Sheepish

So it’s now the third week in May and lambing and calving have had mixed results this year.

 

My policy of only using New Zealand Romney rams has been a big success and the sheep have more-or-less lambed themselves this year with only a handful needing assistance.

 

The calving has been less jolly, with a series of unfortunate events which resulted in three dead calves - each for a different reason. Out of a small herd this is a bit of a disaster - however, as far as I can tell, this was merely bad luck and not the early manifestation of the dreaded Schmallenberg virus which has been so prominent in the news this year.

 

The other slight dampener has been the slow progress in finishing, with even now several cows and sheep left to pop. This I can only assume is a general lowering of fertility due to the appalling weather last year and may be down to something as simple as a lack of sunlight. There is nothing livestock likes better than the sun on its back and for the last twelve months this was in short supply. It also went on to affect the quality of the hay and silage we made last year which didn’t help with their winter feed.

 

A dry-ish April and May have again this year led to a very slow start for the grass growth and although we had a very nice bank holiday weekend, the temperatures are below average again now. This is again going to be a challenging time for lactating cows and ewes to get the energy they need to feed the young stock from the grass, and whilst they may produce sufficient milk - their own body condition is bound to suffer.

 

With the average cow having a gestation period of 285 days it is always a fine line between cows who calve slightly later every year with those that catch up a few days each year. Years like 2012 will definitely have a knock on effect and so farmers up and down the country will be crossing their fingers that 2013 will be an improvement.

 

At the moment the jury is still out. But any spring showers so far have been downpours and when it has been dry the temperatures have been lacklustre to say the least with some chilly winds.
 

However on the bright side the met office are forecasting a return to normal temperatures by the end of the month and a dry bank holiday coming up. Better still they are predicting a dry and pleasantly warm June – set your BBQ’s to stunned!

On Yer Bike!

As a micro generator of electricity I have hankered for a while now for one of the new electric cars so that we can really begin to eat in to our farm fuel bills. However I cannot afford to be an early adopter this time and the battery technology is not quite there yet to produce a vehicle that will get the wife to work at the hospital in Truro and back on a single charge.

However, what we can afford and have been reading about with interest over the last twelve months is the quiet revolution in cycling that is the e-bike. Basically an ordinary bike with a lithium battery and very small motor attached to the crank which can give you a boost as and when you need it.

Cheating! I hear you cry (which to be fair is the reaction I get from nearly everyone). But what can I say? - as an unfit farmer the wrong side of 50 and living in one of England’s unspoiled uplands, I find that whilst I do enjoy riding a bike around I tend to spend most of the time walking as I push it up hills that would test the stamina of even a dope fuelled tour rider.

For those yet to catch up with these wonderful machines, they do not cruise you up hill and down dale at the flick of a button, but merely use the battery to give your aching limbs a boost when they need it most. The result is nothing short of amazing and once you have tried one out you will be converted. They put the fun back into casual cycling and allow you to carry on arguing with your nearest and dearest in spite of any inclines the road may throw at you.

We have now become confirmed bike anoraks and spend many happy hours boosting the profits of Halfords browsing for bits and pieces for our new machines. So much so that tomorrow we are putting our bikes on the train at Bodmin Parkway and taking them off two hours later at Tiverton Parkway with the intention of cycling most of the way home over four days.

We will be following Sustrans route three over the wilderness of Exmoor and have booked ourselves in at B&B’s every 25 or so miles. A true adventure for us oldies and the kids think we are nuts. The weather looks set fair (if that what you can call the bitingly cold Easterly wind that will follow us) and barring a snowstorm we should be ready to be picked up at Okehampton on Sunday. Let the Tour De Devon begin!

Tractor news – tractor blues…

Dedicated followers of the farm twitter and/or facebook will be aware that last month I splashed the cash on a new (to us) tractor and are doubtless(!) wondering how that is working out.

 

The old tractor was still going OK, but at over twenty years old it was beginning to show its age with a few rust holes and a couple of oil leaks. On top of that, Son No. 1 managed to smash the rear glass last year and the replacement wasn’t a perfect fit, and the cab was still littered with tiny cubes of glass.

 

More importantly it was also only two wheel drive.

 

When I bought it just over five years ago I thought this wouldn’t really be an issue as I reasoned that in the “good old days” all tractors were only 2 wheel drive. However we ask a lot more of our machines today, and it would really struggle to carry a bale up even the most gentle of slopes if the ground was at all slippy. Given the fact that it had rained solid for the last twelve months we were snookered on most days.

 

So I hunted on the web for a replacement and found a much newer 4 wheel drive model at a dealer in Devon.

 

If anyone is looking for an easy career move can I suggest tractor dealer. Bear in mind that this newer machine was over £20K.

