Down and dirty in Essex

No disrespect to the inhabitants (some more permanent than others) but Basildon, well, the outskirts where I was, is a bit of a khazi. I apologise to anyone who holds the place dear, but at best it is an aesthetically challenged Essex town intersected by the A13 where every inch of the skyline is littered with pylons. That part of the horizon which isn’t marred by steel power-towers (which should really have solar panels on them by now - if they did, this place would be producing more electricity than anywhere else in the UK!) is occupied by an oil refinery bordering the Thames efflu/estuary, next to which is a stunning view of La Isla “not” bonita...Canvey Island. There is an inlet, or a tract of liquefied mud depending on how the sun hits it, which leads out across some flat land where you can just get a glimpse of the north shores of nearby Kent to the south of the river. Sadly, this part of Kent is not the chocolate-box part known for bursting with ripe fruit, hop gardens and Oast Houses. Its possibly even worse than Basildon and sufficiently ugly that Kent County Council don’t even have a name for it. 

Anyway, I went to this delightful part of the country for a “farm-talk” on Cattle Winter Rationing which was essentially about general nutrition, calf management and animal condition scoring run by a bunch called ADAS who get involved in such matters from an educational point of view.

Despite being rather unkind about Basildon, in between the A13 and the oil refinery is a large agricultural concern managed by a lovely bloke called Alex who runs a mixed farm of around 400 acres. Among his livestock is a 34 strong herd of pedigree South Devons like ours here at Scalands, and fine examples they are too. It was a fantastic opportunity for me to learn some important facts about animal health and dietary needs as well as weaning considerations and disease prevention. Remember, despite appearing like I know what I am doing, I have a massive amount to learn, so this was an excellent day although I could have done without the puncture going over the QE2 bridge on the way back and having to change the stubborn wheel on the narrowest hard shoulder in the country. Not fun.

I spread my seed all over the place last week...

As planned, we over-seeded our largest silage field last week. Having let 33 of our beasts chew the grass down, we ran over the ground with a chain-harrow. This is dragged behind the tractor and basically scuffs the ground and drags small tufts of grass up and essentially opens the earth a little, hopefully enabling enough clear surface between the tufts left behind to allow seeds to nestle and eventually germinate. We then went over the same area with a spreader filled with a seed mix designed for silage growth and later grazing. Importantly, within the mix are two types of perennial rye grass which will have the added benefit of increasing the overall protein level so important for the development of muscle. Finally, the whole lot was rolled to try and embed the seed into the earth. This method is very old fashioned and was how it was done before the development of modern machinery. Its also a bit hit and miss and a reasonable percentage of the seed doesn’t make it to where it should go but when grazing space and budget is tight its the only way to do it. Fortunately this week’s warmer weather should mean the seeds start to do their thing. I shall monitor how this field regenerates and report.

Daaan a market!

Fantastic news from Ashford Market last week. We got an excellent price for one of our young fattened bulls in the beef sale and a mention in the sale news. Despite the other we sent in not quite fetching what we wanted, overall we were very happy. In addition we sold three 17 month old pedigree heifers which fetched an ok price, and whichever way you look at it we have reduced our stock by 10 now (we also sold 5 female calves privately the other week) which means we are where we want to be in terms of space and feed for the winter and have some cash in the bank to help steer us a little closer towards the black. This is a business like any business and cash-flow is key especially with increased winter costs looming.

Blowy job this farming...

No Spring nor Summer Beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one Autumnal face  - John Donne

It would appear that John Donne experienced a different kind of climate back in the 16th and 17th century. Were he around today his words may have more aptly described our Autumn so far as ”violent, and pissy”. Not wishing to elbow any romance into touch here but let’s be honest, no sooner have we just about managed to convince ourselves that we did actually have some form of summer (albeit in spring) that we now seem to be experiencing the full extremes of the available season, overnight. Still, it makes you feel alive and somehow more vital than the comfort offered by more pleasant climes - I hate wearing shorts anyway...you end up getting stung to buggery when you're fencing.

Don’t worry though, sunny spells we’ll continue to have and there is still the odd blackberry to pick. The sloes and damsons are also in abundance this year. Mushroom season is looming too and we can all look forward to lots of stews, dumplings, pies, casseroles and other hearty fare...no more limp salads and cheap, nuked, red-dyed BBQ tucker in the rain. Burn your t-shirts and say “good riddance” to whatever masqueraded as our high season.

