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4th February 2012

We’ve had snow falling for a couple of hours and although it’s settling, it’s nothing significant.  The media build up has been over the top once again, simply because snow is forecast south of the border!  Suggesting that heavy snow will bring a fearful 5 – 10cm and it may be gone by Monday.

Dale and Lee of AutoAgritech, made final repairs to the maize header today

while David and Laurence fixed a puncture on the combine harvester.

Although 75 acres of maize were planted for bird cover last year, much of that has fallen and broken down over winter, but there should still be plenty of corn stripped from the cobs.

Laurence is combining in Homefield at the moment, and it's quite unusual to be harvesting in the snow.

It was also good to see some work begin again in Marshmans and Hammerfield, where contractors finally began baling hemp straw today.  The straw was too damp to be baled after the crop was harvested last year, so it’s remained in the fields to dry and we’ve been unable to sow any winter crops in a number of local fields due to this. 

Although the bulk of each row of straw was picked up by the baler, some of the straw remained frozen to the ground as seen in the foreground of this photo.

One lorry load of hemp straw is going to a power station as fuel and if that goes well, hopefully the remaining fields will soon be baled.

24th January 2011

Great Britain was officially declared to be free from Bluetongue in July 2011 after a concerted effort by livestock farmers to vaccinate against BTV8 which was spreading across parts of Europe.  BTV8 is carried by midges which may have been wind borne from Continental Europe, it can affect sheep, cattle, deer and camelids. 

And now, the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA), has just confirmed that Schmallenberg virus has been found in the UK for the first time.  Again this virus affects ruminants and is thought to be spread by midges.

Cattle, sheep and goats have been affected in northern Europe and infection identified in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Cattle become unwell, losing appetite, productivity and condition.  Infected pregnant cattle and sheep pass the virus to their offspring resulting in deformity, stillbirths and infant mortality.

It’s not yet known whether pregnant animals imported to the UK could have been carrying the disease, or whether midges wind borne from the Continent could have infected livestock on four farms in Norfolk, Suffolk and East Sussex.  It is thought that these cases are the result of infection during summer and autumn 2011 and it’s unlikely to be spreading in the current climate.

This is a relatively new virus and scientists are working closely with colleagues in Germany in the Netherlands to learn all they can.  There isn't a vaccine currently available. 

With early lambing underway and the main lambing season just weeks away, farmers are reminded to be vigilant and report any signs and deformities to their vet and AHVLA. Surveillance and feed-back of information will be critical in understanding this new vector borne invasion.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/ahvla/2012/01/12/schmallenberg-virus/

15th January 2012

 

For a while, Christopher’s been saving up to buy his own sheep and yesterday we drove to Hampshire with our friend Paul to collect a small flock of registered Hampshire Down sheep; seven in-lamb ewes and two ewe lambs. 

The sheep are registered as the Buriton Flock; however the lambs born in mid April will be registered with the Wotton prefix.

For now the sheep will graze at Manor Farm making it easier for Christopher to check them.

12th January 2012

Christmas and New Year are generally quiet on the farm, with a pause in arable work and a couple of staff on holiday.  This left the feeding and checking of livestock which was routine work in mild weather.

The second group of Belted Galloways gradually calved throughout December and apart from one stillborn heifer, the calving has gone well. A bull calf was born on Christmas day so inevitably he’s called Noel, you might see him as he grows up with his three white feet!

Unfortunately the mis-marking has continued in the calves with only 9 out of 19 being correctly marked with a complete white belt, on an otherwise black body; 6 heifers and 3 bull calves. There should have been 11 heifers for future restocking; the stillborn plus four which are mis-marked, so I won’t be breeding from them or the mis-mark genetics may re-appear down the generations.

We have three completely black calves, four with white feet and one with a black dot on the belt.  It was amusing when the first black calf was born and she is very pretty, however with each of the mis-marked calves it has become quite depressing!

The aim to increase the breeding stock each year has been significantly set back in 2011 by Granite’s infertility and now, due to a genetic throw back possibly from a pedigree bull four generations ago, our herd will look rather unusual for the next thirty months. What a difference a year makes.  

10th December 2011

Park Phoenix served our cows in two goups, the first group of twelve have all calved and are now at Hackhurst and the second group of seven at Churchfield began calving last week.  Unfortunately the first of these cows appeared to be in difficulty; she paced the field awkwardly but there was no sign of the calf and when a bloody discharge emerged, the vet was called immediately.  We walked the cow into the crush and she quietly stood, as Tom did an internal examination.  He found that the placenta had presented first which meant the cow had no means of pushing out her calf, which then died and had to be pulled out by hand. This sort of thing is very sad and we really felt for the cow after she’d carried her calf so well for nine months, it was a beautifully belted heifer calf.

On a positive note, Annie gave birth to a heifer calf overnight and I tagged her this morning. I don’t name the calves with a letter of the alphabet for each year, but simply use names I like.  For a bit of fun we’ve had Trigger, Boycie and Del Boy and this year thinking about ‘The Good Life’; we have ‘Margo’ and now Annie’s calf has been called Babs; Barbara is too long for the label!

