Can't think of a Title

It was our local NVS meeting on Tuesday night with a talk buy David Metcalfe on how he developed his Pendle and now Improved Pendle leek, the meeting was the most popular of the winter season so far with around 40 / 50 people coming along. He grows both Leeks and Onions in pots the Leek in 50 ltr and Onions in 30/ 35 ltr pots in a mixture of.

For Leeks 120 ltrs sterilised soil + 75ltrs sphagnum moss peat with 1/2 a jar of dried blood
1 jar of dolomite lime 1 jar calcified seaweed 1/2 jar humate 1 jar osmocote exact (15-9-9) and 2 handfuls of viresco dry. Then NO extra feeding. With that mix he hopes to grow blanched Leeks with a girth of 12 ins +.

For Onions 75 ltr sterilized soil +75 ltr sphagnum moss peat with 1 jar of Vitax organic grower 2-1-4 1/2 a jar dried blood 1/2 a jar calcified seaweed 1 handful of viresco dry 1/2 a jar dolomite lime. Then NO extra feeding. The jar he uses is a old 500g chicken tonight jar. Sounds easy growing them when he tells you but?
It did at least spur me on to try and get a few jobs done this weekend so as not have the usual mad spring rush, so i started to empty out all the sand from the drums that i grew long carrots in last season and set them up on the new base that i built last back end' it took an age as i had to barrow the sand about 80 yrd all up hill to refill them, i gave them a splash over with armillotox as i went along just in case anything nasty was lurking. With haveing the extra drums for this season i hope to get some decent Parsnips as well as Carrots next August, at least all this work keeps my mind of all the doom and glum that's around just at the moment i see tonight our dear leader Gordon is about to spend another 200 billion pound helping out the Banks yet again, i hope he knows what he's doing but i have my doubts, what is certain is theirs going to be a lot more pain before we are finished with this recession. Oh i nearly forgot to mention on a more cheerful note United gave MK Dons (the so called away win specialists ) a 2-0 first half lead then stuffed them 3-2 in the second half, great eh! moved us up the league 3 positions as well, as they say United all ways come strong second half of the season so watch this space.

A bit of all sorts

Have had a slow weekend, been down with a sod of a cold, by the time i'd done my work on the farm that was enough for me. I have watched a bit of sport on television ie Wales v France there will be no peace from the Welsh now, mind they did look a good side. It could have been a diffrent story if in their match against England, England had not fallen asleep in the second half. On the football side United had a decent draw at Swindon and when you consider both Doncaster and Swansea lost it looks an even better point.

This week work wise we are trying to cram in quite a bit of work so as to be able to have some spare time over the Easter weekend, today Tuesday we marketed our final 40 2007 born lambs and the trade was 144 pence a kilo and i was pleased with that when you consider that when we were under gov controls during foot and mouth we had to take 76 pence a kilo it frightens me to think how much DEFRA incompetence cost us in the August to December period when the vast majority of our lambs (about 600) are marketed and even though the inquiry into it blamed management incompetence and complacency at Pirbright no one seems to being held to account never mind sacked from their cushy well paid jobs personaly i'd jail the useless gits for pollution.

Hopefully by tomorrow night we will have given all the breeding ewes their pre lambing vaccination and multivitamin dose plus a parasitic Fluke and Worm treatment as they should start lambing in ernest from the 2nd April. If all goes well and we catch up with work and the weather is fair i might be able to get some jobs done in the veg plot during the Easter break i do need to get some final digging done and my carrot soil mixed and put in the barrels plus get a couple of mole traps set, what i can't fit in before we start lambing will just have to wait till late April as it just gets to hectic in lambing time .

New steps in the spring

Spent some of the weekend getting a few Dahlias set up so as to be able to get some cuttings taken latter on in the spring they aren't any special variety just a few i grew from seed last year and i liked the look of, I wanted to get them done as we are going off on a winter break for 10 days to i hope warm sunny weather and while i was on with the dahlias i chitted up 4 Maris Bard potatoes that i will plant in a barrel in the greenhouse when i get back so as to get an earlier crop.


Kevin has been here most of the week putting in some new steps up the garden, it was one of them jobs that i seemed to never have the time to get round to so i bit the bullet and called in our local handyman/ landscaper, OH! wouldn't it be nice to have a level site, i think he was a bit suprised at how much rock and stone he had to dig out just for a few steps. ( i wasn't when i set up my veg patch which is now at the top of the steps i had to remove 5 skip loads of stone then i had to cart in even more soil and compost to fill and improve the plot ) A couple of hydrangea cuttings which had started coming in to leaf i have brought inside so as to not let them get checked if we get another cold snap.

On the Farm our first sheep lambed triplets then one had a single they are some pure bred Texels that we keep so as to breed our own Rams to use on our commercial breeding ewes they are inside at the moment but should be fit to go outside in a couple of days if the weather is OK. Our stock bulls started fighting quite a bit this week so we had to separate them i guess they were just trying to decide who is number one and as they have not had much work to do they are improving in condition and can fell spring in the air.

