Change is something all of us are confronted with time and time again. Being born in the late 1980s I’ve witnessed technology advancing in great leaps and bounds, and farming innovations and machinery striding forward at the same time. If someone had told me 30 years ago that I’d be holding the equivalent of an office in my pocket I’d have laughed at them, and that’s before we even mention the internet.
Change is something all of us are confronted with time and time again. Being born in the late 1980s I’ve witnessed technology advancing in great leaps and bounds, and farming innovations and machinery striding forward at the same time.
If someone had told me 30 years ago that I’d be holding the equivalent of an office in my pocket I’d have laughed at them, and that’s before we even mention the internet.
But like everything else, it’s just something we have to get used to and while I took advantage of laser eye surgery many years ago, recently I found myself having difficulty seeing anything at a distance. So off I trotted to the opticians for a check-up, seeing as I’d neglected to do so in 16 odd years after getting the winkers fixed back in college.
I was duly told they’ve slightly deteriorated and glasses are needed for driving or television, but the bright side being I should never need them for reading, which is a blessing, as my record of maintaining unbroken spectacles when younger was abysmal to say the least.
Thankfully, with the recent sunny weather they’ve been relegated to their box for the last week, as sunglasses and sunscreen are in demand instead.
Half the stock is currently out, but with most of our ground facing east, growth has remained poor despite the dry, sunny weather and the nights are still cold, so a bale was left out for them to pick at, which is keeping them content outside.
We hope to empty most of the shed this week, leaving two overdue cows in until they calve. It’s wonderful to get the stock out so early, so long as we don’t pay for this later in the year or resort to rounding them up to take them back inside again.
As we declined to enter the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES), we have the option of mowing meadows when weather and grass are ready and these have all been closed up for summer, along with receiving some fertiliser.
Gran lime has also been applied to some of the pasture which was low in pH on our recent soil tests and for the first time in a few years, rushes were treated at the end of last year, meaning they’re less of an issue than usual.
Leaning on the job
Most of the time I find farming to be a case of learning on the job, frequently through a case of trial and error where if one way doesn’t work, we simply try another until we get it right, or as correct as it needs to be at the time.
Sometimes the fact that we tried to find a solution in the first place is an encouragement to never stop trying.
I found the Green Cert helped to fill in a few missing parts of my farming brain, specifically when it came to grass management.
Like school, it was useful in drilling the basics back into us, but regrettably we also learn the unnecessary, which we’ll never have any use for afterwards.
Was learning trigonometry any use to me last week when the quad spreader decided to seize up?
Certainly not, unless I was trying to work out where to hit it with the sledgehammer for optimum force without making matters worse.
I also found it’s much easier putting fertiliser in than taking it out, having made the mistake of pouring three bags in prior to realising it was jammed. That’s one mistake I’ll learn from and always check in future.
After four hours of pumping grease, WD-40 and more shock therapy with the hammer, we gave up and took it to the local mechanic who had it working within the hour. While stubbornness can be a positive trait at times, this was not one of those times.
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