Worms Eye View

With the dry spell of weather over the past few weeks, the land has been drying out which has allowed us to get onto the fields and start working on our spring campaign.  We have started ploughing some of the light land inpreparation for planting salad onions in about 4 weeks time.  Ploughing now should allow a nice germination of weeds before the onions are planted, reducing the cost of weed killers (herbicides) and actually being able to control some certain weeds, like groudsel.

Derek was ploughing in this field, Lynch Piece, and was almost immediately joined by about 50 lapwings looking for all the tasty worms and insects that were being turned onto the surface.  A tasty snack, unless you are the worm!

Conservation Grade Student

Yesterday I travelled to Royston in Hertfordshire for an Induction Day into becoming a farmer growing 'Conservation Grade' milling wheat for this years harvest. The training took place at Thrift Farm and is owned by Robert Law Robert has been one of the pioneers of Conservation Grade (CG) cereals, growing Oats for Jordans and as one of the 80 or so CG, growers has dedicated 10% of the arable area of the farm to wildlife.

The day started with an induction about CG from Brin Hughes about how the organisation started and what the aims are.  In a nutshell the idea is to grow food for people and wildlife on the same farm, whilst getting a premium from the customer for the nature friendly production methods (very important!)  In essence the farm needs to provide varying degrees of habitat and food sources for different insects, mammals and birds made up of specific types.  4% must be in Pollen and Nectar Mixes, 2% on Wild Bird Food, 2% in fine tussocky grasses and the final 2% in other habitats, such as hedgerows, ditches, watercourses, woodland and ponds.  These percentages work in nicely for us with our Higher Level Stewardship Agreement.  A farm map is also needed to help the assessor when being audited, once a year.  Within two years there is a habitat assessment to ensure all of the habitats we say we've planted have been done and managed accordingly.

We had a great talk by Peter Thompson from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust all about habitat selection for targets species.  First you need to know what species you have then you need to sort out the habitats.  Where to sight them, what to grow in the them, how to establish them and their following management.  All these snippets of information are so valuable when trying to plan these additions around the farm landscape. As Robert said "its easier to manage 500 acres of wheat than 60 acres of bird food".  I think that sums up the philosophy of these guys willing to go the extra mile for conservation and taking pride in the food that they grow, for people and wildlife.

We saw one of Roberts new barn Owl Boxes and heard about the Nature Friendly Owls project.  These birds are at the top of the food chain on our farms and if they are thriving then its a very good sign that those below them are also doing very well indeed.  In all I had a great day and I am looking forward to working with these farmers in the future, which can only be good for our business and also for our wildlife.  I can't help thinking that there are so many similarities and passions that CG farmers have with LEAF Farmers that there isn't some way of linking the two organisations together in some way?  We'll as the nubie of the group I'll leave that one quietly on the back burner for now, but leave you with a quote from Sir David Bellamy.

 "It's not just nature that benefits from Conservation Grade, we all do.  We see more birds and more bees and hear more buzzing and bird song.  On these farms we can start to enjoy the countryside again".  Keep watching and listening to hear how we get on.

Bustling Bramblings

For about the last 6 weeks or so we have had a great flock of LBJ's (Little Brown Jobs) feeding on one of our Higher level Stewardship bird food mixes.  The plot is quite large which is great for these smaller birds offering lots of protection, hidden away in the middle of their very own dinner table.  The size of the block (5acres) is also able to sustain larger numbers of birds for longer periods of time which is another benefit, so they're not using up energy searching out their next meal.  There is also less 'edge effect' of reduced seed yield, usually caused by rabbits nibbling away at the edges.

This mixture consists of Spring barley (60%), Tricticale (15%), Millet (10%), Fodder Raddish (5%) and Mustard (10%), although due to the dry summer when the crop was planted there seems to be a greater percentage of mustard that has survived!

The vast majority of these birds are Bramblings although there are a few Linnets and Chaffinches joining in the flock.  Having walked through the crop to take some video footage here of the flock swooping around there is still some seed left that has not shed yet so I hope that this bird table will continue to deliver the goods for a few weeks to come, while the winter weather is upon us.

Lambs Final Journey

On Monday 16th January Tod, Tia and myself set off heading North West into Wales, our destination was the abattoir in LLanidloes where are lambs are sent to be killed.  The trip up took about 2.5 hours and there was lots of discussion about our sheep flock on the way.  These are the same lambs that feature on YouTube here

After signing in and getting to reception we were warmly welcomed by Kevin Brown, who id the Procurement Manager and General Assistant manager for the plant who kitted us up in white coats and trousers, hard hats and hair nets.  We started off our trip looking at the vast warren of fridge space where the sheep and beef carcases were being held whilst they came down to temperature, ready to be transported, for lamb this is maximum of 7 degrees C.  Then we moved on through the lines to where the lambs are humanely stunned and killed which was a very swift and skilled job, expertly handled.  Having been skinned and processed, taking away the intestines, hearts, lungs, livers and having some fat trimmed off, we watched our lambs go along the grading line. Here they are weighed and given their grades for fat and conformation.  Most of that batch (of 123) that went through as R3L's and R3H's and averaged 20.91Kg.  In total the group of lambs yielded just over 2.5 Tonnes of meat and bone!

