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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.
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.
Combining is finally finished; hooray! However the difficulties this season’s weather has produced are far from over. The very best description for the current soil conditions here at Prosperous Farm that I have come across was on the British Farming Forum, where a member called essexpeasant posted* that: “a herd of elephants in stilettos would not give me the seeds to soil contact I now desire ….”
Itis the same here “ a herd of elephants in stilettos” or even a division of Challenger tanks would not work miracles on this hard, hard land.
Jethro describes the land here as a “twenty minute farm”, which means it goes from very wet to very hard in no time at all. There are endless discussions as to which machine to try next and which field to leave ’til last, and today we have four tractors working: two ploughs, one cultivator and one set of discs working this hard ground down. There is a good 3 weeks flat out land work to try to get next year’s crop in the ground. The fields will now have to be worked over several times, the cost of which, even if he had the time, Jethro dares not even speculate.
*[post number 50]
We are totally waterlogged.
If sinking almost to the ankles, whilst pulling a few carrots for supper in the veggie garden last night, gives you a clear enough visual picture then you get the idea of the problems the industry is facing over the unfinished harvest and subsequent land work. Even MORE rain fell in the night and Jethro says that on the plus side at least the livestock are still growing [and the grass].
Apart from checking the livestock and feeding the pigs no one is working today, it is impossible to get any machine onto any land anywhere on the farm.
The effects of this weather are however beginning to filter into the mainstream, this opinion piece is quite informative, with a peppering of interesting historical anecdotes and quotes.
Since reading the article I have found Samuel Pepys’ entry in his diary , which particularly mentions the rain and poor harvest on Wednesday 8th July 1663. Further mentions, by Pepys, of the unseasonal weather can be found on the entries for the 11th, 19th, and 21st July 1663.
The grey skies and lack of sun are beginning to get everyone down, and it is not just the farmers who are feeling this. The harvest is progressing reasonably well, after various breakdowns which seem to occur all too frequently in arable farming, despite the many thousands of pound spent every year on servicing, maintaining and replacing of machines and their many parts. On Thursday it was a pulley, and later that same day a bearing.
Heat and sun is what we need, this muggy greyness is heeding progress and not lifting our rather sluggish spirits. Round baling is Jethro’s current task and he has abandoned the oat straw, until it is drier on account of the damp grassy stalks within swath, and moved onto barley straw. We need around 250 large round bales to see us through the next twelve months.
The weekly despatch of lamb boxes has gone well, despite a few customers forgetting to come, which unfortunately happens from time to time. Collating everyone’s requests to the readiness of the animals is a logistics nightmare, but somehow we get there every week. Next year we will have to lamb the sheep later as we’d like to miss the August holiday period as accommodating holiday dates as well as individual requirements takes up far too much office time.
The seasonal land work which includes any post harvest cultivations, ploughing and drilling is causing a few major headaches this year. The planned rotation of oil seed rape following the wheat crop has been abandoned because the soil conditions, following this terrible wet weather, are not suitable for drilling rape. It is nothing to do with the machines and everything to do with the state of the tilth, or rather the lack of tilth. The clay cap fields are a sliding sticky mess with a lot of compaction following the work by the combine, tractors with trailers carting the corn and also the sewage sludge spreaders.
Prosperous Farm is not the only farm affected and many farmers are openly discussing how best to tackle this. The consensus remains, as it often is, that every year is different and 2008 is no exception. Here, at least, oats will now be the chosen crop in the rotation following the wheat, as they will be easier to drill.
Here’s something to hopefully lighten the mood as the dire weather continues and the ordeal of harvest 2008 grinds on.
I have no idea of the origins of this anonymous funny, it came from the USA courtesy of electronic media, which is so much faster than pigeon post or stage coach that at times I struggle to keep up.
Adapted for this country it reads…
Dairy farmer definitions:
YOU KNOW YOU ARE A DAIRY FARMER IF:
1.Your backyard ends with an electric fence.
2. The children’s drinking glasses are milk replacer cups.
3. Muck is a meal time topic.
4. You know the price of milk per litre but not by the pint.
5. The sand pit for your children is an old tractor tyre.
6. You have three pairs of Nora boots and two pairs all go to the same foot.
7. The medicine cabinet in your house contains a container of udder balm.
8. You’ve ever received an award for fat, and were proud of it. (butterfat)
9. Your idea of a power lunch is a sandwich on a tractor.
10. Your idea of carpentry includes a chainsaw and bent nails.
11. Fence repairs are second nature.
12. You can fix anything with baler twine, a piece of wire, duct tape and a pair of mole grips.
13. Your idea of neighbourhood watch is someone calling you to let you know your heifers are out.
14. The back door on your house has the key in it all the time so it doesn’t get lost.
15. Your idea of public transport is moving your cows along the road, or to a holding pen or field.
16. Most of your good headgear advertises semen or seeds.
17. You have more than a dozen cats.
18. You have more pictures of your cows than of your children.
19. Your idea of overnight delivery is calving a cow at three in the morning.
20. You can remember the name of every cow on the farm but the names of your children elude you..
Although Prosperous Farm is not a dairy farm there are cattle, sheep and pigs as well as the crops, and more sentences from the list apply than I’d like to readily admit! Today, bright with a drying wind first thing, now at 10 am ominously cloudy and grey. The day to day servicing of the machinery continues ready for the off again at a moments notice.