7th December 2011

It’s a cold blustery day, excellent for blowing away the cobwebs and bringing out the woolly hat for the first time this winter! We’ve seen a couple of snowflakes in the last two days and I’m keeping a close eye on the weather forecast; just in case the wind changes direction and pushes snow southwards.

Due to a massive Thames Water leak in Abinger a few weeks ago, we brought the calving herd into the barn at Paddington where the cows all calved safely. Unfortunately we still can’t turn the cattle back out into the field due to the bags of effluent that Thames Water have just left sitting on the pasture; I’d have thought H&S legislation  would ensure that human waste be removed from site immediately?  The last of the calves was born on Thursday, so this morning we moved  the herd from the barn onto 35 acres south of Hackhurst; Path Field, Kingsland West and Kingsland East.

We haven’t had the best of luck with bulls this year; beginning with a bull that was infertile and losing six months or so in the calving programme and struggling to find a replacement bull at short notice. In the short term I hired Park Phoenix, a bull with good pedigree who served the cows well. 

However the belts on the calves have on the whole, been a disaster. 

Two calves have no belt at all, they are jet black calves; others have a reasonable band under the tummy which then  narrows down to a minimal strip of white hair or no white hair over the back and one of the heifers has four white feet! 

This could well be a genetic throw back from many generations ago when some breeders used black bulls to improve blood lines, although there’s no sign of a black bull in the listed pedigree of park phoenix.

Some consider that the combination of a particular bull with a herd of cows, may throw odd markings one year and be perfectly normal the next.

If the belt is good and encircling the calf then it can be registered with the Belted Galloway Society, otherwise it could be sold or will be reared for beef.  This is another glitch in the breeding programme which should be increasing our pedigree herd and improving the breed.

27th October 2011

With a few staff away this week, Sam’s been looking after young stock and keeping an eye on the Galloways, Luke spent a couple of hours each morning feeding the older cattle and David and Ed have been on arable work and that's been a complete nightmare for them.

Contractors harvested the hemp seed for Goodoil a couple of weeks ago. The seed will go to Devon where the culinary oil will be physically pressed from the seed. Gravity is used to filter the oil; solids settle at the bottom and pure oil is siphoned off the top. This ancient technique creates the most natural oil.

The stems were left standing in the field for a fortnight to allow the retting process; micro-organisms and moisture dissolve or rot away much of the tissues and pectins surrounding the fibre and allowing its separation from the stems. The retting process is used in flax and hemp fibre production.

The stems needed to be cut and baled in dry weather and the contractors haven’t yet finished so that will affect out our autumn sowing. GOODoil are sending their hemp straw bales to Hemp Technology in East Anglia to be developed into insulation products and horse bedding.

The intention was for David and Ed to cultivate and drill wheat in the fields cleared of hemp bales.  However the rakes and balers used by the contractors are having problems picking up all the hemp straw, leaving behind more chaff than expected. 

This has caused huge headaches with the cultivator (Ed) and even more problems with the drill (David). The drill has 50 coulter legs that place the seed inches into the soil; these legs are catching the hemp straw which is wrapping around the legs and blocking the coulters, stopping the seed from going into the soil. 

David is spending more time unblocking the seed drill than actually sowing the seed and it's extremely frustrating. Over the last few days they have managed to drill  64 acres where they’d normally drill 100 - 150 acres per day. In September 187 acres of wheat was drilled at Shalford in a day.

Tomorrow we’ll begin ploughing around Coomb Farm to see whether the hemp straw can be buried to allow the drilling to speed up. However, ploughing itself is slow and uses a lot of diesel. Despite these delays we are just 15 hectares behind baler which is delayed by rain.

Tony Leach from East Surrey started to lift fodder beet for us.  This is another painfully slow process due to the very dry soil conditions over recent months and not helped enough by the rain of the last few days.

Four loads were lifted on Tuesday (about 40 tonnes from 1.5 acres) and three loads on Wednesday. Yields seem to be good, with large clean beets being lifted and transported to Churchfield where we should be able to store about 150 tonnes with the balance at Paddington.  The fodder will feed cattle overwinter and we may sell some of it.

7th October 2011

 

Yesterday didn’t go according to plan at all, but some days are like that I suppose. 

We were going to start by bringing in a group of Belted Galloways that had started to calve; the calves needed to be tagged and the bull calves ringed, then I was meant to head off at 9am to help butcher and box up my beef ready for collection from the farm.

However I had a call before breakfast from Michael Fordham, telling me his butchers shop had been broken into overnight; he didn’t know exactly what had been stolen, he was waiting for the police and couldn't touch anything. There was no point in me going down until we knew more.