On the football front well what happens when the best home record meets the best away record in the league?
United beat Doncaster 1/0 of course. Our promotion push continues.

Weed control

Had a guy come to collect some used silage sheeting which is something i often seem to be giving away once i have finished with it seems very popular for covering empty ground on allotments to act as weed suppressant until spring i personally have never bothered doing it and just spend an hour now and then pulling out what weed pops up, and it seems this year as if the buttercups are having a good winter, I have thought it might be useful put on about mid March being black it would absorb the sun's heat and perhaps bring planting time on a bit sooner (any one got an opinion they would like to share). Spent Saturday removing some awkward boughs from a couple off trees sawed them up with the hand saw and stored them away to dry for firewood in 12 months time, it was good to get stuck in to some practical work after having to deal with a bunch of civil servants on Friday, are they programed to be awkward and unhelpful? or does it come naturally to them either way they have a knack of making a simple enquiry seem like rocket science as they never seem willing or capable of giving a straight answer and oh they are so busy and can we get back to you probably in about a month as i am finishing early and need to get away. These are the same bunch that tell you how to do everything but don't have a clue how to do it themselves, i only rang because it was lashing it down with rain and it seemed a good idea quite honestly I wish I hadn't bothered it would have been more productive plodding on in the rain.

Football Result United 1 Crewe Alexander 0 Now Second in League. Bonus Result Leeds lost 0 1 to Doncaster

Football Results FA Youth Cup 4th round.

Manchester United Youth 1 United Youth 2

The Moles are back.

The weather must be warming up the ground these last few days as i have noticed a lot of mole activity occurring this last week, not causing a lot of trouble as they are mainly in the vegetable plot which is just about empty at the moment with just an odd row of Parsnips and about the same amount of Leeks. I did check and service my traps ( I use the barrel type shown in picture) so as to be ready to catch them but as the soil is so wet i will wait until the weather is drier as they seem a lot harder to catch when the ground is wet probably because the sent left is stronger from setting them in wet soil making them more likely to fill them with soil and push them out of the ground. The best time seems to be mid march when the ground is drying and before they start breeding , but if they spread into the lawn I will have a go sooner.

On the work front we sold the last of the 2006 calf crop as store cattle on Thursday most have gone to Yorkshire for finishing roundabout Easter time, once they were out of the way we were able to wean the calves born April/May 2007 they made a hell of a noise for a couple of days but seem quite settled now it's quite a change for them I suppose been taken away from their mothers and a change of diet as well.

.

Football Result. Doncaster 1 United 0 can't win em all. Now third in league

Steady work for early January

January I have to admit is not my favourite month, the grounds usually to wet to work and so it seems jobs start piling up, having said that this weekend has been reasonably dry with just the odd shower, so I did get the chance to rake up the final drop of leaves of the front lawn it is a bit shaded at the best of times having three Oak trees one Sycamore and a Beech tree growing in it so we do have a lot of leaves to deal with and it certainly benefits from a good raking which i do quite roughly so as to drag out some of the dead thatch and moss. Oak and Sycamore leaves seem to rake up quite easily but the Beech is a different cup of tea altogether, small leaves and a mass off beech nuts that if you dont remove seem to poison the grass .
I had a look at the dahlias that i put in store and was a bit disappointed with the way that some had stored about 1 in 4/5 had started to rot, i was a bit worried when i put them away in November that the condition of them was not ideal with such a wet backend and no frost to kill the tops some seemed a bit soft and immature and even though i did dry them in the greenhouse for a week before packing them away, as a precaution I packed each one individually so as not to encourage fungus spread so the results may have been worse had i not . Any way the sound ones got another dusting of anti fungal and a 24 hour airing before repacking so hopefully things will be better from now on . I got a chance to prepare a base for sighting some barrels to grow long carrots this year, this will be my first attempt at growing them this way and we will just have to see how we go on (look back in august September to see how it went), any carrots i have grown before have just been in the veg plot and i have never had a great lot of luck with them probably because my ground is a bit stony and heavy. On the work front well we treated all breeding sheep which had the first snow off winter to deal with (see picture) for Fluke parasites which took a couple of days, and then did a bit of sale preparation on the last 6 store cattle that we will be selling on Thursday 13th I am reasonably confident of a decent trade but they won't be a flyer as they are the last to go of the 2006 calf crop.

Football result United 3 Port Vale 2 Now 2'nd in League

A Brand New Year

It"s wet and windy but quite mild
Well that's it the end of 2007 roll on 2008. 2007 been an up and down year a great spring sunny and warm then very wet all summer, didn,t need to water the garden once but had to work overtime to keep the lawn,s tidy. Work was steady but for the Goverment hassling me with red tape (now't new with that then) and then setting loose Foot and Mouth Disease from their Pirbright laboratory and then they had the nerve to say they coped well with it all (useless tossers ) cost the livestock industry millions and do they care no couldn't give a monkeys, anyway tomorrow i am going to dig out a old established hydrangea up at friends house and transplant it back here can't beat getting cheap plants hopefully it should move easily enough but we will see come spring if it has survived the move.

United 4 Hartlepool 2 Now 3rd in league 1.