Owd Fred's Blog

Calving time for the Suckler Cows12 April 2012

2012-04-14T07:25:00Z

Yesterday we had an incalf heifer looking as if she was ready to start to calve and she was looking around where to calve, just in the late evening. Two hours later and just going dark, her water had broken and she had got two calves with her, but they looked remarkably dry and well licked from the distance. She had if fact taken to two other young calves that were only a day or so old and keeping them close to her. The danger here was that when she eventually had her own calf she may follow one...(read more)

War Time Horses

2012-03-19T07:50:00Z

I watched a program about War Horses the other night, only to realise how many were taken from this country and North America to work abroad during the First World War. What an important role they played in the transportation of supplies out to the front line in the most horrific conditions. During the Second World War horses were still in short supply but possibly for a very different reason. Read on here http://yewsfarm.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/war-time-horses-i-watched-program-about.html...(read more)

Our Single Farm Payment form is a stickler

2012-03-08T07:37:00Z

Our Government seems to "Gold Plate" every last rule no matter how petty and small, where as the same rules in France are far more relaxed. For example, all cattle have to have two ear tags, if you’re unlucky enough to have been chosen for an inspection, and if they find a beast with one tag missing you stand to have your entire SFP stopped or percentage deduction. More on this story here http://yewsfarm.blogspot.com/2012/03/our-single-farm-payment-form-is.html...(read more)

Not so many bulls about farms

2012-02-01T19:55:00Z

Not so many bulls about farms these days, particularly the dairy herds. Before the advent of Artificial Insemination, you often reared a bull calf out of one of your own best cows, the resultant heifers coming into your herd and completing their first lactation, would be very hit and miss. It was not uncommon to see cows with curled up toes and long pendulous udders often having front teats pointing east west. Also you had three more years of calves on the way before the bull had been proven. Read...(read more)

My own Experience with Suspected Big cats in UK

2012-01-15T08:47:00Z

Big cats in UK . The discussion has come around again, about whether there are big “big cats” loose around UK. There has never been one found dead or died, but then you never seem to find dead deer or dead badgers other than road kill. My own experience in 1992 in a field of twenty five eighteen month old store cattle standing in the middle of a sixteen acre field one frosty morning. They were just standing in the centre of the field in a tight huddle at first light, and from the distance the steam...(read more)

All the Machinery has taken a wobble at the same time

2012-01-08T08:57:00Z

We seem to have run into a period in life when all the machinery seems to have taken a wobble at the same time and cannot shake it off. All attempts to put thing right have been thwarted and mechanics who are working on them cannot just put their finger on the particular problem. Take the Agrotron tractor for instance, for a long while it had difficulty in drawing its fuel from its own fuel tank, while working its was no trouble but left over night and its fuel in the tank low, you would have to...(read more)

Farmer & Stock Breeder year book and desk diary Christmas 1961

2011-12-31T09:03:00Z

Its not every Christmas that its as cold as last year 2010, when we had sustained cold and frost for some six weeks along with more snow than we had had for years. Looking back in the diary just fifty years ago we had a very frosty spell over the run up to that Christmas 1961, we had turkeys to kill pluck and dress. That year we had ordered a hundred poults, and as per usual we were sent one hundred and ten, and with a bit of luck we had actually sold just about a hundred finished birds come December...(read more)

Year End Blog 2011

2011-12-24T15:17:00Z

Here is a brief summery of activities of happenings around the farm and the blogs 2011 . Not enough room to do it diary fashion day by day so here goes. I was asked “which is your favourite blog” the answer was,-- The Longest Swath , and I was honoured to have it published on the Farm-n-Wife web sitesite in the middle of the Mid-west USA. http://farmnwife.com/ with the Badge 'Featured Farmer of the week' . Read the full story here http://yewsfarm.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/year-end-blog-2011...(read more)

What we were doing 50 years ago this day 27.11.1961

2011-11-28T08:51:00Z

Just been looking back in the old farm diary on what we were doing just fifty years ago today This was the nearest they had to a cattle crush, and note the cattle, young stock all had horns, the cows would be tied up in the cowsheds by the chain. There are a few horses in the back ground. Read more and more pictures, http://yewsfarm.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/what-we-were-doing-this-day-27112011.html...(read more)

A Farmers Gardening Blog

2011-11-22T08:35:00Z

Gardening as a Pastime(with tractors always in the picture) Many potential gardeners who work, and travel some distance to and from work, just physically do not have much time to do what they would like to do in the garden. Then there is the people who just cannot stand gardening, like a neighbour we had in the village, (the wheelwright), his wife loved her garden, and he was committed to mowing the lawns front and back, and always commented to who ever would listen, that his garden should be tarmac...(read more)

Cheese and Mustard (1940’s)

2011-11-06T20:25:00Z

Every now and then, in the pantry the last lump of cheese would be going dry and crumbly, but it was still all used, very very rare for good food to be wasted back then. I’m not talking about the fiddly bits of cheese you see in the shops and super markets these days all fancy wrapped and stamped with a sell by date. This was a real wedge off a whole round block of Cheshire and Cheddar Cheese, probably fifteen or twenty times the size mentioned above. Read on http://yewsfarm.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11...(read more)

Carting & cutting Kale 65 years ago with the cowman

2011-10-27T06:28:00Z

This was tale about what happened to my brother and I when I was 9 years old and my brother just over 6years . I was just old enough to work helping the then cowman Philip to load kale for the cows, a job he did every afternoon ready for the following days feeding. Philip had a tremendous scramble to get us out, I know I was first out and standing by on my own in a daze, and after a short while my younger brother Robert emerged all muddy an shaken. read on here http://bit.ly/uX6J8I...(read more)

