Stop the mower and things appear!

We have pulled back the old school idea that a tidy mown grass drive makes for a welcoming sight on to the farm.
Patrick was really keen to stop the mower from cutting the long drive at Lodge Farm and let the wild flowers establish and use this as a statement of our new wildlife minded approach. In the last couple of years we have seen Black Knapweed and Ox-eyed Daisy's numbers increase no end adding to the Cowslips and Clover which was there but struggling to survive on the drive.

On Wednesday on his walk back to work Patrick discovered something that we had never seen on the farm and this is all due to the change in mentality allowing flowers to actually flower!...........

Our first Bee Orchid to add to the list of Pyramid Orchid and Common Spotted Orchid which we knew we had already.

A nice surprise. BWB

True Great British Spirit

Last week was a very strange week for me. It started off with a double bank holiday for the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations, 3 BBQ's, 2 Cake days and a lot of Pimms or Calvors Lager consumed. Having just moved house, I attended my old village’s party in the village hall. Then the following day I was helping a couple of young residents in my new village to decorate crowns for a crown competition and went to that Jubilee party on the lawn. The weather didn’t dampen the true Great British spirit at either venue, with everyone dressed up in red, white and blue rain coats and rugs.

The only day of work on the farm was Wednesday! We are doing some much needed building repair to one of the old pig sheds and so we were quickly trying to get the new roof sheets on the old steel frame before the rain and wind got too much and the Health and Safety alarm bell in my head started ringing. We managed to get them all done and installed, with plenty of time to spare and the rest of the painting and walling will follow on smoothly this week now.

Thursday was the start of the County show season for us. The much anticipated and looked forward to Suffolk Show started on a chilly damp Thursday but the smiles of the occasion brought out the sun at times in the morning. All our family are involved in the planning of the show beforehand and during the two days. 

The Suffolk show is a great event where people far and wide come to see the best of the best that Suffolk has to offer: horses, sheep, pigs, cattle, machinery, art, crafts, clothes, cars. The list is endless and it is a great time to catch up with friends, make new ones and network with other businesses. The numbers coming through the gate were slightly down due, I think, to everyone being Jubilee’d out – and the weather! But the hardy souls that did come had a great show to look around.

I was given a very important job on Thursday. Having rescheduled my stewarding rota, I had to leave the Showground to pick up a VIP from the railway station. This was something I was looking forward to but was concerned because to get back in the Showground at 10am in the past has been very tricky due to all the extra traffic going to the site. I picked up the sponsor’s car and sat in it to find it was an automatic It then took a couple of minutes to find the automatic handbrake and how to get the car moving! I managed it and arrived in good time to await the arrival of the VIP!

The London Train was on time and my guest, the Secretary of State for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Caroline Spelman MP was on board.  The Minister had been invited by the Suffolk Agricultural Association’s new President, Lord Deben, and it was her first time in attending the Suffolk Show. She had heard great things about the event and how it had retained its Agricultural background. We drove from the station and I had the opportunity to talk about the show, myself, our farm and LEAF. We managed to get back into the Show within 25 minutes and I left her to be taken round by a show organiser. She was thrilled to see the Suffolk Punches being shown in the ring as we pulled up amongst the crowd.  I do hope she enjoyed her invitation and day at the show.

The rest of Thursday went well but the weather started to deteriorate and this caused a few unexpected headaches for me as a steward and for the show organisers, but the Show must go on – or so we thought!

Friday was a different story altogether! High winds and driving rain made for a very uneasy drive to the second day at the showground. The normal pre day prep on the exhibitors’ stands was starting as we arrived at 6.30am. Patrick and I caught an early breakfast and rumours were already starting to circulate about the possibility of shutting the event down! In 181years of the Show this had never been done. To shut the show in the middle would be only done if there was a major incident or it was unsafe for people to be on site. It would take a massive call from the show committee and group of Senior Stewards but it would only be done for the right reasons.

