July 2010
A huge apology for my lack of posts over the last few months I do have a large picture file in my mobile phone which will be diaryed however at present the phone won’t talk to my new netbook even though they are both made by the same company (Samsung). Here on the farm we are being affected by the dry weather as are all our neighbours. The winter barley put up it’s seed heads by the end of may and although a fine looking crop the grain itself will be light in weight. We have about half a clamp full of silage after we finished 1st cut but normally I would expect three quarters full. We have big baled some rough bits we would have normally left for the cows and also half the left hand meadow giving us another 32 big square bales of silage and also have made 300 bales of hay. My next plan is to sow about two ha of forage rape on the stubble as soon as the Barley has been harvested and if it is still very dry we will use dirty water to irrigate it to make it germinate the aim being that this will free up more grass to silage in the Autumn as the cows will be grazing the rape. As I often say this is a plan so best laid plans and all that. We had a very welcome wet spell so grass has now started to grow again so we should get some second cut towards the end of August. On a problematic note the IH 784 has overheated a caught fire burning out the wiring system this would have been fixable however the damage to the engine is beyond salvage so it’s time to look for another. This had happened while Bob was topping thistles and I was out collecting a radiator for the Landrover as the last one was damaged when the engine mount broke sending the cooling fan into the radiator. It must be a thing with our machines at present as the car’s water pump packed in as well when I returned from an afternoon at Blakemere craft centre with the trailer. More soon when we finish the repairs PHIL