Harvest is is full swing round here. We have not started yet but most of the neighbours have at least tried a little, crops look good and as most are not fully ripe yet quality looks good too.
I have been very busy with SRDP, energy business paperwork, cattle and lamb sales and trying to find my grain drier. The laughable system that is SRDP has now cost me £2000 in consultants fees so far yet we still have not got an actual application in, cynicism about it will shortly be replaced by bankruptcy at this rate. Energy company work does at least pay well, it shows how pathetically rewarded farmers are. Cattle and lamb sales are going well in volume and desperately badly in price. There is now no organic premium whatsoever, this will be followed shortly by no organic production at least from me if things don't improve. My drier is at this moment still missing.
Now to the tags, we are part of the electronic tag pilot scheme. I know I volunteered for it so I should not moan but I am going to anyway. 4 of us worked from 9 to 5 and we succeeded in tagging 350 lambs.Not all of them got both tags, some bent and had to be binned the tag applicator seems to be designed for some other species, certainly not humans. The tags come in awkward numbers,female parts in tens for non electronic, in 30's for electronic, non electronic males come in strips of five. Very easy to lose count and even easier to put different numbers in each ear. It's not fair to blame the manufacturer as I know they make a logical, normal system for ordinary tags. They also make an excellent multiple tag applicator. The level of labour required to implement electronic double tagging would destroy the sheep industry. I would very much like to insert at least one of the electronic tags into all the politicians responsible for this fiasco.