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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.
It is great to be able to report that at long last we have had a completely rain free week, and in the last two days some welcome sunshine which has lifted our spirits somewhat.
By tonight the corn that has remained standing in the fields should finally all be in, and in the garden the onion crop has is lifted and is now drying outside in the sun.
Today, everyone is working on the land, ploughing, combining and carting corn and the animals are relaxing in the sun.
Today food and farming is in the news.
Compulsory cooking in schools, and free recipe books for 11 year olds, BRILLIANT. Cooking, or domestic science as it used to be called should never have been abolished.
There is also in depth harvest coverage on the TV news, or rather the lack of harvest of on account of the weather and the fact that farmers now have until 4th October to go on their waterlogged fields with extra permission from the EU. However, the media, EU and DEFRA probably do not realise that actually farmers do still decide for themselves if they are able [will] go onto the fields or not, whether to try to save a crop or write it off…
Boris is speaking out for farmers, and writes once again with knowledge and passion. There is so much extensively livestock production in this country on land that cannot be ploughed. It is what makes our countryside famous; think of the moorland and the hills from one end of the country to the other [Dartmoor, Peak District, Lake District, Pennines, Highlands, Southdowns etc], there are so many beautiful areas which have been shaped and cared for by farmers grazing livestock. Boris is right: it is not the animals that are the problem, it is the people.
My suggestion is: keep eating meat, but ASK where and how it is produced. And if you are able please choose local and extensively reared meat whenever you can. These types of systems are utilising the land in the best way possible and should be supported.
Grey and wet yesterday, and today we woke to a nondescript morning, is there any other type of weather?
Nevertheless we do feel very lucky compared to many others in parts of the country especially the NE and the West. To date we have had 19 inches of rain already this year [average is 22 inches], and already in September we have had over 1.5 ins [40 mm] , and over 3 inches [80mm] in August.
This afternoon is much brighter and drier although the wheat still tests at a depressing 24% moisture, which would normally be too wet for Jethro to cope with. However he has come up with a cunning plan involving the hire of space heaters and all manner of inventions in order to try to keep moving forward and dry the grains. The combine is presently , as I update this, moving forward, and we just hope it doesn’t get stuck.
The ploughing has restarted over the last few days and has been going quite well; it is what to do next that is Jethro’s current problem. The beans are too soft to harvest and the ground is too wet. These clay soils are the very worst in these sort of damp ongoing conditions and the quandary is not knowing whether it will continue to be wet or might we get a dry spell, and if so for how long?
Despite modern 21st Century agriculture having the most up to date equipment and technology when nature intervenes [or is it determined by a Higher Power?] there is nothing to be done except revert to old farming principles and make it up as best as you can as you go along. Just wait and see, there will be many fewer yellow fields next year as the oil seed rape cannot be easily sown this year.
It appears not just to be nature [or even a Higher Power] that is making decisions, farmers are ruled by the European Commission rules on almost everything. This article shows how very ludicrous it all is… allowing it is one thing but whether the wheels will be able to turn is another matter altogether.
Once upon a time farming was simpler, now I am not at all sure that the huge workload combined with the weather, the effort, and dealing with the POLITICS of it all makes it worthwhile. Perhaps I am just feeling my great age.
Later edit: 7.30pm The combine is now trying to open up a path through the bean field next to the wheat, as the wheat field is now too sticky to turn in.
Jethro says it will take 1 million BTU’s of heat to dry this wheat cut at 24% moisture…. what ever will the cost of that be?
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.
Well here we are now right in the middle of the “harvest from hell,” as one farmer labelled this year’s effort to get the grain in, and today we have had all manner of visits and phone calls, all requiring Jethro’s time and attention.
Jethro is not available, and certainly not got time to speak to anyone unless they can drive a tractor for 4 days or find him the spare part he so desperately needs! He is now on a tractor working from early in the morning until way past dark, when he updates the daily records on the computer, before snatching a bit of sleep and starting over.
DEFRA, in their infinite wisdom and showing their usual full understanding of the agricultural calendar [and the current weather conditions] have organised a customer satisfaction survey of farmers participating in their Environmental Stewardship Schemes which are administered by Natural England. This survey requires a series of questions to be answered about working with Natural England. It can only be done by phone, email is not allowed [so much easier especially for busy farmers], and it must be completed before 15th September.
I have just answered one of these calls on Jethro’s behalf, and explained that owing to circumstances beyond our control:
a) the farmer isn’t here
b) he won’t be in this evening
c)his tractor is so loud the mobile is no good either
d) he hardly sleeps
e) he is unable to think about anything other than machines and fieldwork right now, and that even the family don’t know what is going on [especially not his mother]
etc, etc.
