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Summer 2008
Glorious sunshine today, with skylarks singing over the wheat fields surrounding the farm and bow waves of meadow and woodland butterflies fluttering in front of anyone walking near the fields that have been closed off for haymaking.
Dragonflies and damselflies are hovering over the pond and the wild birds forget their usual caution when we approach as getting food to their chicks takes precedence and the sparrows queue up on the rails between the pigsties to swoop in and pick up grain at feeding time. Our incubator is in continuous use and the inglenook fireplace in the farmhouse is presently occupied by the chicks of three varieties of laying hen, with another hatch due on Monday. The oldest chicks are now outside, at the gangly stage when their feet are full size but the rest of them needs to catch up.
Hilary Benn's decision not to authorise a badger cull is beyond belief. We have nothing against badgers at all, we just want healthy ones that don't cause 40,000 cattle to be slaughtered as positive TB reactors every year. DEFRA have now sent out to farmers a CD called 'Bovine TB Husbandry Best Practice' in which 23 of the 26 points rest on ways to reduce badger-to-cattle transmission. Because badgers are nocturnal most people have never seen one and think they're rare - in fact they're probably the third most numerous wild animal in the UK, afer rats and mice.
There are new things to see every day on the farm - yesterday it was a newly fledged green woodpecker being insturcted on insect-hunting by a parent bird, a baby Pipistrelle bat clinging to the wall behind the dustbin, six tiny ducklings in a straggling line following Mum through the pasture and a blue (male) Southern Hawker dragonfly over the pond.
The only thatched pub in Herefordshire has just reopened near Jubilee Clump on Bringsty Common, just 25 minutes' walk from the Barn, so our Barn guests can enjoy the wonderful views of the Malverns to the south and unspoilt countryside all around them and have lunch afterwards!
I'm spreading the work of cleaning, rolling and tying the fleeces this year, rather than try to keep up with the pace of the shearing gang as the fleeces are tossed across. It's a quiet, contemplative sort of task: I usually use it to think about grazing plans or how many ewes to lamb next year. We're hoping for a better return for the wool this year - last year we made a profit of £7 - no, not per fleece but for the whole flock! Wool really is the best thing to wear in cold weather - much warmer than petro-chemical industry by-products like acrylic fleece - and it "grows" on grass! The woolover.com website has a wonderful selection of machine washable woollen sweaters, cardigans and gilets at very reasonable prices - and made in Britain from British wool, too!
We've three new litters of pigs on the farm, although the price increase in their wheat-based feed over the last year, from £157 to £269 per tonne with no matching increase in the price of pork (at least to the producer) and the increased cost of both collecting the piglets and taking the finished pigs to the abattoir makes this more a labour of love than one for profit. If you'd like to try some of the very best meat in the country take a look at the rarebreedsbutcher.com website - you may well find Hareley Farm pork and lamb among their current supply!
For 20 years there's been a steady increase in measures to reduce food production. The resulting food shortages have now emerged but governments are notoriously slow to change existing policies, so there's an inevitable time lag before policies catch up with realities, during which time the situation gets worse. Farming returns have been low for so many years that there's a desperate need to replace old stock buildings and machinery and to buy in the best genetics to improve the health and productivity of livestock and crops. I hope it will eventually dawn on the Government that farmers must have price stability, especially in a time of world price volatility.
Last updated: 28/07/2008
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