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Farm ponds invertebrate audit
An out of the blue call from Helen Greaves changed the plans for the day as it became the day to do an audit of invertebrates in both the restored farm ponds and the newly created scrapes. A lovely hot sunny day isn’t the best sort of day to don waders but, if you want…
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Raising the water levels in a restored farm pond
It’s been a few wet months since we cleaned out and restored the main pond and despite the rain the retained water level held in the pond has been disappointing. As we had a digger on site today to prep a shed floor, it had a few minutes diversion to carry across a few buckets…
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Detached Bungalow For Rent – 165 Moss Lane, Hesketh Bank
Large 3/4 Bedroom Detached Bungalow (Status: Presently Let) A spacious detached bungalow in semi rural location, gardens front and rear with off road parking. £195 a week / £850 pcm Council Tax: WLBC Band D Double glazed windows throughout Oil fired central heating (with new boiler) EPC Rating: D Strictly no smoking. Pets by negotiation. PRESENTLY…
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Giant Pumpkin Season Begins
The first of our 2018 giant pumpkin seedlings has popped up overnight which heralds the start of the new season. We do quite a few staggered sowings to ensure we have some giants ready for the PR demand which usually begins early September. There is plenty of time to sow if you want yours ready…
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2018 hybrid Willow SRC harvest
A dry day (at last) allowed a late afternoon walk through a row of hybrid willow short rotation coppice (SRC) to hand cut poles of 7cm dia or more for processing into wood chunks to be used as fuel in BBQ’s, wood fired Pizza Ovens, Wood boilers wood burners. Whilst a mechanical harvest is much faster,…
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Long Chilli Competition plants
The ‘long chilli’ and heavy chilli are relatively new additions to the giant vegetable competition schedules so growing techniques and plant genetics are still very much up for debate. I had a go last year with some donated chilli seed and had great success with the long chilli but less so with the heaviest. Some…
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Growing Firewood – 2018 Update
The latest annual update in our trial of a number of species planted specifically for firewood. All species are on the same soil type so whilst not particularly scientific the findings are sufficient to judge which performs best for us. Storming ahead in both rate of growth and quality of logs is the Eucalyptus Omeo.…
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Cold Day At The Office
I was out and about before the inevitable traffic chaos that goes hand in hand with a dusting of snow and glad I did so judging by the traffic later on. First stop was feeding the hens, the goose, his pheasant lady friends and two robins who stopped fighting for a few minutes so they…
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Recycling telegraph poles for farm gate posts
Since all the horrible additives were banned from pressure treated ‘tantalised’ wood we have found that modern fence posts last little more than 3 years before rotting off at the base. Whilst this has dramatically increasing the maintenance bill for stock fencing it is totally impractical to replace corner posts and gate posts so frequently.…
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LADS farm study 2018
I’ve just come back from a few days away on a Farmer Study Tour to Mannheim, Germany, with the Liverpool Agricultural Discussion Society (LADS). Lets get the well deserved credits at the top of the page: Antony Ollerton (LADS), Colin Mountford-Smith (BASF) and Cornthwaites (John Deere) for organising the event and BASF for putting in…