The operator was very understanding and explained that all of the above points about the time of year had already been raised with DEFRA, who probably took no notice, as unsurprisingly the closing date remained the same. I have agreed for Jethro to try to ring back if we have a wet day, otherwise they will ring again nearer the deadline. I felt so sorry for the operator as this experience will undoubtedly be repeated with every call they make.
There have also been several calls today by reps, only one of which was helpful and I was able to send him off to look for this elusive spare part for the seed drill [more on this later]. The other callers were from non-farming companies who happen to sell things used for property maintenance and other such tasks. I don’t think it had occurred to them that they would not be welcomed with open arms by the farmer…
Now before any more interruptions I am off to clean out the hen houses.
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?
Ten hours yesterday was the longest continuous period that the combine has worked this year. Somehow, acre by acre, to date Jethro has managed to harvest and store over 1000 tons of wheat, but he needs the grain butler soon to keep and maintain the quality. Managing the stored grain in a season like this is every bit as tricky as growing it in the first place. Once it has been dried, samples will be sent for quality testing to see if the milling quality is there, or if it will have to be consigned as feed wheat.
Once the wheat harvest was completed, the oats were next to be cut, and yesterday the moisture level in that crop was a pleasing twelve percent, so there were no worries there, however it rained in the night and it’s still pouring now. No combining today.
There is a report dated 27/08/1912 in the Times archives about the calamitous weather in August of that year. It was, according to the report, far worse than this year, but readers will need to sign up to be able to access these archives.
Fact: Sales of paint have rocketed this summer as farmers try to occupy idle staff who are unable to work on account of the weather. Buildings and anything else that stands still long enough are being given the once over.
Farmers [even my dear son on a bad day] are not always known as the most cheerful fellows and in the course of their work they do have to contend with all sorts of problems beyond their control – the biggest of which at the moment is the current inclement weather. From one end of the country to the other there are terrible tales reaching us of lost hay crops, germinating ears of corn and total frustration amongst the growers that it is raining somewhere [it feels like everywhere] every single day and rather unusually almost the whole country is affected. However today even I have two week’s worth of washing hanging on the outside line, but still the wheat is too wet!
Increasing and genuine concerns do now exist within the grain and milling industry regarding the wheat crop. The ‘hard’ varieties of wheat such as Solstice and Malacca, to name but two, are grown for bread making and if they have been damaged by the weather they may not be of sufficient quality to mill and will therefore end up as feed wheat. The damage this weather causes is both widespread and extremely troublesome. Wet ground means in some areas combines and tractors with trailers [sadly the work horses of my first lifetime are long gone] get stuck fast and pulling them out is no easy task not to mention the terrible mess left behind in the field afterwards.
In a season like this the ears of the corn can either germinate while on still the stalk or just fall out of the ears with tremendous losses. Some farmers have to choose between either accepting this loss of crop from the ears [and subsequent unwanted germination in the fields] or accept exceedingly high drying costs, burning gas, oil or electricity. If the moisture meter reads 15 per cent or below then drying does not need to take place, and Jethro cannot cope with moisture levels above 18 per cent here at Prosperous Farm owing to the types of grain stores he has now. Upon delivery from the field to the grain store every single trailer load is measured for both moisture levels and the bushel weight. Jethro has just ordered a grain stirrer to keep the grain on the move as the crop which was combined with too much moisture could start to heat if not kept aerated and moving while drying takes place. I am told sales of ‘grain butlers’ [grain stirrer] are up for this year some three hundred percent! I know some arable farms have dryers which use conveyors, and setting the costs aside, they can dry corn with much higher moisture levels possibly even up to 24 percent if they had to.
One of the measures of quality milling wheat is called a Hagberg falling number – for a detailed explanation please read. This potential loss of quality will have a huge impact on both prices and our food security. This potential loss of quality has potentially serious consequences to both the individual farmers and the country as a whole. Wheat which does not make the grade as quality milling wheat is sold as feed wheat at a much lower price and must be exported on the world market as we grow a surplus of feed wheat in this country. To give you some idea of the quantity of wheat used in the UK the latest published milling wheat figures can be read here.
All we can do is hope and pray, for a spell of settled weather just as we did in the 17th and 18th Centuries, although perhaps prayers were more important to us in those days. I know daily life moves faster now and I am yet to decide if it is better. I need to find out more about this strange new world where I have found farming to be the same in so many ways [the work, the animals, the weather] and also completely different [the rules & regulations, machines, varieties and size of both farms and machines].
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.
