The Cranham Farming Diary

December 2002

Overtown Farm is a National Trust farm, tenanted by Martin and Pauhla Whitaker.
It is beef, sheep and arable and has been in organic conversion since 1999. The farm will be wholly organic in 2003.

I am sorry that this month's diary is rather late but the first month of 2003 was spent at the Soil Association's organic farm conference at Cirencester. This was a very interesting event with many thought provoking speeches and workshop's which as well as the usual supermarket bashing (apart from Sainsbury's of course who sponsored the event!) covered such diverse topics as ethically traded Windward Isle banana's, the dangers of the fast food culture(did you know there are more prison inmates in the U.S.A than farmers?) to no-till seeding and plow-down crop's on organic farms in Saskatchewan! Needless to say various organic wines and beers were tested and I can thoroughly recommend Bishops Rock bitter from Cornwall!

Red sky in the morning, subsidy cheque warning.

December 2002 will be remembered as a very wet , foggy and muddy time and at the time of writing (8/1/03) it seems a long time ago now that the ground is frozen solid and in true British fashion the unlagged pipes and troughs need thawing out.But its nice to be dry and to see the sun occasionally.The winter feeding now carries on apace and it always is amazing how the hay and straw starts disappearing. An old tradition carried out locally on one of the first sundays of the new year is the Plough Sunday service at Painswick parish church where local farmers pull a plough up the aisle to be blessed.Unfortunately I couldnt attend this year but it is a very old tradition(including the compulsory visit to the Royal Oak afterwards!)

"Earth as hard as iron, water like a stone."

Why is it on Christmas eve, a time of peace and love amongst mankind, that the post on this day is used to convey bad news? Redundancy announcement's ,bank foreclosures etc, all seem to be announced on this day.Last years post contained a letter from our vet's saying that they didn't want to carry on treating farm animals any more, although fortunately one the partners decided to carry on with the farm work. This years delight was a letter from D.E.F.R.A, saying that from feb 1st all new born lamb's had to be eartagged from day one with its flock number and an individual number( starting at 00001). Apart from being a mindlessly boring procedure to indulge in, it is surely a welfare issue when tags rip out of tiny ears as they enevitably do.
I do wonder why the English as a race enjoy copper bottoming such bureaucratic nonsense. Surely we have been in the EU long enough to take a more relaxed continental view of these silly diktats!

The Overtown Farm Christmas staff party in full swing!

December weather lore…

A green winter makes a fat churchyard.
January weather lore.. "

As the days lengthen the cold strengthens.

At a previous S.A conference a German Agricultural Minister started his speech with: In Germany ,the only way we can get three farmers to agree on one thing, is to shoot two of them.

Wishing you all a prosperous New Year!
MPW

08/01/2003

Click here to return to The Farming page.

To return to Cranham.net click here