Farm Diary by Gwyn Jones

We have entered the 'rainy' season it seems. Once again, inches of rain seem to fall in a matter of days, with hail in London on Sunday, just to liven things up a bit. The last of the dry cows will be yarded at Crouchlands this week, although there is still enough grass to keep them going for a while yet; the ground has now given up to the wet weather and has turned into its winter state of sodden bottomless clay. We have some dry cows at Tillington, where on the sand the grass can be gr

We have escaped any damage on the land during the stormy weather, and the trees have now lost most of their leaves, leaving them much less vulnerable. Keeping the plastic sheets on the straw stack has been a real pain, as the wind gets under a corner and lifts the sheet, sliding the tyres along the top. We have our straw delivered in as we use it during the winter, and because of that the sheeting is only a temporary job, and not up to the weather of late.

We feed quite a lot of straw to cows and young stock, so we do have a stack of superb barley straw for this purpose and a stack of wheat straw for bedding. Straw is extremely expensive this winter, and we cannot afford to have any spoilage because of rain. Mind you we use it up quite quickly, and if the sheet blows off, the trick is to use the top bales immediately, and sheet over the dry ones underneath once more.

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The casual disregard this government has towards agriculture, whilst attempting to divert attention away from its problems by focusing on global warming, is beginning to go wrong. Importation of eggs has thrown up the old problem of salmonella. Remember Edwina Currie? Following her self destruction, the British egg industry set about eliminating salmonella from egg production at vast expense, and the 'lion on the egg' now not only stands for British eggs produced to higher standards, but it also stands for safer food.

( For full feature see West Sussex Gazette November 29