Hey ho, whovever said farming was easy?
Farms, like farmers come in all shapes and sizes and how they run their businesses varies too. At one end of the scale there are farmers who farm their land and trade their produce in almost the same way as their fathers and grandfathers did and at the other end of the scale there are those who look for niche markets and try to capitalize on every opportunity that they can.
Commodities, like grain and seed, are traded on the open market with various options available to the sellers. Forward selling ties a farmer in to a set price and contracted delivery date either with or without severe penalties (deductions) if the specified quality is not met. Most arable farmers are price takers and their skill in judging when best to sell or arrange a contract takes both courage and experience. Almost everyone has had a deal or two in their lifetimes they’d rather forget and also perhaps a record high from last year that still puts a smile on their face every time they think about it.
Commercial beef, lamb and pork is also traded, as a commodity, on the open market sold either by deadweight prices, after the animal is slaughtered, or by live weight auction in the markets. Both systems have their merits and what suits one farmer may not suit another.
The price setters are the farmers who dare to be different. Either they produce a premium product, or they add value, or both. A premium product might be: rare breed meat, yoghourt, milk, ice cream, or cold pressed rape oil from oil seed rape to name only a few.
Most dairy farmers are price takers, and this story will have to wait for another blog entry as it is large topic.
Here at Prosperous Farm, Jethro has a foot in both camps. He is a price taker for his arable crops of wheat, barley, beans, oil seed rape and oats, and a price setter for his traditional breed meat which he sells direct to the consumer.
Selling direct to the consumer and gaining feedback is time consuming but extremely rewarding for the producers, especially once you start to build a band of loyal customers. The celebrity chefs are helping this trend to buy from farms, as are Channel 4 with their current food map listing producers, shops and restaurants with wonderful food from all over the country.
Shopping locally, supporting small businesses and understanding exactly how food is produced is brilliant for the future of agriculture. It currently feels like there is an important shift by consumers towards wanting to know more about what we eat, especially meat. Although, I heartily accept, not everyone is able to do this it is at least a start and it should lead to improvements on the supermarket shelf and also teach the next generation that food is grown or reared and is not something that comes in a box or a packet.
How strange I had just finished writing this post when a reader sent me this link.
Now a bit of genuine support and respect would really help the industry to feel appreciated.
On the farm today things are better, everyone is busy and not just filling in time, the combine started again mid-afternoon and is still working. The young pigs [already sold] weighed today and are gaining a pound a day [450grams] nicely, but in the house it is not going so well – our bathroom light is broken. The bulb went last weekend and the new bathroom light [specially fitted last year] is stuck so fast the glass bowl will need breaking in order to replace the bulb which of course at the moment no one has either the time or the inclination to do. So it is back to the old days – bathing by candlelight – nevertheless 21st Century plumbing is wonderful.
This is the start of a blog, one designed to enthuse, inform and comment on all things rural and agricultural, covering:
farming, how food is produced, local food, food security, food miles, countryside, fly tipping, animals, people, regulations, nature, bio fuels, AND all sorts of other things.
It is brought to you by Dorothy Tull [nee Buckeridge] – the mother of one of the greatest agriculturalists of all time – Jethro Tull.
Jethro Tull has on occasion been called the father of English agriculture so does that make Dorothy the mother of agriculture by default?
The original Jethro Tull is famous, hardworking, honest and known the whole world over for revolutionizing agricultural methods in the 1700’s by designing a seed drill to sow several rows at once. This device saved time and improved germination rates at a time when food was in short supply. Now in 2008 food and farming is once again an important topic.
Up until now her daily tasks have been to look after the family, keep careful accounts and also in busy times to help outside on the farm. However, she currently feels so strongly that both farmers and farming are constantly misrepresented she has taken off her pinny (apron) and picked up her pen.
Dorothy is learning to cope with the technology, the language, and hardest of all – 21st Century life both on the farm as well and in society in general.
Now she is to adapt and speak out in public will her life ever be the same?
Please bookmark this page to be sure to read the next installment from the one and only Mrs Dorothy Tull.
