Jan 20
New Year Frost
Posted in Baby Animals , Farm Machinery by David Wilson
It's been very cold on the farm, like everywhere else in the country, and the weather tends to dictate everything that happens here. There are always pros and cons to these frosty conditions and the trick for us is trying to turn it to our advantage, where we can, particularly as the days are much shorter so we are kept very busy.
On the upside it's given us the chance to give some of the yards and cattle beds a good clear out of manure and tip it, although we can't spread it just yet.
It was a beautiful sight when there was a flurry of snow earlier in the month and a hoar frost which left a coating on the trees for a while, particularly in the early mornings, but it meant the ground has been very solid for digging up some of the vegetables. Parsnips in particular need to be dug up fresh and are best stored in the ground, so we've had to pick our moments for this job, aiming for around two in the afternoon before the ground starts to ice up again. And celeriac needs to be handled very gently so that it doesn't snap off when it's picked.
One of the most important cold-weather jobs is to defrost the water tanks and to check all the pipes and troughs for cracked pipes and leakages. A couple of our key pieces of equipment seem to have been effected too, including the extraordinary sight of our slurry tank imploding. It literally seemed to collapse into itself, like a squeezed toothpaste tube. Whilst it was probably only corrosion due to wear and tear the cold spell doesn't seem to have helped matters. Then we had a problem with the Manitou loader which is one of our key pieces of equipment. The farm revolves around this machine and the battery must have had a very heavy load on it due to the cold and just exploded with a huge bang.
Since the New Year we've had about a dozen new calves born on the farm. It is quite common for calves to develop pneumonia especially when the weather changes from cold and dry to mild and damp with the air coming off the Atlantic. The virus spreads on the moisture droplets. We are always trying to strike a balance in the calf shed between giving the calves plenty of fresh air but no draughts - it's not always easy.