Sure enough, that call had to be made and the gates shut at 8.15am. It was then all hands to the pump making sure everyone was told and anything not tied down was needed to be pulled down and removed as the wind picked up. The Show Committee, Showground maintenance team and all the voluntary Stewards did a tremendous job in the face of adversity. Some Exhibitors and General Public were a bit miffed by the decision but when one of the largest temporary structures on the showground: the food hall marquee, lifted up and moved, it put the day into perspective.  By midday many store holders had got their tents and gazebos down but those who hadn’t watched as one by one the wind lifted them up and rolled them over the ground or onto other stands. It was a scary place to be with 90mph gusts of wind, flying marquees and whipping ropes & tent flaps and this is why they evacuated the whole ground at 1.30pm.

It was a very sad day for all involved. Stewards and organisers described it as if they had been bereaved and were in a state of shock. Luckily no one was hurt or died and the show will be back next year bigger and stronger and possibly with a few more guy ropes on the marquees!

Our next show is Cereals, the biggest farming event of the year, followed by the Norfolk show, so fingers crossed for these events. Other than this, the farm is ticking along with the crops looking windswept but well. Sunshine is much needed from now until harvest and beyond, so, in the words of my mother when I was a little boy….’Smiles bring sunshine,’ - please get smiling and do your best for us!                                 BWB

Reduce our Carbon foot print!

One thing we have to consider with all operations on the farm is our Carbon footprint. Farmers have got to use to driving their tractors so found this bit of equipment that will cut out the engine, improve the stamina and allow us to cut all our 180acres of hay by hand!

Just don't think everyone will be volunteering to head out with the mower so readily, maybe with this one they might! Farm machinery just keeps getting bigger and bigger!
 

Swallow

Hirundo rustica

Swallows are an attractive species with a glossy blue/black upper body and white underparts. They have distinctive red faces and throats plus long tail 'streamers' - male streamers are longer.

Size

17 - 19cm

Weight

16 - 25g

Habitat

Mixed farmland, often near cattle.

Nest

Usually on shelves or beams in buildings such as barns.

Eggs

4-5 red spotted white eggs.

Food

Flies, bees, butterflies and moths.

Voice

Sweet twittering song, a 'swit, swit, swit' call.

Characteristics

A graceful and elegant bird often seen swooping over water looking for insects, the Swallow arrives in the UK in March after a winter in Africa. Before migrating back to Africa huge flocks will gather together on telegraph wires.

BTO Statistics

Swallows are amber-listed as they have suffered moderate declines in recent years. The Swallow's vulnerability is thought to relate to a reduction in insect populations - their main source of food - and a shortage of suitable nesting sites.

Breeding

Nests are cup or half-cup shaped and built with a lot of mud. The incubation period lasts for 14-15 days, fledglings leave the nest 19-21 days after hatching. They are still fed by their parents for another week. Parents are very protective of their young and will mob any predators including cats and magpies and drive them away from the nest.

Feeding

Swallows eat and drink on the wing. However, if there is a shortage of flying insects they will take small invertebrates from the ground.

House Martin

House Martin

Delichon urbica

House Martins are small birds with glossy blue-black upper parts and pure white under parts. They have a distinctive white rump with a forked tail (easily distinguished from Swallows as they lack the long tail streamers). Juveniles have a browner rump and have some white mottling in the nape.

Size

12cm

Weight

15-23g

Habitat

Found throughout the UK, bar the Scottish Highlands. Some still nest on cliffs, which were their traditional sites of choice. Nowadays most House Martins can be found in villages and towns where they nest on buildings, often forming colonies.

Nest

Swallow and House martin (Flying) collecting nest material
by water of muddy pond.

A cup-shaped nest is built from mud and lined with feathers and grasses. All but the mud is collected on the wing.

Eggs

1-3 clutches of white eggs (May-August)

Food

Insects including flies and aphids

Voice

A soft twittering song

Characteristics

Extremely sociable, House Martins will help out other parents by calling chicks out from the nest when it is time for them to fend for themselves. Fledglings are fed by parents in midair.

