September Heat

It's been ages since I collected my thoughts and recorded them here. I blame the end of the football season; my usual routine was to listen to games on the radio and get on with research and writing on-line. Tonight's England demolition of Moldova certainly isn't captivating but it forms the sound track to me getting back (hopefully) into the blog habit.

A lot has and hasn't happened since my last post in March. We haven't had a summer for a start... Thankfully more recently we've had a dry spell of weather and that's enabled a good run of work, including a program of major earthworks.

I often say I have a list of 27 things to do, but I actually had a list of 27 jobs for the three tonne digger and three tonne dumper I hired last month. Some tasks were easily crossed off the list, for example collecting up broken stone gateposts from gateways across the farm. Not only does that remove a hazard for stock (and us), but grass couldn't grow where they lay. Not a major loss, but an attention to detail matter that was easily dealt with, with the equipment we had.

Plenty of drainage jobs were done, but the most time consuming tasks were to landscape the veg plot, spread the soil produced previously by work on our house and filling depressions in fields left by sheds long since demolished. The latter was essential prior to our Front field being ploughed at some point in the future. The picture shows the second terrace taking shape.



We've gathered together a number of railway sleepers and we'll recycle these as raised beds, using a good heap of top soil set aside for that purpose. The first retaining wall, visible running up from the bottom right corner of the above picture, is set on concrete and is constructed from modern blocks and stone. This will prevent the land shifting toward the house had it had done in the past, to the point where at points along its length the earth was five feet high against the building. The next wall will be a traditional dry stone construction, subject no doubt to local comment/sarcasm as we build it!

The Weight of a Pig

Pigs produce pork and bacon cuts at different weights as they grow. A pork pig might weigh around 60 to 75 kilograms and left to gain weight for bacon it would reach around 90 to 120 kilograms. But how do you know when your pigs reach these weight ranges? In our case we don't have an expensive set of livestock scales and that challenge would be familiar to many smallholders today.

The answer lies in the following equation, courtesy of thepigsite.com:

• Measure the Heart Girth in metres (around the body of the pig behind its front legs
• Measure the Length of the pig in metres (from its ears to its tail)
• Square the Heart Girth to get the Girth Result
• Multiply the Girth Result by the Length and multiply that by 69.3
• The result is the weight of the pig in kilograms.

The largest of our three British Saddleback pigs weighs 100 kilograms and I think its ready to go to the butcher. We have a choice of three to pick from, but one, Glaves and Sons, stands out for two reasons, for one, they package and label the cuts individually and two a pig farmer we know heartily recommended them. The next step is to revise the DEFRA procedure for taking stock off the farm.

Scrap Metal

Over the 18 months since buying our farm we've collected three large piles of scrap together as a number of rundown livestock sheds have been dismantled and the land cleared. Each pile has usually had at least one intriguing centre piece: the first was a very old seed drilling machine (we kept the cart wheels), the second was the number of tin roofing sheets and the third were the ovens removed from the house.

As a pile grew collection was arranged with the local scrap merchant, using a lorry complete with an integral crane, to make way for the next heap. I received the final tally today and all together we removed 10.6 tonnes of scrap, everything from wire fence, tools, guttering, wheel hubs, nails and screws we had found buried to old beds and building material.

To put that total in perspective 10.6 tonnes is the equivalent of:

• the kerb weight of eight VW Golf cars
• one of the capsules on the London Eye
• 1,052,631 £1 coins
• a third of a fully laden Tornado fighter
• around 163 women of average weight.

Here are a few pictures showing, pile one:

Pile two being driven away:

Pile three being collected last week:

Pallets

During our building project here I've tried and failed to have wooden pallets removed by drivers making fresh deliveries. I don't understand, surely the builders merchant or other business could take good pallets and use them again, as opposed to buying new pallets, thus reducing costs?

Perhaps drivers could be incentivised to bring back good pallets, even if they weren't dropped off by their company originally. Even if the pallets were stored at a depot and not used for further deliveries, they'd be in a single location, in volume, and profitable for companies that specialise in pallet recycling/collection/supply.

Maybe you can tell I've just spent a day breaking up pallets..? Our neighbours have gratefully taken some, be it for the base of a dog kennel or to store straw bales on but the rest had to go and some will make good kindling.

There are of course enterprising folk out there who'll do a bit more with the average pallet: http://craftbritain.co.uk/2011/08/24/recycle-wooden-pallets/ 

According to the Environmental Information Exchange at the School of Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, approximately 12% of softwood used in the UK goes into the manufacture of pallets and other packaging. There are thought to be around 2 billion pallets in circulation worldwide and as many as 90 million in the UK alone (Brighton and Hove Wood Recycling Project).

The Environment Agency estimates that the UK produces 7.5 million tonnes of wood waste each year, with over 80% disposed in landfill sites, despite the fact that much of it is reusable. 

Have you heard of WRAP? I hadn't but you'd probably recognise their 'recycle now' campaign. They look at the wood recycling issue closely; it turns out there's a market for recycled wood! And of course there's an industry body; I wonder if a member of the Wood Recyclers' Association would take our scrap wood pile, and what (unlike the healthy scrap metal supply/demand relationship) it would cost..?