Does it have a service history? – Don’t know

Would you service it? – No

Do you want to see our tractor to part exchange? – No, I can price it from a photo

Will you fix the seat which has obviously been extensively used by a farmer too fond of his Big Mac’s and Large Fries? – Oh OK, if you insist

 

So hands were shaken and after a couple of weeks the new beast arrives and it soon becomes obvious that in the intervening fifteen odd years there have been a few improvements made by the John Deere Tractor Corporation.

 

When you turn the key on the radio no longer blast out Radio 1 at full volume (as left by your errant son) causing you to jump out of you seat - but now comes in softly and you have to turn it up to the desired level. It also comes in on Classic FM as I have yet to let Mitchell behind the wheel.

 

There is a nifty little lever which enables you to switch the whole three tonne machine from forward to reverse in any gear without using the clutch. Unbelievable.

 

The newly repaired seat has both up-and-down and side-to-side suspension so that you are not thrown about like a pea on a drum over rough ground.

When you step on the brakes you stop.

 

Less good (perhaps) is that the cab side windows open effortlessly without you needing to grope for the catch, but crucially without you needing to notice your wallet (with £200 cash, 6 bank/credit cards and a handy list of pin numbers) floating out of the window and ending up somewhere on the verge of the Camelford to Bude road as you go to pick up your new grain trailer…

Merry Christmas...

...with apologies to Noddy Holder!

Are you banging on your tractor with a hammer?
As your starter motor gives up with a stammer
Has the lock froze on the cab door?
Has your battery turned and then died?
Are you kicking at your tyres as you cry..

So here it is flipping Christmas
It's enough to freeze your bum
Look out you turkeys
Coz it's only just begun

Are your cows all baying loudly for their grub?
As your quad bike struggles through the icy sludge
Now the yard is like an ice rink
And the chickens can't be seen
As the ducks glide by like Orville and Dean

So here it Is blasted Christmas
It's enough to freeze your ears
Look on the bright side
For it's only once a year

Did the school play seem like fourteen hours long?
And the carol service's endless hum-a-long
Have the kids all pinched the best chairs?
Have your wellies been chucked out?
As you try to smile while eating Brussel Sprouts

So here it is tacky Christmas
With its cards and fairy lights
Twelve days of humbug
And an overload of rhyming trite!

And of course, Henry the horse, dances the waltz…

When we first moved to Cornwall in the seventies, it was to be near the iconic North Cornish coastline and to a little cottage that was only a couple of miles from the picturesque natural harbour of Boscastle where we had spent many of our happy family holidays.

Beautiful as this area is, it was then (and is now) a hard place to make enough money to keep a family and I clearly remember my Mum and Dad – a couple who up until then had regarded Battersea Park as the great outdoors – attempting lobster fishing and relief milking amongst other things in order to make ends meet.

We didn’t have much spare cash at that time but nearly all of my parent’s new friends had horses, and so despite Dad having turned 50 and Mum in her mid-thirties they began to learn to ride. The locals were very generous with their time and nags and riding became a big thing for all of us – with the highlight being the occasional chance to ride up on the moors.

Bodmin Moor is the perfect riding country. Miles of wide open spaces that are much flatter than many of our other uplands and littered with ‘wild’ ponies. The draw of this was so strong that in the end my parents sold everything they had and then borrowed a bundle to buy a very run down moorland farm called South Penquite.

I clearly remember on the first day we moved in, one of our new farming neighbours rode up to introduce himself. His bridle and stirrup leathers were both made of baler twine and his pony look like it hadn’t been fed for a week – but it nevertheless scared the pants off me as it bolted down the lane when I foolishly accept “a go”.

The moors were, at the time, a genuine horse culture where the farmers often had more ponies grazing than sheep, when the two annual pony sales were the biggest dates at the local market, where Land Rovers were scarce and quad bikes unheard of, and where riding was the preferred means of transport for everyone. My parents were in heaven, and even when I joined the army I would come home every leave and break in ponies and help on the farm.

My Dad had a new horse that was straight off the moors and broken by one of the local lads. Jumping Jack Flash (or just Jack to his friends) wasn’t big, but carried my father literally to his grave. He was riding Jack right up until the week he passed away and we buried them both in the same corner of the farm – but that is another story.

What brings me to reminisce about horses are two events that have happened last month. Firstly it was a day of mixed emotions when I helped some of the local rough riders round up about 40 wild ponies on one of the more remote areas of moorland. It is perhaps a sign of the times that whilst one farmer of over seventy turned up with his horse, tacked up and ready to ride in the back of his cattle trailer – a couple of the younger generation turned up on scramble bikes. Anyway after an hour or so of galloping round and after another hour of horse trading we were left with 22 unwanted and unmarked moorland ponies.