BTO Statistics

Overall numbers are still high but House Martins are now amber rated due to recent moderate declines.

Breeding

After spending the winter in Africa, they return to the UK in the Spring and most will return to a previous nesting site. They breed in colonies that usually include five nests but can increase to tens and even hundreds of nests. Lack of mud can be a problem (particularly in dry summers) but House Martins will readily use man-made nest boxes. Both parents build the nest, incubate the eggs and feed the young. Eggs are incubated for 15 days and chicks hatch 22-32 days after hatching.

Feeding

Most feeding is done on the wing. House Martins fly higher than Swallows to catch their prey, but the insects are generally smaller.

Wild on Wednesday

Patrick helps out Radio Suffolk with a monthly slot with Lesley Dolphin but this month he was unable to do it so I had to step into his Radio shoes!

The link can be found on BBC iplayer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00ryj4m/Lesley_Dolphin_23_05_2012/

Fast forward to 1hr55mins and hear about all that has been going on down on the farm; weather, crop protection, wild seed mixes, Great crested newts, photography, rain harvesting and LEAF.

BWB

April Showers?….more like monsoons!

Pond like a puddle start of April

Wet, Wet, Wet! It has been a pretty dire month for doing anything on the farm. The weather has been against pretty much everything we had planned, like finishing off the nitrogen fertilising, keeping up the fungicide cover on all the crops, oh and our LEAF launch and all the other jobs we have on our list.

I downloaded our weather station records yesterday. These record everything you can imagine with regard to the weather and made for some interesting reading! For the whole of April, we have only had three days without any rain recorded; in April and one week of March we have had 149mm of rain and the average temperature has been enough to keep me office bound most of the month! Like most farmers, I would prefer to be out and about on the farm but this period of wet has really given me a chance to do lots of extra office work - the type of work you always seem to put off! We have got a number of projects on the go and all have required some sort of financial planning; budgets, costing and plans etc, so it has been great to dust off my old business planning folder from college. 

One of these plans has gone live! Our newly installed PV Solar Energy Unit was switched on and is now producing power. The installation has been kept clean with all this rain but fingers crossed it will be making loads of energy as the sunshine of spring and summer returns!

The crops are looking pretty miserable in these wet conditions. The wet and warm days with cold nights have created favourable disease conditions and with the land being water logged and not suitable to travel over, the diseases are really getting their claws into the plants, which will soon become stressed and the yield will be affected. As soon as we have had a few dry days, we will have to be out and getting some overdue fungicides on to the crops. We have had to change the chemicals for more expensive ones, due to this high disease pressure. The chemicals we will be applying will act as protectors but will also eradicate and cure the diseases that have found their way into the crops, so that hopefully we can maintain their high yield potential which we are hoping for.

One unexpected bonus of this rain was the fact that one of our very deep, freshly renovated ponds filled up over night. We cleaned the pond out in November, the bottom now being some 12ft deep. I walked past it on Friday night hoping for a bit more water to be in it and there was only a small puddle down in the bottom. Then Patrick walked past on Saturday morning and he called me to say it was full to the brim! I was shocked! What had transpired was that while doing the clearance work we actually redirected the drains off one of the big fields into another part of the ditch, hoping to redirect the water into the pond. We actually never did block the ditch to do this but a twist of fate did it for us. As the field hit its water capacity, the field drain started to run and run and run! The pipe we laid was a flexi pipe which then started to float as the water built up in the ditch because we had never built a head wall against it. This meant that all the field drain water off 16ha of land basically went into the pond and then backed up the ditch. We had to do some emergency pond plumbing to allow the excess water to get away and now we have a lovely deep water pond that will never dry out!

Pond FULL End of April

As May starts, we are hoping for some dry, warm, sunny weather so we can get back up-to-date with the land and environmental work that has been stalled by the high rainfall. Like every farmer, we are at the mercy of the weather, which is probably why we always want something other than that currently available. At the start of April and the hosepipe ban we were all complaining of lack of water, so the moral is: be careful what you wish for!!       BWB