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Well, my back gave notice on Saturday that enough was enough and I will be taking a week off from both the farm and this blog from tomorrow.
A trip to the chiropractor has I hope lessened the impact of the latest strain but still day to day life is a struggle and it is really not surprising when you think that none of us have had a single day off the farm for several months and we are all doing demanding jobs that are both mentally and physically challenging.
Farming and bad backs sadly frequently go togther and it is just something we all live with, including me, learning as we go along, how best to avoid the problems and generally look after our spines. I have had the proper moving and handling training and generally my back has been really good for several years so this latest episode was both rather unexpected and an unpleasant reminder that once a back has ‘gone’ it will never be quite the same again.
When my back went ‘ping’ on Saturday I was just shutting the boot of a friend’s pick-up, it was as simple as that, and now I cannot even do an everyday task like putting my socks on and I am very grateful for the modern painkillers that I am taking every 6 hours in order to keep going. Still, I do know it will get better, and I hope this time it will be sooner rather than later as the diary is very full.
Meanwhile the two little piglets are doing very well, and on the other side of the farm it is time to take stock of all the maintenance work that carries on through the winter once the land work is completed. Hedgecutting, property maintenance, treeplanting are all next on to do Jethro’s list.
The drilling of next year’s crops is finally finished, HOORAY.
It appears we are never too old to learn new facts. Last week
A Full Moon
I learnt that a full moon towards the end of October is called a ‘woodcock moon’. This site seems to bear this out.
This photograph , taken by someone else, beautifully illustrates today’s post.
a rural washing line
It is well known that talking to oneself is the first sign of madness, and while still a child I was often told that doing one’s cardigan buttons up wrongly was also not a very good sign. Today, I have done something which, when you hear it, you will be thinking is a definite sign of madness.
The last few weeks of non-stop farm work have put a huge strain on the household laundry department with regards dust, debris, oil and soil. Jethro’s latest offerings, left hopefully beside the washing machine, were completely covered in very short, green shreds of hay. The large navy blue sweater had all but disappeared under this thatched covering of hay. The black socks, lying close at hand were just the same. The ancient tiled floor was adorned with sweet smelling rural confetti.
After various displacement activities, and putting the task off as long as I could I finally gathered up the offending items and the debris and retreated outside. I then shook the clothes as hard as I could. This brought only a slight improvement, and luckily I ‘d remembered to stand up wind while I did it.
However, the stubbly green particles were still much in evidence so for the first time in my life I have pinned dirty washing onto the line in the hope that a bit of weather will clear the debris enough for them to be washed. My biggest worry, next to you all thinking I have gone barking [unless you thought that already], is in a few days time, will I actually remember they are dirty….
In the meantime Jethro is now wearing overalls while feeding hay.
grow your own or buy local and support those who grow fresh quality produce
Much to Jethro’s delight we have passed this challenge, and do so happily several times every week. We had visitors for lunch on Saturday and cooked roast topside of Aberdeen Angus beef, from an animal born and reared here at Prosperous Farm.
Every vegetable: carrots, red onions, parsnips, courgettes, cauliflower, potatoes and broccoli were grown in the large vegetable garden. Our own eggs were used for the Yorkshire pudding and the sponge topping. Apples were given by a local friend and the raspberries were grown by another friend in July and frozen.
The only additional ingredients were flour and sugar. It is so satisfying and so delicious, not to mention all the calories you burn off while working in the garden so you can actually eat more!
Guidelines on how to join and also how to take part without actually growing your own and further full instructions can be found here.
‘One hundred feet’ is actually not applicable in our case, everything here is on a somewhat larger scale: the house, the garden and the acres of farm land, but since the sentiment is the same and I thought this was such a good idea that I wanted to share it with you.
For those of you who want to eat local food but are not able to actually produce your own there are many small producers of all types of food, local to where you live, who are listed on the Channel 4 food map, or found at Big Barn.
Happy cooking, and even happier eating.
On paper:
- one in-pig gilt [young female pig], average litter size 8 – 10, 2.1 litters per year.
- calculate 8 potential sales of a mixture of pedigree breeding stock, weaners and ultimately boxes of pork.
- prospects good, gross income conservatively projected: 3 pedigree registered gilts @£95, 2 weaners @£ 60, and 3 fat pigs cut and butchered @£300 = @£1305 x 2.01 = £2623.05
- offer shares in The Piggy Bank PLC to buy more pigs
- deposits received and purchases made.
- the gilt farrows prematurely has 5 piglets, 3 alive, 2 dead
- spend half a day tending to their needs and they begin to look potentially viable but with a long way to go
- the gilt lays on the best one of the three
- two weaker piglets are left, both boars with no future breeding potential and doubts that they will survive long enough to turn into pork.
