and instead I find I have a few spare minutes to quickly tap the keys before starting another large task. It is very cold, and very wet and I think I am now not sorry to be stuck indoors.

The 400 acres of drilled spring corn and our first row of early potatoes in the garden will benefit from the rain. Unfortunately we had not quite finished rolling all the arable seed beds after drilling, but as we have had a run of almost perfect weather there are few complaints. Within five minutes of the squall arriving the tractor drivers have phoned in to say they are now returning to the yard.

Our first suckler calf of the season, a heifer, was born on Saturday and is doing well, although her mother is currently not in the greatest shape and is under the care of the vet. This particular cow had lost condition and has had blood tests to try to work out what is wrong when she is eating well and well in herself but she is lacking in condition. We knew she isn’t ill, as such, as she gave the vet and I such a run around in the yard on Thursday when he came out to examine her. Eventually, after several attempts of nearly getting her to the gate [even with food] only to have her return to the far end of the yard we had to let out Ruby the pet cow out in order to get them both up the race and into the cattle crush.

Persuading Ruby back into her byre after the patient was safely penned was slightly perilous too. It is Ruby’s  first time out of the byre this winter and in the warm sunshine she was very frisky. I waved a bucket with food in the bottom from the end of the yard and she is so greedy that she galloped up the concrete, flat out, kicking her heels out to one side as she ran. I stopped her quite easily but then rather lost my nerve to continue with persuading her to go back to bed as her byre was still some distance away and she was desperate to get at the food even if it meant barging into me. I handed the bucket to Jethro [who had just arrived] and he grasped it, rather like the baton in a relay race, and sped down the yard with his naughty red heifer galloping flat out after him…

ink……..

I had a laundry disaster this morning while washing the white coats which we wear for meat sales… I mistakenly left a black ball point pen in the coat pocket, even though I had checked the pockets. On removing the washing from the machine, while avoiding the puppy’s razor like teeth, an black inky mess stood out from the bright whiteness of the coats resulting in a huge groan from yours truly.

Then, I had a brainwave from something I had seen on the Victorian Farm.  In the programme which covered washday and laundry [which took all week and nothing else could have been done] a dim memory flashed through my neurons at lightening speed. MILK! Long before the age of modern detergents milk had been used to remove ink.

As we have a house cow and we have plenty of spare milk I soaked the two white coats in five litres of milk for over two hours and duly washed again at 60′ with my usual persil non-bio plus a whitener. Result. I hung the coats out in the sunshine and instead of black streaks all over I just have a couple of stubborn very small ink marks which I think is a really great result.

the coming of the spring grass

The sun is still shining and the grass is growing well while all the time the tractors are still rolling on the arable land.

The growth of the new grass is much easier to measure on the other side of the fence as it is nibbled immediately within the field boundaries. The ram lambs still come for their daily feed home grown barley but are less keen for it which is a sure sign of the coming of the spring grass.

The stock work is piling up with vaccinations due, cattle still to be weighed and all manner of sheep to be moved to fresh grazing on previous set aside to give the sheep a natural nutritional boost while at the same time home resting the home pastures before lambing.

There are just not enough hours in the day or enough manpower available at the same time to get through all the urgent tasks at the exact time they need to be done. The pressure we are all feeling, from the arable and livestock sides of the business, is so typical of mixed farming systems in the spring and autumn. After all these years we ought to be either hardened to it or have come up with a better plan but we haven’t yet and everything usually works out fine in the end.

The boar appears much better and will now be used on 3 of our girls.

In the meantime we plough on with the computerising of the accounts and the planning for various access visits including Open Farm Sunday on 7th June, and various other educational access visits.

feeling the spring rise

The cattle can clearly smell the grass growing and know spring is almost here. This morning they are running about in their open sided sheds kicking their heels in the bright, warm sunshine.  Tomorrow we will weigh them and calculate their daily liveweight gain over the winter and for the oldest beef animals estimate their time of dispatch. Our wonderfully patient beef customers are getting a little restless and I promised them an update on when their beef boxes will be ready.

In the meantime I have just weighed and selected another eight lambs to send this week and this afternoon we will be checking on the progress of the fattening pigs, however I am sure they will be a few weeks off yet.  Our fattening lambs are almost gone for another year and come mid April we will be delivering the new crop.

Progress on the arable front is good too with the drilling almost done and the fertiliser application on the wheat making good progress.

In the meantime the hired boar has arrived and is firmly in quarantine. This is not our first experience of hiring boars and we are frequently dismayed to find that some rare breed pigs are apparently kept in indifferent conditions. We are not sure he is even fit for the purpose he came for.  Personally this morning I think he still looks poor, and we are debating whether to even try him or just send him back. He was dosed with Dectomax, an anti parasite injection, before we even took him off the trailer as he has arrived with what looks to us rather like both mange and worms, still his appetite is good and that is always a good thing with pigs. Pigs who are not eating is usually a sign of something terminal.  Keeping these rare breeds going is not at all easy but we are determined to get it right and make a really good job of it, I just wish every other rare breed pig keeper tried to do the same.

In the meantime we’ve found a boar of the same line as our sterile one and can fetch him very soon. This will be good because we really prefer to have a closed herd, which makes us much less vulnerable to outbreaks of parasites and disease. It also means we are totally responsible for the pigs’ management and we prefer to do that too.

I have bad news and good news:  First the bad news – I clearly spoke too soon on the drilling front as the very clever little box of ’chips’ which calculates the correct seed rate has gone on the blink and is causing MAJOR problems for Jethro. The original seed drill was so much simpler.

Now the good news is I just walked past the hired boar’s box and he is shouting for his tea already.

sowing seeds….

Animal or vegetable seeds? 

Well both we hope!

Drilling has started again for the spring sown crops of barley.

And the sex life of the pigs, or rather the total lack of pregnant pigs, has been a talking point here for the last few days. There has appeared to be plenty of action and semen out in the paddocks for the last few months but finally no actual piglets to show for it! We wish we could afford a pregnancy scanner.

A new boar has been collected and hired as we found our boar was sterile… the new boy is now in a loose box ’in quarantine’ away from our girls and he will remain isolation until we have dosed him for worms and external parasites and made sure he is not infected with anything nasty. Then he can have 2 lovely piggy ladies this month, and another two next month.

By then we shall have another boar of our own, and this one will be able to go back. We don’t want all 9 lovely ladies all to give birth at once because it could make selling the pork in one go too difficult.

If we can, with a fully working boar, stagger the farrowing right then the customer list usually seems to keep pace with the production, or at least that is the plan. In the meantime we shall have to buy a few weaners from our friends to keep us going. We have 15 home bred rare breed fatteners coming along niceley outdoors at the moment and they are expected to start to be ready from May onwards.

Time will tell if all these ’seeds’ will develop into new crops of barley and piglets… or whether the sex lives of the Prosperous Farm pigs will eventually become a cult read… watch this blog…