MUD – After what was an exceptionally wet October the few days of dry sunny weather has been a really welcome opportunity to get on with some of the list of jobs.
MUCK – Today has been all about poo!. We have moved one of our hen houses, with 500 girls in residence, clear out and move the 24 tonnes of chicken litter and put the house back, reassemble and working all before the girls bedtime, which is pretty early this time of year. We added the litter to our dung heaps and took the opportunity to turn them at the same time and was amazed at the quantity of worms, hundreds in each scoop. We have about 250 tonnes of well rotted dung ready for the spring, brilliant stuff. The poultry litter is an amazing fertiliser, cattle dung is super soil improver and worms are the real heros of soil structure and much more.
MISHAPS – Whilst we were busy sliding around we were looking across the valley and watching our large conventional neighbours 12 tonne forage harvester with 12 tonne trailer on the back in a ‘gently undulating’ Devon field, slid back down across the maize field before ending up jack knifed on the wrong side of a fence. Some hearts were pounding, but they got away with it, dragged it out and drashed on into the night. Modern farming is big gear, big costs, big pressure and big risks only lacking big rewards.