- potential income possibly zero
Annual expenses per breeding pig [feed - home grown ration £179, straw £25, vet £30, labour £1850, use of boar £40, capital expenditure (25%) £120, Misc. incl. Heat, light, power, registration, fuel, hygiene, advertising and marketing etc £273.
The viability of The Piggy Bank PLC is severely threatened and Government support is called in. There is nothing to offer the share holders except a handful of dead piglets and the vague notion that next time will be better.
This example above may read harshly and may be upsetting to some readers but it is the stark reality of livestock farming, and is an agricultural illustration of the recent turmoil on the world’s banks.
It is also the actuality of living and tangible assets, and farming in an environmentally friendly and welfare conscious way. Here at Prosperous Farm economies of scale, combined with the other livestock enterprises help to cut many of of the costs and the figures given above are just an example to show exactly how tight the margins are.
However, parody aside: this life and death situation, which many livestock farmers deal with a on a regular basis, is also a type of evolution – ensuring up to a point – survival of the fittest animals and ensures that the breeding stock that does survive is both hardy and viable. And this in turn ensures that only the fittest farm businesses survive too, those with the best stockmanship skills combined with good financial management. However these events must also be averaged over many years as no year or season is ever the same and every farm has good years and indifferent ones too.
Well we still have 2 piglets.
The littlest one was unfortunately lain on by his mother yesterday, but the other 2 are now doing much better, suckling well and then retreating to their own area behind a barrier with the infra-red heat lamp, safely away from the danger of their mother’s bulky body as she tends to sigh loudly and just flop down in a heap.
Here’s hoping.
While the media pundits speculate and discuss the disintegration of the globe’s finances which now appear to have been built entirely on promises and IOU’s we have much more pressing matters here on the farm.
What we deal with on the farm on a day to day basis, and by this I mean every single day of the year, is tangible assets. You can see them, touch them and usually know approximately their worth. Growing crops, or failing crops, livestock or deadstock, it is basic and simple.
This morning a gilt [young female pig] has had her first piglets, by their lack of size we think they are premature. There was no sign last night that their birthday was imminent and because we bought this gilt already in-pig, we did not know the exact day of service. Usual gestation for a pig is 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days. Yesterday she had just started to bag up in the udder area but not as much as a pig usually does before they are due and I certainly could not draw any milk off her last night which is a usual sign of birth within 24 hours.
The gilt produced five piglets. Two were dead and buried right under the straw, perhaps she laid on them as she was birthing. On examining them closely there was no sign they had even drawn their first breath, one would have been the biggest of the litter and the other was a small one. Three more remain alive, 2 small ones and one very small, a runt. We have not even determined the sex yet as if we try pick them up they squeal loudly and this upsets the mother, who is already struggling to cope with her change in circumstances.
The piglets have not yet sucked their mother and it is vital that they receive the colostrums [first milk with antibodies] within the first six hours of life. I have managed to milk out a very small amount from the pig and syringe it into the piglets. It is so much harder trying to milk a pig than a sheep or a cow, perhaps a human breast pump would be easier? I syringed ten millilitres [two teaspoons] into the bigger two, and less for the smaller one, it was all I could milk out of her the first time. It gave them a new lease of life and two then tried to suckle. I managed to get one latched on for a few moments but then the squealing started as it got totally over excited about drinking, as all newborn animals do, so then the gilt got up and round and round the stable we went.
It is not at all easy, and actually quite dangerous for us, although she is lovely pig and very friendly the maternal instinct can kick in at any second and she could turn on us. She must weigh at least 130kg and could knock and pin us to the ground if she wanted to.
I must go and try to feed them again, they need to feed every 1 – 2 hours in their first days. Hopefully Jethro will be back soon from checking all the other animals and guiding large tractors and machines down narrow lanes as still the drilling and cultivations for next year’s still continue non-stop, 250 acres still to go.
This morning we have bright sunshine on one side of the farm and thick fog on the other side. The drilling is going well so far and everyone is cheerful as the end of the land work could be finally in sight. Fingers crossed!
This is one of our favourite you tube clips, a lovely melody and great photographs, enjoy. Guaranteed to make you smile even in the toughest of times.
As the world’s finances continue to crumble next year’s wheat crop is firmly planted in the ground. At last the weather is good and the soil conditions acceptable. Two tractors and drills are working flat out and Jethro hopes to have 500 acres sown by Monday if we have no breakdowns and everyone works non-stop through the weekend.
The promise of a new crop and a new beginning is always a good time on the farm, once the seed is in the ground. Until then it can be somewhat nerve-wracking for everyone, and Jethro has been a might tetchy in the last few days.
One of my tasks today is to clear a patch in the current brassica bed ready to plant some overwintered onions and garlic for next year, and clear out the herb bed which is now hidden under a tall tower of fat hen and thistles. The pigs will no doubt be pleased with their additional greens when I have finished.
