Black Sheep Blog

Happy New Year and all that jazz.

Our festive question of the week reveals that cider is the farming tipple of choice, narrowly beating beer.

I'm quite suprised by that given the extent of lagers, ales, bitters, stouts and porters available for our enjoyment.

My suspicions are that the snakebite (aka diesel) drinking student massive have something to do with the the figures.

Had these images sent in from Ben Parsons from Leominster and couldn't help but laugh.

The story goes that Ben and his brother bought their dad an old Fergie 2 furrow plough for a Christmas present this year on the internet,

It was delivered to Ben's house. However he found the thing a tad difficult to move on his own, so telephoned a friend to ask him if I could borrow a tractor for the afternoon to move the plough to their father's house.

The friend kindly agreed, so off went Ben to pick up the tractor only to discover that it was a great big Fendt 926!

Well, it should fit they thought, and it did, but with a comedy looking outcome!

One of the most popular gripes of FWi users is that the site is so slow over a dial-up modem.

Granted the site is not the fastest out there - but then again we don't have the server resources of the BBC.

The usual suspects are the News pages and the Forums - which I concede are painfully slow - but are being replaced!

However, on Broadband FWi, like many other sites, performs fairly consistently so my arguement is that in this day and age why isn't everyone on broadband?

In the past that comment has farmers compaining bitterly about the lack of rural broadband access. But the Telegraph today tells us that BT have made broadband available to 99.8% of the UK.

Compare this statistic to our current browser metrics which have only 59% of users connecting via broadband or quicker and it shows that availability is no longer the reason for a slow broadband take up among our readership.

Adam has tagged me for the blog meme that's doing the rounds.

Here are five things you (probably) don't know about me:

1. I'm a Classicist at heart, having studied Greek and Latin at school and then Classics at Exeter University. Ask me anything about Periclean Athens and I promise to answer without looking at wikipedia.

2. My collegues keep trying to get me to audition for Big Brother.

3. I've seen the Space Shuttle take off and it's the most impressive things I've witnessed by quite a margin. If you're ever planning a trip out to Florida, try and coincide with a launch - it beats Disney World.

4. I'm writing a book called "Whatever happened to Lafrowda Dave?" If anyone happens to know the answer, feel free to let me know as it would probably improve the current ending.

5. I've had some truly bad haircuts in my time - couple below - and would still be exploring new styles if it hadn't decided to give up and retreat backwards.

In the spirit of things I challenge Farmer Jake, Tim Relf, Emily, Heather Gorringe and Electroramblings to carry on the good work.

Funny picture of a calf with a question mark marking:

Tim has discovered a lovely little site courtesy of West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers called www.cheddarvision.tv.

Basically a cheese being filmed.

More interestingly, also mentions being hooked on Celeb BB. For my sins I too find it compulsive viewing.

I can't help but think that I'm reliving my childhood in being addicted to watching-from-behind-the-sofa-TV.

Only this time it's reality TV instead of Doctor Who.

Apparently, the grain it takes to fill a 25-gallon fuel tank with ethanol just once will feed one person for a whole year.

With that in mind, the NY Times is reporting concerns over whether there will be enough corn from the US harvest in 2007 to support the demand for both fuel and food, after a new study found that ethanol plants could use as much as half of America’s corn crop next year

Big Biofuel's Simon Robinson covers this matter better than I ever could ...

The wind power debate rages on in the FWi forums - such is the passion the subject cooks up that at times tempers have threatened to boil over.

Because of the subject's prominence in our users' minds - Mr News picked this out as his Window on the Web feature this week. It's only 9 secs but still looks impressive:

In case you've not heard of Crazy Dave here's his claim to fame.

His video shows him overtaking his father as they both drive their tractors and trailers home.

Crazy Dave gives a hilarious commentary as he eases past his Dad as if he were a Grand Prix driver.

It is slightly questionable from a safety point of view (just how has he filmed it?) but very funny!

Watch out for a bit of dodgy language if you're a sensitive soul.

Disco Stu stumbled across this on Googlesightseeing - an example of crude crop writing just beside Edinburgh Airport.

See the big picture ....

Field Day
Farmers Weekly's Tim Relf takes an alternative look at rural 'goings on'

Food for Thought
Farmers Weekly's news blog, bringing you daily our journalists' take on key farming stories from around the UK...and beyond

Taking Stock
Our livestock show and sales blog reveals the real stories from the UK's key auctions

Interesting web 2.0 tool that Jim Muttram picked up on:

Daylife.com

It's a news aggregator which pulls stories together into pages to give the complete view.

In this case farming

At last! Someone involved in agriculture has mentioned this Big Brother thing.

David Miliband maintains he doesn't watch BB (yeah right!) but he's still backing Shilpa over Jade. Bit of a no brainer - especially for a politician.

A braver post would've been his opinion whether this is indicative of what is considered acceptable behavior from the great white working class, and more specifically women from that background.

For what it's worth, I've watched with a sense of horror as Jade Goody was rewarded with celebrity-hood for her ignorance and lack of social graces. I'll be cheering at the TV when she exits and realises the worm has turned.

An important email greets me this morning - it's a good example of how far removed from the reality of farming FW's current home is:

Dear All

Over the next couple of days our chair specialist will be carrying out the servicing of the chairs throughout the building, which will have minimum impact to the staff. The works will require all staff giving access to the specialist to inspect their chairs for a period of no more than 5 minutes.

Two points:

1) do people aspire to become a chair specialist?
2) do chairs really require an mot? Either they work or they're in pieces, n'est pas?

This story here tells of how a duck was shot and, presumed dead, was placed in a fridge.

Two days later, when the fridge was opened, it was found that the duck was in fact still alive.

Subsequently, the duck was operated on to repair the gunshot wounds.

It then expired from heart failure during surgery.

However, the vets performed some sort of avian CPR and resussitated it successfully.

The state in which it currently now resides.

My immediate observation is why all this effort and expense in keeping something alive when the initial intention was to kill it?

Carrots can do great things for humans; most famously they prevent you from knocking your leg against the bedside table when you are getting into bed at night. But what happens when cows get fed carrots...