We should welcome Autumn. Its a time where things change from green to red, brown and gold. Artists love this time of year. Leaves drop from trees leaving lonely branches bare to the elements against a full range of bruised, grey skies. Pub doors get blown open by a leafy gust upon arrival and people spend their time dripping by the fire. The aromas of damp Barber, wet dog and smouldering socks fill the air – more dominant now smoking has been banned – at least it tempers the smell of cleaning products. (It does all sound a little pretentious, I know, but it is an evocative time of year and I'm a wordy type!)

Where the farm is concerned, I have sold 5 of this year’s heifer calves to my neighbour and plan to send two fattened young bulls and 3 bulling heifers born last year off to Ashford market on the 20th. Income at last!

We are also going to over-seed (if the bloody wind drops, that is) our largest silage field with a perennial rye grass mix to add some more sugars and protein to next year’s cut and plan to do this the old fashioned way – spread it with the fertiliser spreader and let the animals trample it in.

We also need to make more repairs to the feeding racks and make some more bedding space out of the straw shed by using old gates and a bit of ingenuity because we will be housing 60 animals over winter – last year we kept 50 – all part of the master plan of taking more animals to 24 months and older before we send any to slaughter. More time on natural feed = more flavour, and that’s what its all about.

John Frederick Smith, 15th April 1937 to 6th September 2010

Tomorrow is an anniversary which we as a family have all seen coming - yet its suddenly here and we can’t quite believe it.

My dear old Dad died a year ago on the 6^th September 2010, aged 73. We miss him terribly - he left behind a big hole in our lives and the past 12 months have been quite tough for my Mum as we also lost my nan, my mum’s mother, in December.

However, I genuinely feel that my mum has benefitted from the farm practice continuing pretty much as before, because that way there is less of a change about the place. If you look at the views and listen to my dad’s animals mooing in the distance along with catching a whiff of characteristic farmyard smells, you can almost imagine he is still here. If he was here, mind, he would be bounding around being fairly vocal about something or other, usually a left-wing politician or his favourite new arsehole in the village.

He did involve himself in more placid pursuits such as winding his clocks and reading the papers, although he was on the go most of the time. Quite often if I was to pop round he would say that he was “thirsty”, and “What was I doing today?” aka, do you fancy a pint, or five or six as was often the case. It would generally only be a matter of time before the question came, regardless of the day. I was always available to have a pint with him knowing that one day we wouldn’t be able to anymore.

Strange as it may seem for some of those that knew him, I mainly remember the laughter, his laughter, and the fun we had together - he was very witty. I could go on, as he could in fact, but I’ll leave it there and thank you for paying attention to the farm blog over the past few months.

Dad started off with nothing and the farm represents everything he worked for, without which, as a family we would not have so many wonderful memories.

Vegas Nini

Despite probably being a strange name for a calf, “Vegas Nini” it is. The “Nini” is short for Janine and comes from my friend Janine Pierce who came up with the name. As it happens, it was one of my favourite names, so I am quite chuffed about it...it was the clear favourite by a long way. The final scores were as follows:

Vegas  - 22 votes

Vivian – 7 votes

Vivaldi – 4 votes

Vulcan – 1 vote

Valhala – 1 vote

Valutus – 0 votes

Other news...well, there isn’t much. We continue to spread the odd bit of muck around and take the heads of thistles and weeds with the topper (mower) before they start seeding. Beyond that, its all about having a good “trim” in general and making sure the hedgerows aren’t encroaching on the fields too much. (My innuendo alarm is ringing at this point – I’m sure there’s something I could say here!?!). Repairs are also key, and I am setting about maintaining all of the feeding racks in the yards in time for winter.

Apart from making sure we spread every conceivable piece of cowsh*t over the fields, the next major project will be that of re-seeding our largest silage field, “Peans”. This is a total of about 17 acres, which is quite big and scary when you consider the cost of a protein-rich rye grass seed mix plus the time and effort. We’ll do this the old fashioned way and churn up the ground a bit with the chain harrow and then spread the seed with an old fertiliser spreader - then give it a light roll afterwards. Frankly, we just don’t have the means to do it any other way in terms of equipment or cash!