On the subject of the pigs, we weighed a batch of youngsters last week to see how they are doing. This involves a lot of bribing with food to enter the electronic weigh scales and then be let out into the clean concrete yard beyond for a mass exploration and chance to talk to all the other pigs. This task has to be done so gently and kindly as you cannot and should not make a pig do anything against its will, they are just too strong and scream too loud. If you push them they just rebel, and you can’t budge them. However, once they get the idea of scoops of free food under their noses and this regular weigh in it is usually quite straightforward.
Nevertheless for this group [who are aged about 15 weeks] this was their first weigh-in so it took rather longer. While we were weighing the very last pig one of the smaller ones stuck his head into the bucket of meal and while frantically gobbling food as fast as he could, before his brothers noticed, he somehow looped the bucket handle right over his neck. Disaster! Poor little pig, he got such a fright and took off around the yard with such a squealing and clattering all we could do was howl with laughter at this ridiculous sight and watch in amazement through the tears of hysteria that cheerfully leaked from our eyes. All the other pigs in the group took off after him, chorusing their own delight, as from this full to the brim five gallon bucket poured piles and piles of lovely meal and treats for all.
Eventually the bucket emptied, the squealing stopped, and the perpetrator of the deed freed himself from the handle and rushed off to join his friends for his early tea. We left them all out in the yard to clear up the meal and run around and while we had our supper they put themselves back to bed in the clean straw, replete and happy and Jethro found them all fast asleep lying close together – back to belly, looking exactly like fat pink sausages in a pan. All he had to do was shut the door.
Weeks ago Jethro booked in a steer to the slaughterhouse for this week. However, the animal has not yet gone, and now has a few more days of sunshine [at last] and grass with an early morning meal of home made cattle muesli.
Defra regulations state that cattle must have two tags in their ears at all times. A few days ago this steer had the required two tags, but perhaps luckily for him on Tuesday or Wednesday he lost one of them, the secondary tag.
Jethro ordered a replacement tag and has had to re-book the bullock into the abattoir for next week, and then re-arrange all the next stages of quality beef production. The beef hangs for a minimum of 26 days in a cold store before it is expertly cut, and sold.
Would the world have stopped if we had sent him with only one tag and his paper passport, possibly not, but we could not take the risk that he would be turned away and then have to endure two journeys in the trailer so we took the safest option and let him have a few more days with his friends.
Please click here for pictures of tags and passports, you may need to scroll down on this new page.
Does anyone else suffer from sleepless nights just now? I bet they do. For me it was not the credit crunch or the potential bank bail out that woke me but a random thought about the quantity of sausages made when we sold the last batch of pigs. Too late [or too early!] to wonder about it now - the pork is sold and has proabaly been eaten or frozen and the next pigs, lambs and steer go next week.
Sleepwise, I was done for and eventually after several cups of tea and a very wakeful few hours I managed a few final winks before the day’s work on the farm unfolded, while the world’s finances took another dive.
There is something solid about working on the land and with animals, there is a routine to the work and I might once have said a rhythm but with the changeable weather of the last few months I think the usual rhythm has gone. We have not had a single day off since July, and we are all very tired.
The ground was too hard last week and then it rained, and simply carried on raining so it will be a few more days of dry weather before drilling with Jethro’s latest invention – the seed drill – can start again.
To remind us of sunnier times
Well, we have had such a busy week since I last posted, so I have had no time to write [or hardly even breathe] despite being featured on another excellent website featuring farm blogs from around the world. Thank you, Ian.
In the last week, three electricity related happenings have taken up a lot of our time.
I had spent ages composing a what I thought was a really good post for the blog last week when the power went off, came on, went off, came on, went off and finally died for good. The power was actually only off for less than an hour, which was excellent service from the service providers. It was however dark enough at the time for me to dig out and light the candles and gas lamps, this is probably a good thing to so near the start of winter. However the computer was very unwell after the power was restored, despite the careful use of two surge protectors. It took a lot of old time and patience to sort it all out, retrieving and restoring various items, and I as you can see now I am back on the blog.
The second incident was one of the electricity board’s main fuses blown out in one of the grain stores and the electricity company had to come out to fix that. The grain store fans are still on full and with regular testing of our stored crops shows we are finally reducing the moisture. link I can report that the third incident is good news – at last we have fixed the bathroom light. This simple task has only taken 6 weeks [although in reality to us all it feels far longer] and on entering the bathroom we now squint from the brightness and almost feel as if we need to wear sunglasses while taking a bath, as we had got so used to the previous gloom.
And while we are on the subject of sunglasses, this lovely bright picture at the top of the post is of one of our sunflowers taken before the recent frosts. These lovely flowers cheers us as they grow and cheer our hens through the winter ensuring they receive healthy omega oils from the seeds, which we hope they can pass on to us in the eggs, well that is our theory anyway.
