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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.
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.
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!
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?
