By the Barn Blog
A collection of thoughts and tales around the life of a farmer.
seasonal foods
Posted: 6th Jan 2021
By the barn January 21
Posted: 6th Jan 2021
troughs make too mess on our ground and its easy to get knocked over by determined ewes and our legs bashed against the hard edges.
By the barn December 20
Posted: 1st Dec 2020
Luckily over a million people lobbied to make sure there was a trade and standards commission in place to scrutinise deals on the agriculture sectors behalf, showing consumers do care how their food is produced.
By the barn November 2020
Posted: 5th Nov 2020
The Yew tree, famous for its wood and highly poisonous, retains its leaves and can live to more than a thousand years of age. Often found in churchyards, it provides the drug tamoxifen
Bovine Tb- carrying out a test
Posted: 5th Oct 2020
On the day of the test, we bring the cattle in and wait the arrival of the vet as well as a helping hand. This alone upsets the cattle, as they know somethings up when there are different people about and their routine is broken.
By the barn October 20
Posted: 5th Oct 2020
As soon as they hear the tractor start up, the cattle are poised and waiting by the electric fence, grumbling and bellowing if we’re a bit later than usual and hindering the tractor all trying to be first to have the best pickings.
By the barn September 20
Posted: 2nd Sep 2020
The seagulls and buzzards love to hang around to pick up a fat, juicy worm, getting quite close to the moving tractor at times, with an occasional flurry to drive off a passing red kite. Long days, often working well into the night, until all is sown that has to be!
By the barn August 2020
Posted: 1st Aug 2020
Although grown mostly for human consumption further east, we used peas as a protein food for our livestock and the resulting straw was much loved by goats in particular.
Bovine Tb our history
Posted: 2nd Jul 2020
And for no one else, the 'animal lovers', wildlife trusts and animal rights activists, to care about them, just the vector that transmits the disease- the badger, is equally heart breaking!
By the barn July 20
Posted: 2nd Jul 2020
Low dose antibiotics are commonly used in other parts of the world to increase growth rates and minimise production costs and the fear is it enhances resistance to antibiotics in humans.