Kids Connect campaign blog

Emily writes...
Hello again! The holidays are almost over!
On Wednesday a stray dog followed my dad home from work. We kept him at our house and phoned around to see if anyone had lost a dog, but no one had heard of any missing dogs.
Our own dog was very unimpressed about having to share his bed with this newcomer!
The next morning we took him to the vets, but he hadn’t got a microchip. But we called someone who had reported their missing dog to the dog warden. They came to see if it was him and it was. They took him off.
But they had also lost another dog which has just been found down one of our fields. Our new rabbit is doing fine and settling in, I got some pictures of him with our guinea pig Ozie.

Martha writes
On Thursday my Dad started baling with our new baler. It is a Claas Variant.
He has baled over a thousand bales already and is sick of seeing them come out of the end of his tractor!
We now have them all to bring back to the farm and put into the Dutch barn to keep dry over winter. The hens will be happy as they like to lay their eggs in all the most awkward places, usually where we can’t reach them.
We have finished cutting our wheat and it has done really well. Most of it doesn’t need drying.
When the combined left the fields, the geese and hens have been scratching about in the stubble looking for any spilt grains of wheat.
I have had to go shopping this week as I have to go back to school on Tuesday....which is a shame!

Craig writes
We’ve started harvesting our barley as well as getting all of the lambs weaned and the weather seems to be staying nice.
After an early start, Saturday morning was spent weaning the lambs off their mothers – all went well apart from a silly ewe that jumped the fence into the neighbouring field.
A strong breeze brought the combine into the first field of spring barley in the afternoon and just as we thought everything was going great, a blockage arose inside the combine. This involved clambering into the main part of the machine to unblock it so we were stopped for a couple of hours.
We were barely started again when we saw the sheep that had escaped run into the burn. With a struggle we got her out and rushed off to tip the load of grain before the combine needed emptied again.
The field got finished, the end-rig was baled and the grain came in about 16% moisture – perfect!

Emily writes:

I went back to school. Sniff sniff - the holidays are over.

Anyway, dad is working late nights to plough all the fields and is hoping to finish it soon.

The oilseed rape is planted. Also, the spring-born suckled calves are being given some creep feed which is rolled barley and minerals.

On Wednesday my sister and I had to help our mum clean the holiday lets to get our pocket money.

I wouldn’t clean them from choice but if I’m earning money from it, I’ll do the best that I can.

Our new rabbit has had his first glimpse of the outside when he went in his run on Tuesday.

Felicity writes:

On the farm the rest of the corn has been harvested and the oilseed rape ground has been cultivated.

All the flowers are wilting on the farm, and will soon die but the sweetcorn is just starting to come out.

Martha writes:

I've gone back to school.

I am now in my last year at primary - it has been a bit strange as all my friends have already moved onto secondary school.

My dad has been really busy leading all the bales he has done into the Dutch barn for winter, there seems to be a lot of them.

Soon we will have to start sorting out the pigs to go to the bacon factory, a man who keeps an eye on them comes and puts a red mark on them when he thinks they are ready to go.

Me, my dad and mum and sometimes my sister (she doesn’t like doing pigs, they smell) then have to get these out and put them in a separate place for when the wagon comes for them.

This sometimes involves a lot of running around which the pigs seem to enjoy, but not me. When they go onto the wagon my dad has to give them a tattoo so that the factory knows which farm they come from.

Craig writes:

The combine has been and gone after a long spell of weather led to a smooth-running harvest.

Straw this year was plentiful and the lack of sun to fade it resulted in the straw having an especially golden colour to it.

The folds are full of piles of grain now, although there has been a couple of lorries in for loads so that thinned them out a bit.

Our barley grain is put for malting, but sometimes goes for feed if the quality isn’t good enough – that's certainly not the case this year as the demand is high for the crop although feed prices are just as good if not better than malting this year depending on your contract.

Emily writes:

There’s a lot happening.

The oilseed rape is 2cms high and we need some rain to make it grow some more. We’ve almost sold all of the corn off which is good.

The village fete has been rescheduled to the weekend after next because it was cancelled in the summer due to rain. My dog has had a hair cut so now he looks very strange and doesn’t smell as much. We covered the pool over yesterday and now it’s really warm so I wish we hadn’t.

The guests in the hayloft are enjoying the good weather. And to sum it all up tonight we are having blackberry and apple crumble with blackberries from the bushes and apples from the trees in our garden.

Martha writes:

I’d like to tell you about our two cats called Pumpkin and Smoggy.

Pumpkin the ginger-and-black one was found by my dad when he was moving some bales so we brought her into the house and she has been in ever since.

My sister has adopted her and she even knows what time she goes to bed and sneaks upstairs and into her bed before my mum sees her.

The grey one is mine and she was living under the garden shed with her brothers and sisters but we managed to catch her, she was really vicious and was hissing and spitting for ages and she bit me really hard on the finger.

We took her into the house and she spent two days hiding under the welsh dresser in the kitchen, but she is really friendly now and they both get on really well. She likes to sleep on my sofa bed in my bedroom.

Unfortunately we could not send any pigs last week due to the movement restrictions because of foot-and-mouth but hopefully we will be able to send some this week.

Martha writes:

have had to move our turkeys from their rearing shed into something a lot bigger as they have started to escape.

We have 50 at the moment which are for Christmas, but we are taking orders already so I think that we will probably have to get some more.

At the moment they don’t look very big, but by Christmas some of them could weigh about 24lb which is a lot.

We also have some large black American turkeys which are huge and ugly and I think that they look just like vultures and I am not quite sure why we have got these.

Craig writes:

The return of foot-and-mouth in this country has been a bit of a shock to all of us with livestock, but on a brighter note the arable side seems to be doing well.

I’ve been busy taking bales to the side of one of our fields recently, for them to be taken away to Skye.

I was using a four-bale spike on the back of the tractor as well as having the loader on the front to take another two – a bit tricky to start with but I got the hang of it.

The big grain bucket has been well used as we’ve had a few more grain lorries so the grain is gradually disappearing from the sheds – more brushing and shovelling for me!

Felicity writes:

We have been spreading the muck on the fields.

A few of the sheep have been suffering from strike so we keep having to buy more medicine.

The chickens have now been let out of their new home and are very happy.

I've also been on a school trip to Castleton in Derbyshire, we were very lucky because it was very sunny and we went down into one of the many Blue John mines!