The picture above was taken of our lambs the following day, showing he confirmation and fat coverage really well. 

It was a time of mixed emotions really to see our own lambs being killed but I was reassured and happy to see how it was done; with a calm quiet humane approach, with skilled friendly staff in a very professional manner.  We also had some time to look at the lairage, which was clean, airy and well set up to handle large numbers of sheep.  During peak production the plant can cope with 5,000 lambs day.  We looked at the skins that were being salted and packed on site, by a third party, many of these skins end up in China and return to the UK in the form of Ugg boots!

The dirty water produced on the whole site, from the washings of the processing lines, to floor washings and lorry washings is all collected, aerated and filtered through reed beds before ending up, after rigorous testing back in the local stream.

It really was a fantastic visit and one that I will repeat again with another batch of lambs.  To see the end result of 10 months of shepherding, ultimately seeing the carcase that will be processed and delivered to Sainsbury's was very satisfying. I would recommend all farmers to go and see this with their own stock, work with the customer to get more efficient at producing what the customer needs.

First Trees Planted in the COCO

Today was the first ever planting day for COCO (Conderton and Overbury Community Orchard) and what a great day it was.  It started as a crisp sunny morning with brilliant blue sky and a light frost on the ground.  Derek and Gordon gave everyone a quick demonstration of how to plant each of the trees then armed with a map everyone grabbed their spades and set off in different directions to make a start. 

We started with 18" deep hole, filled it with a compost to act as a fertiliser, planted the tree, firming down the soil all of the time to ensure there are no air pockets.  After that a small stake was banged in next to the tree and a small strap attached to hold it firm.  More compost was applied, as a mulch to keep the weeds at bay and finally a plastic tree guard put around the tree to protect it from voles and mice.  It was wrapped up with a 6' mesh guard to stop sheep and deer nibbling the growing points then it was 'job done'.

10 cider apple trees where planted (5 'Ten Commandments' and 5 Tom Putts) and 16 perry pear trees (5 Blanckney Reds, 5 Moorcrofts and 6 Judge Amphletts) all within an hour and a half.  It was a great community effort, helped by the weather, but a great effort by everyone involved.  A huge thank you to everyone who volunteered, it's great to know the community spirit is alive and well in Overbury and Conderton.  After the planting some investigation of the new JCB was required by the engineers among us.

Time For An Unseasonal Haircut

Now its time for something different!  Last week we tried a new management practise with the early lambing ewes at Park Farm and that was to give them a very unseasonal haircut.  Don't worry though, they have about 6 weeks before they lamb and then a further two weeks around the farm buildings which will give them plenty of time to grow a nice new woolly coat.  There are many positive reasons to winter shear the ewes.  Firstly they will be more comfortable and cooler as they are naturally an outdoor all year around species resulting in less stress on the sheep, shearing put to one side, but once a year they get that anyway.  They should also eat less and be more efficient with what they eat, as they are no using energy to keep cool.  Click YouTube - Farmer Jake to see the action!

From our point of view any ewes having difficulties during lambing should be easier to spot, although they might be harder to catch!  We should, in theory, be able to put a few more ewes in each pen, as they require less space.  It is much easier to assess the condition of the ewes and put the ewes in better condition groups, i.e. a thinner twin can be bumped up to the triplets to give her more feed.  It's also a much easier time of year to do the job.  We don't have to get the ewes in from the fields and spilt off their lambs, this will save us lots of time.  The coats won't grow a tremendous amount until the later summer so we won't have to gather them in the spring to 'dag' (trim) the dirty back ends of the sheep (after eating the lush grass).  It's just an experiment at this time but who knows, if it works we might be doing all of them next year!

Contracting Expanding

This is the time of year that Gordon is out and about cutting many miles of our own and some of our neighbours hedges.  In total we cut hedges on over 10,000 acres of farmland and many miles of roadside verges.  Some of the insides of the hedges are cut during the autumn before the crops are planted so that damage to the field margins (grass) are limited as the soil is still nice and dry and can carry the tractor.  The downside to this is that some of the berries on the hedges are cut off and therefore not eaten by the birds in the winter.

By leaving the roadside verges, spring cropping fields and many of the farm tracks until now to be trimmed, allows the hedgerow birds alot more time to feast on the hedgerow bounty.  These roadside hedges are cut every year which aids roadside safety and also, if done carefully can still provide a good source of berries even after the hedge trimmer has tidied up the hedge.  We even have a blower on the hedge trimmer to blow the chippings into the verges, off the roads, therefore reducing the risk of punctures to passing traffic.  Birds such as Yellow Hammers love a neatly trimmed hedge that they can perch up on, and guard their territory.

Hedge cutting is one of many services that we can offer to our neighbours around Bredon Hill.  Our farm machinery is also used at certain times of the year.  Our sprayer is contracted out to spray tall crops such as beans and oilseed rape in the summer.  With its taller wheels and high clearance the damage is far less that with a conventional tractor mounted sprayer.  It also does liquid fertiliser applications.  At this time of year our snow plough is also on standby incase it is needed around the hill.  We have a specific route but can always detour to clear a driveway or farm-yard along the way.