Gold Fleece

New Zealand would like sheep shearing to be an Olympic sport!

The New Zealand Farmers Federation, a rural lobby group, claims wool shearers should be recognised alongside the world's finest athletes for their "sport".

Jeanette Maxwell, a spokesman for the federation, describes top shearers as "athletes who take it to another level".

"Surely, the time has come to elevate shearing's sporting status to the ultimate world stage. "One way would be to make shearing a demonstration sport at the Commonwealth Games, if not the Olympics itself." She said: "I can testify to the physical effort shearing takes.

From The Daily Telegraph today.

How Much Does Rain Weigh?

I was happily watching the BBC's Victorian Farm Christmas show yesterday when I was struck by a statistic used during a discussion relating to hay making.

Heavy rain would damage the crop, but how to quantify that damage; how much does rain water weigh? According to Mr Acton Scott, the owner of the historic farm where the television production takes place, one inch of rain on one acre of land would weigh 100 metric tonnes.

That's the short answer.

Here's the conclusion from a university study in the US (in imperial measures of course):

'Water in the form of precipitation is unevenly distributed. Each inch of rain is relatively heavy. One inch of rain on a square foot of land weighs 5.20 pounds. One inch of rain on one acre of land weighs 113.31 tons.'

113 tons equals 102 tonnes. Now stay with it.

'The purpose of this report is to explain two procedures to determine the weight of one inch of rain on one acre of land.

'The first approach determines the number of cubic inches of water on one acre and the weight in pounds of one cubic inch of water, then uses these values to determine the weight of one inch of rain on one acre. One acre is one rod wide and one-half mile long. A rod is 16.5 feet. A mile is 5280 feet, and a half mile is 2640 feet. The number of square feet in an acre is 16.5 feet times 2640 feet, which equals 43,560 square feet per acre. There are 144 square inches in a square foot. The number of square inches per acre is 43,560 square feet times 144 square inches, which equals 6,272,640 square inches per acre. One inch of rain times 6,272,640 square inches per acre equals 6,272,640 cubic inches of water per acre. One pint of water weighs one pound (1.04316 lbs/pint). One gallon of water weighs 8.3453 pounds. One cubic foot of water contains 7.48052 gallons. The weight of one cubic foot of water is 7.48052 gallons times 8.3453 pounds, which equals62.42718356 pounds of water per cubic foot. One cubic foot contains 1728 cubic inches. The weight of one cubic inch of water is 62.42718356 pounds divided by 1728 cubic inches, which equals 0.036126842 pounds of water per cubic inch. The weight of one inch of rain on one acre of land is 6,272,640 cubic inches of water per acre times 0.036126842 pounds of water per cubic inch, which equals 226,610.6763 pounds of water per acre. There are 2000 pounds in one ton. The weight of water per acre, 226,610.6763 pounds divided by 2000 pounds per ton, equals 113.3053382 tons of water in one inch of rain on one acre of land.

 'The second approach determines the number of gallons in one inch of water over one acre and then determines the weight of that number of gallons of water. One cubic foot of water contains 7.48052 gallons. There are 1728 cubic inches in one cubic foot. The number of gallons of water in a cubic inch is 7.48052 gallons divided by 1728 cubic inches, which equals 0.004329005 gallons per cubic inch of water. There are 6,272,640 cubic inches of water on one acre. This value times 0.004329005 gallons per cubic inch equals 27,154.2876 gallons of water per acre. One gallon of water weighs 8.3453 pounds. The weight of water per gallon, 8.3453 pounds, times 27,154.2876 gallons of water per acre equals 226,610.6763 pounds of water per inch of rain on one acre. This value divided by 2000 pounds per ton equals 113.3053382 tons of water per acre.'

Credit to Llewellyn L. Manske PhD, Range Scientist at the Dickinson Research Extension Center of North Dakota State University.

http://www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/dickinso/

A Countryside Secret

I happened to visit our local fish and chip shop last Wednesday evening. While I was hunting for the correct change the co-owner, Karen, commented that the skin on my hands looked particularly dry. She was joined by a member of staff and both ladies looked at me and together pronounced the solution, 'udder cream'!

Now I had to ask, were they making fun of me? They promised they weren't and from behind his fryer Karen's husband chipped in, 'it's the best thing for the job'!

At our local farm supplies shop the next day I related the story from the night before. I didn't have time to complete my first sentence and I was being led across the store. Our neighbours daughter in law, Julie, works in the store and she enthusiastically squeezed a sample into my palm. Strong stuff; the manager shouted across to warn me that I should avoid touching my face! It turned out to be a peppermint scented variety and stayed with me all day. I had to explain myself as I entered my next stop, the decorating shop, to pick up paint. It would work wonders on a blocked nose.

Julie used to work in a modern milking parlour near Gillamoor, about 10 minutes drive from our house. The bactericidal cream, a form of cold cream, is applied to the cows udder and teats to control bovine mastitis, prevent soreness and, ultimately, loss of milk production. Only a few dairy operations remain in our area, but the store still sells udder cream based solely on demand for it as a hand cream.

The former milk maid swears by it, so I've got myself a tub and put aside my Norwegian Formula product. Udder cream, who'd have thought it..?!