Having literally no value, these ponies were actually threatening the viability of our major conservation scheme on the moors, where we are paid to reduce the grazing to help restore the heather and wetlands. So, with no other options left we called in the knacker man and spent a harrowing afternoon humanely disposing of them.

On a more cheery note, I have known for a while that I would need a “Jack” of my own to see me into old age and so I have purchased another moorland horse (from the son of the farmer Dad got Jack from) and am now showing him the moors and getting him used to the livestock on a daily basis. His name is Henry.

Scrub-a-dub-dub

While the economy stubbornly refuses to grow, the wet weather has led to an extraordinary amount of growth around the farm.

I distinctly remember scratching my head in April and seriously wondering where I was going to put the cows next, as the drought-like conditions killed off any spring grass growth and left me feeding hay well into May.

We were saved of course by the Jubilee double bank holiday, when it started raining and seemingly didn’t stop for the next six weeks. The resulting flush of greenery has left the cows and sheep wading knee deep in grass and I have been forced into going around the farm with the tractor and grass cutter to keep on top of it all. On the campsite I have already notched up twice as many hours on the ride-on mower as I did for the whole of last year, and on my early morning strolls I find myself picking off thistles with my machete that have put in a foot of new growth since I first swiped them down in June.

The difference between a well managed wildlife habitat and an area of desolate scrub can be a fine one and keeping on top of all the gorse and bracken around the farm in any year is a big job. This year’s crop of pearl bordered fritillary butterflies have already had a torrid time of it with the weather and the last thing they need is for next year’s essential supply of violets to be drowned out in a sea of scrub.

So I am very pleased to report that we will once again this autumn host a working holiday under the auspices of The Conservation Volunteers (formally BTCV). This was a huge success in 2011 when a team of eight enthusiastic helpers cleared a large area of scrub from one of our key butterfly habitats. Our jolly crew stayed in our four Yurts and over the course of a week bonded into a formidable team, swathing their way through a couple of acres of gnarly gorse.

This would have taken me months on my own and would have been a very lonely soul-destroying task, and so last autumn it was a real pleasure to wander down with the dogs at dusk and chat with the workers around the dying embers of that day’s fire. They had come from all over the UK and from very different backgrounds and were thoroughly enjoying the communal work & living.

There are still some spaces left for this year’s break from the 3rd – 10th October, so if you fancy a working week on an organic farm, meeting new people and staying in a Yurt you can find more details here: shop.tcv.org.uk/shop/stock?l=level3;lid=733;sid=9343

Pleasure Hunting

On the 2nd of May 2000 the US military, on orders from President Bill Clinton, made access to their previously restricted Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites available to one and all. So what, I hear you cry.

Well the very next day an anorak from Oregon hid a box full of knick-knacks in some woods and posted on the internet the exact co-ordinates so that like minded anoraks with the right type of GPS gear could go look for it. If it was found the simple rule was “Take some stuff, leave some stuff” - and the pursuit of Geocaching was born.

Fast forward almost exactly twelve years and I was approach by a local geo-nut, (actually a very nice lady who works at a nearby school) who wondered if I would mind if she hid some geocaches along our farm trail. After she had patiently explained to me what it was all about I thought ‘what the hell’ and told her to press ahead. It didn’t seem as if it was likely to do any harm and if it gave a few local geeks a reason to enjoy the farmwalk so much the better.

At midnight on the 5th May she sent me an email saying that the co-ordinates had gone live onto a web site and at 8.30 the next morning I was pleasantly surprised to find my first geocachers in the yard looking for a spot to park. By midday there were six cars parked in a row and ever since a steady stream of walkers and families have been enjoying the hunt.

Not to be outdone, I purchased a Garmin GPS device for son number two’s upcoming 11^th birthday, and on the day he took a couple of school mates around the farm looking for treasure. Now normally when I suggest to any of our brood a walk round the farm, I am greeted by long faces and with their feet firmly in drag mode. However, with the winning combination of a new gadget and hidden treasure to find we all set of with real enthusiasm.

They absolutely loved it and rushed from box to box to complete the 2½ miles in record time. We took with us a bag full of unwanted toys and bits and pieces to swap, and we added our names to the already impressive list in each stash.

Our handheld GPS did knock me back over a hundred quid, but it also has many other useful functions such as a compass, an altimeter and also tracks how far and how fast you have walked. The process of downloading the caches is a doddle and many smart phones can also do this with just the help of the right app.

If you are coming to camp here and have a GPS enabled device, the coordinates can all be found here:

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?lat=50.544565&lng=-4.67747&dist=.6

Happy hunting!