Kathy and Michael work extremely hard on their family farm and a few years ago they diversified by opening a small butchers shop on the farm.  However, just two months ago they opened a new, larger shop in the village which provides a farm shop and village stores alongside their successful butchery. The shop opens three days a week providing a valued service to locals and on the other days, there is farm work to be done, plus they’re available to butcher for other farmers who sell their meat direct or self sufficient smallholders.

Michael is obviously gutted and we’re all left sickened by these thieves (the only polite name I can give them, as I can’t print what we’re thinking) who’ve left a trail of mess for Michael and Kathy and of course the knock-on effect to so many others.

The butchery tubs and containers normally used on a daily basis were stolen to carry meat away from the shop and over the field; sausages, chicken, burgers and as it transpired, some of my Beltie beef.

Luckily the lager sides of beef that hadn’t yet been cut down, were left hanging in the chiller, so we’ve had to re-arrange the butchery and beef collection for next week and I’m grateful to our understanding customers in light of this awful event.

Back here on the farm, we decided to gather up the cows and calves to walk them out to Paddington barn, but only one calf was with its mother. The cows tend to hide their calves in grassy clumps or nettles on the edge of the field for safekeeping, but as we tried to gather up the cows they didn’t fetch their calves straight away and we had to search the undergrowth to find them. Once in the barn, another bull calf was born and this morning another cow appears to be calving.  It’s a very tight calving group so far! 

3rd October 2011

When the boys were younger I used to take them out to the harvest fields to see Laurence, otherwise they’d see very little of him for three months.  Laurence would stop for a bite to eat and then we’d each take a turn around the field in the combine harvester.  Nowadays the boys are helping out on the farm and I’ve only managed a couple of trips in the combine this year; too busy painting and decorating!

Before returning to agricultural college for a new term, Luke worked here during harvest; loading and carting straw back to the farm.  A friend of the family, Frank Ibbott also worked this summer and although he knew the hours would be long, I don’t think anything could prepare him for the reality of harvest time (just as it was for Luke two years ago!)

Despite the hard work, I’m sure Frank enjoyed the experience which undoubtedly enhanced his CV and certainly gave him a taste of the ‘Real World’!

The wheat harvested on heavy ground was very good, with over 3.5 tonnes per acre.  The barley, triticale and wheat on sandy soils had poor yields due to drought conditions in April. The drought was followed by rain which resulted in a second growth of barley causing an uneven crop; whilst harvest was delayed for the later plants to ripen, the seed heads of the earlier barley plants were falling to the ground.   Oilseed rape did well on all soils.

Harvest has been drawn out by the weather and Laurence finally cut the last of the Triticale at Hackhurst on Saturday.  On a positive note, Ed and David have been cultivating and drilling since July, going into fields soon after the straw bales have been shifted out.

Crops drilled so far: 200 acres wheat at Park Farm and 190 acres at Shalford; 25 acres barley at Raikes; 45 acres of oats at Paddington and a total of 480 acres oilseed rape at Cranleigh, West Lane and Whitedown.

Still to drill: 100 acres oats, 200 acres wheat and 50 acres barley.

2nd October 2011

We’ve had a beautiful start to the day with mist rolling along the valley and the sun breaking through as I fed and watered the pigs.  I’m waiting for Polly to farrow.  Her estimated due date is about now; her flanks have really filled out over the past week or so but there’s no sign of milk just yet.

Also due between now and December are 19 Belted Galloway calves; the two calving groups were served over approximately three months by a hire bull, Park Phoenix; before the arrival of our own bull from Scotland, Carsluith Ethelred.

Ethelred had a gentle introduction to the farm and then spent six weeks with four heifers before moving location to serve another four females.  35 days after the bull left the field, the first four heifers were pregnancy diagnosed (PD) by the vet.  This was done in the most atrocious weather but nevertheless confirmed that three will be calving next January – February.

Unfortunately despite running with two bulls this year, the fourth heifer remains barren and therefore has gone to market.

The Belted Galloways have been grazing the North Downs over the summer and earlier this month we walked the young stock from Blatchford Down, past New Barn and back to Hackhurst.  Years ago I worked for the National Trust along the Downs and subsequently for Barbara Blatchford, so I’ve always known this area as Blatchford Down; although current NT staff call this area the Plantation.

Alan Blatchford started the Tanners Marathon, a 30 mile ‘challenge walk’ with the Epsom & Ewell YHA group in 1960.  Although at the time it was thought to be a ‘one off’, Alan was still organising this unique local event twenty years later, when in 1980 he died aged 44. Donations were given to the National Trust enabling them to clear the land of trees and fence the downland for sheep grazing, naming the downland ‘Blatchford Down’ in memory of Alan.

Once the cattle reached Hackhurst barns, they were weighed and sorted into two groups.  The nine lighter cattle moved to Hammerfield in Abinger and eleven were transported further along the downs to the ‘Nose’ below Spectacles Wood where they’ve grazed for a few weeks.  On Friday we ran them westward along the drove road and now they’re grazing the field below Ranmore.

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