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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.
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.
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!
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…
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.
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.
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…
More snow fell last night, followed by rain and sleet however our troubles here are nothing compared with those who live in Australia, especially in the State of Victoria and are coping with these terrible bush fires. How they would welcome a dose of the cold wet stuff, and that puts everything in perspective for us.
We are in now uncharted territory as the combination of rain and melting snow on previously saturated ground is a new one. We watch almost hour by hour as the pond levels rise and the fields start to flood.
The problem with the overflowing pond is that it can overflow through the Victorian buildings to fill the yard and we have no where else to move the housed cattle to.
warm and dry for now
All the melt water from the village runs down the road and into the pond, on top of all our own ‘run off’ from the surrounding fields and yards.
Frost is forecast later tonight, perhaps it will slow the rapid thaw but the problem is that the roads are running with water so they will probably be like glass tomorow and we know the County Council is short of grit and no longer bothers to salt the rural byways.
It took an hour to get to the local railway station 5 miles away this morning.
Spring seems a long way away but would be very welcome right now.
land or sea?
This was a field last time we looked.
I simply don’t know where the days go!
Christmas came and went and the daily work on the farm simply carried on. We had a pig with mastitis on Christmas Eve [now cured], and a shortage of electricity causing the bore hole to stop working.
16 days of hard frost followed on Boxing Day leading to huge water problems with the outdoor livestock. Thousands of gallons of water have been carried out to cattle, pigs and sheep.
The frost thawed and then the rains came [ still falling] and the pond and the fields are now almost overflowing with excess water..
The younger generation are returned to their seats of learning and even Jethro has had a week away this month studying for his MSC. While he was away we had a burst radiator in a bedroom which nearly brought down the ceiling of the farm office, thanks to the NFU insurance for their swift response in drying us out [ the fans are still whirring] and a very poorly pig who was sadly and swiftly put down. This pig was one of our absolute favourites owing to her lovely nature, she was 18 months old and had just been weaned from her litter of 10 at 8 weeks old. Customers are queuing to buy our breeding stock and I have already pre-sold 4 out of the 5 gilts, we will keep the best one to be her replacement, in due course.
The horse has come and is settling slowly, our progress has not been helped by either the terrible weather nor a terrifying experience for both of us with some trespassing motor-cross riders who all revved their engines at once causing her to frantically rear again and again and me to be thrown. Steps are being taken to restrict access on the bridle paths to those who are entitled. I am the third serious accident that I know of in this locality and sadly I fear a tragedy if nothing is done.
I missed blogging but the days were not long enough. However the nights are lighter now and we have Spring to look forward to.
I am back and will do my best to post often. Camera still not sorted.
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.
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.
We are entering uncharted territory, the grain stores bulge with wet grain and damp beans. Beans were combined until 1.30 am this morning and we hope to get the rest of the bean crop today before the next band of forecasted rain due at tea-time today, everyone is exhausted.
The challenge of the Century is to now dry these crops without spoilage. We are not alone. This occurrence is being repeated all over the country by those who either have harvested, or are still trying to harvest sodden crops from sodden fields.
At Prosperous Farm the moisture varies from 18 to 25 percent, 15 percent is what is needed. Both labour and energy costs will be very high this year as huge efforts by both men and machines are concentrated on preventing spoilage in these gigantic heaps. However, we are the lucky ones as many farmers have written off their crops and unless conditions improve some farmers will not even be able to sow next year’s crops either. The newly purchased grain stirrer is currently creeping around the very deep pile of wheat and the fans are on full. More calor gas and more heaters have been ordered, and reading the electric meters beside the grain stores, in due course, will not be a job for the fainthearted.
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.