Whilst I am reluctant to change things too much on the farm there are a few tweaks I have made. The old man had, in general, done things very efficiently over the years, however with the focus on generating a reputation for excellent beef I have decided to neuter all of our male calves in order to naturally produce a larger carcass almost wholly on grass, over a longer period of time. This approach should produce more flavour and reduce input costs in terms of supplementing feed with a cereal mix, (bloody expensive right now!). In addition, it is more ethical and essentially allows the animals to feed on their natural diet. Leaving them until they are at least 20 months means our cashflow will be under pressure, but once we catch our tail up it means all animals will be sold for beef at an older age with the improved eating traits that go along with this.

Finally, because I know how much of you like photos, here’s some photos of the chicks in their new des-res, oh, and of course my cock!

Name That Calf...

I woke up in a hotel room, confused and in Wiltshire on Saturday morning. I’d booked a hotel for Katie and I in the historic little village of Lacock. We arrived late afternoon on Friday after spending most of the day on the M25 and went for a stroll around the local pubs and had dinner and too much vino before tripping up the creaking 700 year old stairs to bed...thus waking up a bit hungover and not quite sure of where I was.

Lacock is a beautiful spot not far from Stonehenge and quite near the Somerset border. Its sometimes difficult to see evidence of being in the 21st Century when your in one of the old streets; stone walls and roofs and beams everywhere. I highly recommend staying in The Sign of The Angel http://www.lacock.co.uk/ where the rooms, welcome and food are all excellent. I’m not saying this for any commercial reasons and they don’t even know I’m giving them a mention here, it just happened to be a faultless stay and the food was fantastic - just a good tip for anybody wanting a romantic getaway. The beer around there is good too as Wadsworth Brewery in Devizes is only 9 miles away.

Anyway, I thought I’d phone my mother and check on the farm on Saturday morning and lo and behold our final calf (male) had just been born. The mother, Louise, was aware I was going away and clearly chose to give birth while I wasn’t around as a form of revenge for me telling her to bloody hurry up the week before and calling her a fat old knacker! Clever things cows.

So, we have a calf to name. Or YOU do, as I am inviting suggestions for names which must begin with the letter “V”. We go through the alphabet by year, like car number plates used to be in the days before Chavs and ASBOS and when kids were taught to spell and string a sentence together in schools which weren’t afraid to exercise a modicum of discipline and before corruption, left-wing idealism and bureaucracy hadn’t destroyed everything that was once good about Britain. (By the way, I refuse to accept accusations that this blog is anything other than a farming blog – I just digress occasionally).

This year all calves therefore need to be V reg as such. We have already had 8 bull calves this year and so the following names have already been taken, so don’t suggest any of these:

Vincent, Vladimir, Vesuvius, Vaughn, Vernon, Viognier, Velasquez and Valkyrie

Other than the above, feel free to attach your names to the blog. All serious suggestions will be considered (no Va-Va-Vooms or Viagras please) and I’ll choose the winner on or about the 15^th of August. The winner will also get their own name as the second name as in “Verbose Jeremy” for example.

Here’s a picture of the little chap!

Beefing up...

The developed world is consuming more beef. Asian countries (China, Japan and South Korea in particular) seem to be leading this due to economic growth and an increase in affluence - some Middle Eastern markets have also started to chow on cow a bit more than before. Asia, in particular tends to look towards it’s most immediate neighbours for any additional supply and more meat produce than ever is finding its way to these growing markets from Australia and New Zealand via nearby Indonesia.

Couple this with the current Euro/Sterling rate being approximately 1.12 and you can see why beef exports to Europe from the UK are also on the rise. Meat has never been more available to, or affordable for so many people and whichever way you look at it this means more cattle are being eaten and therefore more cattle need to be reared to meet the demand.

So, beef prices in the UK are on the up as a result showing an increase of about 7.5% over the last year for prime finished animals. The trade for animals older than 30 months has seen even greater rises. (More on this another day). This is obviously good news for native beef farmers and goes some way towards mitigating the increase in farm running costs over the year; fuel, feed, straw etc. In theory, there should be a reduction in certain feed costs in the near future due to a bumper crop of Russian wheat hitting the market a few weeks ago but it remains to be seen as to how or when this will be passed on to farmers.

Ending this segment on an even higher note and pertinent to all of this is the fact that we sent a barren cow off to Ashford market on Tuesday to go in the OTM (Over Thirty Month) beef sale. We got our highest ever price for such a beast. She was 7 years old and had given us 4 healthy calves up until this year and the buyer didn’t get much change out of a grand. Cheers Nora!

