There has been 88mm of rain this month with most falling in the last week. See more on our weather page.

We started early in the month with a visit from David from Genesis farm assurance inspection service. We featured his colleague also David visiting in September 2002.

Our milk is currently collected at about midnight and so we have spent time fitting this automatic washing system to the vat.

It rinses off the milk residue then applies chemical and then rinses the tank and yes first night I did wait up for the tanker driver to check it was working properly.

We have had two calves born this month one black and white bull and one black and white heifer.

The bull was born with tight tendons on his back feet meaning he hobbled around on his knuckles rather than his hooves. This meant he was having difficulty feeding from mum so we put him straight onto bucket feeding he has now recovered and is growing well.

January sees the new County NFU chairman take his position at the annual luncheon and this year’s victim is Norman Lawson pictured here (on the right) with outgoing chairman Tony Garnett, besides his NFU activities Norman is also secretary of the Cheshire ploughing match (a busy man indeed).

The luncheon saw a farewell to Rodney Bacon after 30 years with the Union he is now leaving, on a personal note I would like to thank Rodney for all his help over the years I have known him.

 

Also this month a metal detector club has visited us and this year’s find was this silver shilling (5pence in today’s money), which dates from Charles the first. Charles I, was executed during the civil war in the 17th century so this coin is about 350 years old.

Webby as you may have seen, is a detectorist himself, his oldest coin at Greenheyes to date is an early 12th century coin nearly 900 old years.

I have seen roman coins found (2000 years) yet the oldest thing I have seen found by accident by a detector picking up a piece of scrap metal is a flint arrowhead this would probably be at least 3-4,000 years old so Greenheyes has seen human activity for a long time.

Also a picture of 3 musket balls and this lead weight, which weighs exactly one ounce interesting what the plough can turn up.

As I have spent much time in the dairy and milking parlour this month then and now is showing milking 1940 style.

This month’s nature report is about the rarer birds seen by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds survey carried out last year for which we now have the results.

Finally Spam email is a problem to us all, and we get more of our fair share as spammers send through our webmaster. However one enterprising spammer has recently used the link on our September 2000 report and has sent spam to Smidge. Here she is with the only spam she really likes.

See you next month PHIL.