Happy New Year!

Well welcome back to farmer Jake's blog after the festive period and what a lovely welcome it was. A nice load of household rubbish fly tipped in a field gateway over the new year. Who will be left to clear it up? The farmer of course, not the population of the local village, or the council, or the idiot who dropped it off it's another persons problem, but today it is my problem. What is wrong with our society? There is a collection service for those who pay their community charge, it's actually quite efficient and will also re-cycle many of the items we casually throw into our respective coloured bins. If the item won't be collected then there is always the council tip where almost anything can be dropped of into various containers or re-cycling or landfill, but no some complete cretin has to drop it of in a field gateway. Thanks a bunch self centred idiot.

At this time of year the once rare (believe it or not) wood pigeon; who's population growth has been dramatic since the early 1970's, when Oilseed Rape was introduced to our farm rotations and provided a good winter food source. This positive story is rarely publicised by the RSPB when looking at farmland birds population decline or otherwise, why? Because their population growth has been due to modern farming practice and we can't have that. One of the down sides to their massive population increase is that we now need to control their numbers as pests in order to protect our crops. Don't forget that these crops will grow and be sold, to provide food and diesel for the kitchens and cars for you, the general public. We have to use lots of tools in order to keep the pigeons at bay, these include gas bangers, day rope bangers, rockets and spinning discs and kites but ultimately the most successful, if moved regularly is the gas banger. This comes with a small cost in that they make a noise that some people find offensive in disturbing the quite country ambiance. Unfortunately the countryside is not an oil painting by Linton in the 1880's or Constable from the 19th Century, it is working factory floor that has to produce food and a profit to keep it maintained, to provide jobs and to keep its landscape so that the next generation of Constables are not policed out of existence. That's not to say i would ignore people concerns, but the street has to be a two way one.

On the 31st December 2009 new EU regulations come into place about the individual identification of sheep and goats. The ultimate aim will be to have, I think, every sheep and goat with an electric identification device (EID) locked about it's person within the next 5 years. Various stages of this legislation are being fazed in over the next 3 years but some batch movements will still be allowed under the system, which ultimately is not s step far enough.

To that end we have decided to go down the fully EID route for all of our breeding sheep starting today. Each and every ewe and ram (they actually are already tagged), will have to have two ear tags, one yellow (with the EID) and the other a colour of our choice, except red and black. The black ear tags are reserved to indicate where a bolus EID is being used and a red tag indicates a replacement tag, where the original one has been lost and the animal is not on the holding (farm) of birth. This all has to be done before the animal is 9 months old or earlier if and when it leaves the farm.


Today we tagged up some ewe lambs that were born earlier this year, they had a yellow tag, with the EID inserted into their right ear and a blue tag (management tag) inserted into their left ear. We then scanned the tag, added their breed details and date of birth (roughly), into the handheld reader and then uploaded the details into the computer program. We will be able to use lots of this information when we are sorting lambs for market, checking on their growth rates, and selecting which ewes to breed from and which ewes to cull out. The equipment has been quite expensive to set up and purchase but it will pay for itself with far more accurate sheep records, providing detailed management information for Tod that can be easily carried around the farm. EID 'ing' the whole flock and lambs will enable all of the killing lambs to have their tags read at the abattoir which will then tell us which rams and ewes are providing the lambs with the best carcases and therefore where our breeding should be going. Right now we don't have enough information to make too many details decisions but over time t hat will change.

Taking it to a Higher Level

As part of the on going investigations as to whether we should be getting involved in the Higher Level Stewardship a team of archaeologists have been looking at the farms archaeology. They have been trialing a system called 'COSMIC' which is based on a risk assessment to the archaeology. The study looks at each of the sights on the farm and tries to work out whether or not the current or past farming practices have or will put the archaeology in danger. The study looks at the field slope, soil depth, passed cropping and passed cultivation techniques to work out the potential risk. It also looks at futures plans for cropping and cultivation. The the system is then taken outside and hand dug test pits are dug to test the theory from the office. So far most of the test pits have come up with plenty of protection for the archaeology and no harm has been done through the farming practices. We will await the final report as the team still have a few sites left to look at. It any of the sites are shown to be at risk we may have to think about putting an HLS option on that land to protect it. These options could include using minimum tillage establishment techniques or grassing the field down in the most at risk cases. We wait to see! The test pit here is in a field of beans where they were looking to find an old roadway and various enclosures. the darker soil is the cultivation depth and the lighter soil is the subsoil, going down further in the top left corner goes even further down to the base rock layer where the archaeology would be found. In this scenario there is plenty of soil to buffer the archaeology from any of our farming operations.

