Brilliant. Thanks for posting Sally. We only have 3 types of owls living on the farm. Tawny, Barn and Little owls. I don't often see them but you hear them all the time. There's a little owl near my truck which makes a lot of noise most nights. Paul's very proud of his Barn owls in particular and has put up several owl boxes for them to roost in. One of the boxes is an old dog kennel up in an oak on the big meadow. Interesting to see the footage of the Tawny fishing. One of the spots our Tawnies like to roost is in a row of Poplars near a big pond. I'll have to ask Paul whether he's ever seen one catching fish.
My stepfather saw this while he was travelling in England and he tried for years to find a copy of the film. Thank goodness for YouTube. the dog kennel must attract some attention. We had a Blue Heeler which climbed. Good on fences but not so good on trees.
Seed dressing this week. Huge blow out on the 6 ton trailer of grain as it was leaving the farm. Had to help Paul get the wheel off a remove the tyre. Had a new tyre but no new inner tube so had to use 6 or 7 two inch patches to repair the large hole. The seed dressing was done at a nearby farm by contractors with high tech equipment mounted in a truck. Interesting process which removes any remaining chaff and sorts the seeds for size using a table which blows air from beneath like a air hockey table before dressing it for several types of weeds.
@557 You might find this interesting. In one of the Hulver farm videos Paul mentions that he's growing an old strain of wheat that nobody else in the country is growing. I had a chat with him about it today. The John Innes Institute in Norwich keep about 3000 strains in a seed bank and have to grow each variety every few years to keep a fresh supply. Well, Paul noticed one year that one strain was a week or so behind the others and he thought it would be a good way to stagger the harvest if he could grow some of that one together with his usual square head master. The variety was know as new harvester and was as old as the SHM so grew tall enough for thatch. He was able to acquire two ears which he threshed over his kitchen table between his hands and he got about 60 seeds. He grew a small plot with those 60 seeds and threshed that first crop in the spokes of an upside down bicycle wheel over a tilt. By the second year he had enough seeds to use a small combine and by the 5th year he was able to plant 4 acres. He still grows it and he says the straw is every but as good as the SHM which is the thatchers' preferred strain. He's still the only person growing it as he's not allowed to sell it on to other growers without the permission of the John Innes Institute.
Progress on that new ridge I visited a couple of weeks ago has been slower than usual as it has rained almost every day since but it's nearing completion now. The main roof is finished apart from the witches caps at each end and the small wing is well under way.
No it's just down the lane and belongs to a retired GP and her husband. She's an old friend of Pauls and she raises a small flock of sheep on Paul's land in order to keep her Border Collies exercised and her freezers stocked. They're currently in the same meadow as me and a quick headcount gives me a count of 7.
A neighbour of mine has a Border Collie. He is the nicest dog and has an affectionate disposition. I take him for walks in my effort to burn off lard. Are the sheep athletic looking?
Most sheep look a bit fat when you get up close to them. These ones are well fed since it's such a small flock. I prefer goats myself. We had 3 goats given to us a couple of years ago and I deliberately didn't get to know them as I knew I'd get attached and would be very sad when they went off to the slaughterhouse. The cows and sheep have less personality so I don't feel the same about them.
Farmers care for their animals but know not to become attached. I suppose that if you have a flock of several hundred sheep it isn’t an issue as it would be with six. I’ve never had much to do with goats but they have nasty eyes. A bit too knowledgeable I think.
Does Paul keep bees? We have two hives in our back yard. We harvested about 30 kilos of honey last year. We’ll never make any money from it because my husband gives it away. He keeps the neighbourhood in honey.
There are a few hives about the farm to help with pollination but I'm not sure that any of the honey is harvested. The GP friend looks after them. A couple of times during my juggling convention we have had swarms and she has come along and boxed them up. The last time we had a swarm they tried to go in Paul's chimney and he had to light a paper fire to get them out. Somewhere we've got a video of her dealing with a swarm, I'll see if I can find it.
Not found the better video but this one has a couple of quick clips of the swarm at 20 sec's and them being collected at 4 mins. http://juggling.tv/142
Oh, and that's me at 1.45 straight from the kitchen, with my apron on, doing my bit in the show and again right at the end 4.50ish second from left with the synchronised chin balance.
The bloke two houses down from us has a beehive in his wall. He doesn’t mind them being there and said that it keeps the east side of his house warm. He’s going to demolish the house so he can build a new one and said my husband can have the bees. I am going to film the process of collecting the hive, because I think it might become hysterically funny!
That is very interesting. I think what he’s done is very important. Plant breeding today is all done to maximize traits we find valuable today with no thought to what society may require from the same species in the future. Seed banks are great, but of little value if nobody is actually using the varieties for practical purposes. So in the future we may have genetics in seed banks but no knowledge of how best to utilize those genetics to their full potential. My neighbor I harvest with is experimenting with relay cropping using wheat and soybeans. The wheat is drilled in the fall leaving a blank “row” every 30 inches where soybeans are planted in the spring. The wheat variety needs to be early maturity but quite tall so when it’s harvested the soybeans are still short enough to not be damaged by the combine. He had limited success this year because of lack of rain the end of the summer. He could certainly benefit from information gathered by people like Paul growing unconventional crops. The real “innovation” in agriculture is not coming from corporate seed companies going forward in my opinion.
I hadn’t had bees for a few years but last spring my wife decided she wanted to learn the craft so we got six colonies. We just drew comb and tried to make strong colonies this year so didn’t harvest any honey. My dad was a beekeeper so I inherited all his equipment—extractor, bottling equipment, uncapping knives etc. So next year we’ll have honey again. We want to transition completely away from sugar and use honey exclusively. I know how your husband’s generosity works. My dad gave away more honey than he sold and what he did sell was way under value. If you video the colony extraction share it with us!
You need a dairy goat! Then it won’t go to the slaughterhouse. Maybe one of these, the only “American” breed of dairy goat. I think originally the Lamancha breed was supposed to be a dual purpose but are just dairy now. Excellent milkers, but one of the most “opinionated” breeds.
I've just been watching the magpies interacting with the sheep. Jumping on their backs and picking insects out of their fleeces. The sheep don't seem to mind. Even let the magpies stand on their heads and pick bugs off their faces and out of their ears. Corvids are great. I've wanted a pet crow for years.
pfft... sleep with one eye open, you'll be waking up with your legs swinging out the side of my cauldron, seasoned and tenderised