That Unsettled Feeling

2011-10-16T10:09:00Z

Occasionally in life you get the uneasy and unsettled feeling when you’re unsure of the future and not certain as to which way life is taking you, well I got that feeling this last few months. Looking back over the years I got it when I first started school, then at eleven when we went to the big school in town, but that was soon over come within a few days when you got to know your way around. The next time was when I got married and got my own house when I set up on my own farm (tenanted farm)...(read more)

An unwelcome brush with the Law

2011-10-09T19:04:00Z

A Sunday morning brush with the Law One Sunday morning ten years ago I was taking a load of rotted muck with the tractor and trailer down to an allotment in town, on the way I had to pass the police depot along side the M6 motorway. As I was loaded I did a rolling exit out of a road junction, but unfortunately a motorway patrol car was just coming down off the bridge, (they were just going for a tea break, and thought I had no brakes), Follow the story here-- http://bit.ly/pZpRdM...(read more)

The Standard Fordson

2011-10-02T07:37:00Z

This was drawn by the Standard Fordson I remember as a kid of six or seven how we loved to have a ride on the empty trailers back to the field to be loaded. On this occasion I had just missed my chance for a ride and I was on my own, when I though I would run and catch up and climb onto the back end of the wagon. When I caught up with the outfit, I thought I could put my foot in the swinging rope and claw myself up the backend of the gormers and onto the trailer. But it did not turn out like that...(read more)

Grandma had a very strong ‘best’ float

2011-09-27T17:59:00Z

With one wheel on the grass and a steady eye for the road beyond she got through, slowed the cob to a trot she never looked back. If she had looked back as some of her family helpers did, she would have seen a trap still moving along the road slowly, the driver on his back side in the middle of the road, and the axle and wheels of the above mentioned vehicle twisted and half way over the hedge . Read more-- http://yewsfarm.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/grandma-always-had-very-strong-best.html...(read more)

The main cash crop, (1940's)

2011-09-11T20:10:00Z

The main cash crop apart from sugar beet, was wheat this was sown usually after a break crop of grass as in the Norfolk four coarse rotation of Roots Barley Seeds Wheat , Wheat stooked in the field and left for 2 church bells ( ten to fourteen days) before being carted in to the barn, read more http://yewsfarm.blogspot.com/2011/09/corn-harvest-1940s-for-those-on-tuther.html...(read more)

Our Cows have got a Leader

2011-09-04T21:17:00Z

Well its that time of year again when the calves have got to be weaned , the shed has been prepare , the troughs along the front have got gates above them to stop the jumpers, the water trough has extra rails to stop them going through, enough bedding thrown down to last a month, a ring feeder positioned where it can be replenished from outside. The cows will shout by their field gate for three days , Read more http://yewsfarm.blogspot.com/2011/09/cows-have-got-leader.html...(read more)

The cow that carries its own fence

2011-08-29T12:25:00Z

Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up. G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) read more http://bit.ly/qGZYGN...(read more)

Second view of "Need long toe nails"

2011-08-23T07:40:00Z

Dad always said that, "you're only as good as your feet," But then he was talking bout, horse's cows and bullocks for meat. Anyone who died in the village were said to have "fell off the perch" read more on this link http://yewsfarm.blogspot.com/2011/08/need-long-toe-nails-like-claws-to-grip.html...(read more)

How do you define a working farmer’s car?

2011-08-15T06:20:00Z

Pulled out all parcels and shopping and stood back, while the old Austin Montego finally cremated itself in the middle of the road. The old Austin Montego Estate Car, it was a farmers car, or life before we had a Landrover 1970’s / 80’s ( The demise of the Land Rover blog http://bit.ly/k0C2mG ) How do you define a working farmer’s car, a car that can pull almost anything, a car that you can chuck anything that will fit in it, a car with a drawbar that is good and shiny not the one with the plastic...(read more)

Domino the Spotted Stallion.

2011-08-07T06:24:00Z

It was fourteen years ago that Domino was born to a small black Shetland mare, a mare that was not big enough to go in the standard Shetland show classes 38/42inches , and too big to go in the miniature Shetland showing classes 30/34 inches, in fact she was about 36 inches tall. Domino, he stands at 33 inches tall, this was taken 7 years ago, in his winter the black spots in his coat stand up like a shaving brush while the white areas of coat lay fairly flat Going back five years before this, it...(read more)

To Market Drayton Sell (Cattle Market)

2011-07-30T06:58:00Z

Our local cattle market is at Market Drayton, about half an hour's drive west, it's usually store cattle that I sell there, having a suckler herd, I run them on to just short of two years old and sell them to finishers. I buy no corn (barley or wheat) for them, its all grass and wilted silage in the winter, with the grain prices as they are these days and I no longer grow my own, where's the sense in shelling out good money, when a bit longer natural growth bring good results. Below is...(read more)

Farming on a peat bog (only part of the farm)

2011-07-23T20:51:00Z

Almost a quarter of our farm is on a peat bog, at one time each of the farms in the village had a proportion of this peat ground, splitting and fragmenting the farms. In the last forty years as farms became vacant with retirements the estate amalgamated the farms into bigger units and got them into ring fence units. My farm being to the east side of the estate nearly all this peat ground fell into my circle on the map. When I first started farming, and fresh from farm college, keen to try out new...(read more)

We wus Brung up Proper (1940's)

2011-07-16T07:27:00Z

On hearing the back door open, it was never locked, Foot steps in the kitchen, bedroom door we chocked, Then we heard mothers Coo-eee, relieved to hear her call, Have you missed me duckies, we bloomin have an all. (Our farm house was out on its own and scary at night) Looking at kids of today all pampered and molly coddled, with all the mobile phones and Ipods, Nintendo Wii. X -boxes and video games, it seems it's every thing you can think of to keep them inside and isolated from social interaction...(read more)