Summit Success

Well at 8.15 on the 1st November a very weary but elated team of four climbers and three guides made it to the summit (Kibo) on Mt Kilimanjaro, standing shrouded in mist at 5895 metres above sea level. The summit assault started at midnight 1,195m below at Kibo huts and was an arduous climb over rocks, scree and slippery, snow covered paths culminating in a breath taking experience as we peered over the craters edge at Gilman's point on the way to the summit.

Get to Gilman's Point and the finish line is only a further 1.5hrs trek away but only another couple of hundred meters! Technology didn't enable us to blog from the summit so apologies for that, but here are a few more shots of the adventure.

Here the porters were doing the traditional singing thanks, after their tips, singing Kilimanjaro! The top team members, Tosha, Elli, Rambo, Frank, Spiderman and Frank were the main guides (team)that took the Comic Relief 'Celeb's' up to the summit earlier in the year. Mawenzi, the lower of the twin peaks is just showing herself in the distance, behind our loo tent

Trekking through the mist and cloud at about 12,000 ft. The cloud came and went, but when it was clear the views into Kenya were absolutely incredible!

This was the view back from Kibo, towards Mawenzi, in the middle is the barren area called the Saddle. Mawenzi was about 5k away at this point and it was the only trek where we could see where the next camp was, even though, from the start of the trek, it was still 9km away, it still took us about 5hrs to get there. Pole' Pole'

Kibo and Mawenzi bow out in the sunshine as the trek leaves the mountain, the views on the way down were the best ones on the mountain, bathed in sunshine and us with satisfied smiles, beaming all the way down.

Testing

Well, here we are 24 hour to go untill we leave for Amsterdam, in 36 hrs we'll be on the plane to Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.  Dad and I in conjunction with brother in law James and father in law John are due to start the climb on Tuesday.  Bags are packed, repacked and packed again with everything from longjohns to camel packs to re-hydration sachets (thanks hannah). I'll see if this get to farmer jakes blog so that I can blog from Africa's highest point, also known as the worlds highest free standing mountain, AKA the world highest volcano!!  Let's go!
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Jake Freestone
Farm manager Overbury Farms

Farmerjakef.blogspot.com

Boddington Bean Drill

For the past 4 years we have been hiring the grandly named 'Boddington Bean Drill'. the drill belongs to Boddington Estate and is a Simba Flatliner with a Massey seeder unit stuck to the top of it. It is a great way of planting beans without the need for ploughing. The beans are planted to a depth of 6-8 inches aiming for 18 plants/m3 by the time the spring arrives. We can plant over 50 acres a day much more than previously possible. We have started planting earlier than usual as the soil conditions are so favourable onto some of our heaviest land. The soil is lightly worked after the drill to seal up the slots made by the legs. Derek has been driving the 8530 all summer and is using it to plant the beans. Auto trac is employed to keep the rows arrow straight to avoid over or under laps which will make sure all of the agrochemicals applied by the Bateman RB35 will be accurately applied.

Planting Time Again

With the very dry September drilling (planting) has been a stop start affair but with the wider drill, now 6m, we have been able to cover the ground in record breaking time. Gordon has taken up the drilling mantle from his brother Andrew and has been doing a great job. Working well into the night with the Auto trac guidance system keeping him on the straight and narrow. With only 12mm of rain in September we have had some very dry seedbeds to plant into and germination has been varied depending on the depth on seed into available moisture or not. Winter barley planted on Bredon Hill has shot through the ground, where moisture levels were higher but wheat sown into heavy land has yet to emerge. These heavy fields dig get 12mm of rain last week and so they should soon be emerging. I increased the seed rate looking at an emerge plant population as opposed to a seeding rate. Emergence date was the 20th October when we planted in the last week of September so we'll see how close that is. the clip shows Graham rolling with our 6m Simba rolls and Gordon Drilling with the 7830 and the sprinter 6. Derek is just over the wall rolling with the cousins 12m set of rolls, new this year.