Making the cut

We finally cut our silage on the 14^th July. Luckily, this was just before our most recent massive downpour which could have screwed the crop if we were a day or so late. We normally cut it three or four weeks earlier around mid June but due to the very dry spring we left it longer. This can be tricky, as you need to cut with the optimum level of nutrients still in the grass and with sufficient moisture to allow the grass to essentially pickle itself into silage. We will see how this pans out...fingers crossed. Anyway, we got 24 more bales than last year, partly due to cutting it a bit lower and partly due to leaving it to grow after the rainy spell. We have a total of 284 bales as well as some recently acquired barley straw and pea-hay I acquired for mixing in here and there to stretch the main feed a bit. We also have 6 bales of silage I bought from my neighbour to tide me over until this year’s crop “goes off”. (You need to leave silage alone in the bags for at least 6 weeks before it is safe to feed). Grass growth is slow at this time of year compared to spring and so we have to rotate the grazing carefully to tide us over until the grass grows back in the silage fields we have just cut.

On another note, we have already started muck-spreading. Believe it or not, this is one of my favourite times of the year. The farm air has an even healthier tang of rotting cow sh*t about it than usual, particularly on fresh dewy mornings. We always spread in late summer - it signals that we are a certain way through the farming year and I find myself reflecting on what has been achieved; a fairly harsh winter was dealt with, calves have been born and are growing well, silage has been cut and bagged and we still have a few more months of grazing where the animals get the chance to roam and chew to their hearts content against the backdrop of our beautiful countryside. Its a time to relax a bit and take stock, much like everybody else at this time of year- happy holidays everyone!

P.S. Does Robin the bull look slightly Chinese in this picture, or what?

Midsummer murmurs...

I’ve met a lot of experts recently. In fact I didn’t quite realise how many there were out there. They are actually very easy to find if you know how to look and all you have to do is tempt them in like blundering, eager wasps squabbling their way into a beer trap. To get the best results you should always get your expression right. You can perfect this by practising in the mirror and trying your utmost to narrow your eyes whilst quizzically furrowing your brow and getting the right mix of naivety and stupidity across the rest of your face – something that apparently comes naturally to me. This is like the ground bait strewn across the water to get the fish interested before you catapult your hook, line, and yes, “sinker” out into the water by rather coyly saying “What do you think I should do?”

In my particular case I have been discussing my silage strategy and how to get the most out of my poorly grass with some local self appointed peers. The thing is, I already know that growth has slowed despite the rain.  I know that I could throw fertiliser at it (massively expensive and not in line with my eco approach) and I know that if I sold, or more like, gave away some animals (at today’s prices), I would not need so much grass. What I wanted was a shrewd and intelligent solution. What I got was a collection of conflicting and costly confusions. The trouble is I am quite new to this...but not that new and I find that the more green you might appear, the more useless the advice. Its as if there is a multi-tiered system whereby you have to qualify for the reliability of the wisdom you are about to receive. Moreover, advice-givers seem to have the ability to suggest spending more money than they ever would do in the same situation...this seems to be on a sliding scale as to green-ness too and its not just limited to farming. Try it out for a bit of sport in whichever chosen field you wish, it will help you ascertain who not to stand next to in the pub. Finally, anybody who begins their smug and often loudly, slow spoken snippet of wisdom with “My advice to you is...” is really saying “Now, prepare to glaze over and ignore what I am saying because its about as useful to you as the contents of a train lavatory”. 

I did listen to one bit of guidance from someone who does not outwardly appear to be an expert, but someone who knows a great deal about life and people. He reminded me of the “P” word we either forget about or struggle to put into use. Patience.  He told me to look at the grass, look at the cows and hold off cutting for as long as possible, because however slow the grass maybe growing, its still growing. This is what both my, and many of your instincts would tell you to do anyway, and is probably how we judge good advice, ie, the advice closest to what we thought of in the first place!

Finally, I know I am a child and find innuendo funnier than most but here’s the picture of my cock (his name is Colonel Sanders, by the way!) you have all been waiting for. So thanks to Karen Steadman and her daughter Vicky (who truly loved this handsome boy) I have a cockerel with which to breed from...I also took in his girlfriend (Ruby) too. I had to take him off their hands due to their new neighbour obsessively complaining about his crowing. They even wrote to the Telegraph to whinge about it and repeatedly phoned me to get it off their hands – nice neighbours, eh? They’re certainly going about making friends in a little village in the right fashion!