Spare a thought for those lambing

March certainly went out like a lion having arrived like a lamb. Amazing how these old sayings are so often accurate. Spare a thought for those lambing, especially up North in the snow, and at Easter our thoughts turn to lamb; more of that later.

Our farm is as wet as I have seen it in April, but things can change very quickly, and I certainly hope that they do because I have not applied a grain of nitrogen to a single field which is just as well because it might have been wasted.

At Tillington the light land there is warmer and the grass has got hold of the nitrogen applied, turning a darker shade of green. All maize operations are halted temporarily, as are grass drilling operations and applications of dirty water.

We suddenly have very little solid muck coming out of the separators for the maize fields, as the bio-digester is consuming all the fibre.

We are loading it every day with 17 tonnes of muck, 36 tonnes of slurry, 17 tonnes of maize silage and 3 tonnes of grass silage plus some wheat. Now according to the experts, we should be getting 20 per cent solids out of the 'spent' substrate flowing through the separators, but we are getting 7 per cent.

The Germans are baffled (we enjoy that), and have never seen anything like it before.

Is it the 'piranha' bacteria in our tanks that consume everything, leaving us with only a couple of tonnes of dry muck out of all that fibre going in every day? No, we have the answer. The system we installed is the first of its kind for this company, and the Germans were dead against it from the start; but they were wrong (we enjoy that even more).

Most bio-digesters are fed by auger systems delivering the chopped solids. We have a liquid system, where the solids are chopped, mixed with warm substrate pumped out of the towers which involves further chopping and mixing.

We then pump this through a macerator where further processing takes place, turning it all into a fine 'porridge', which the bacteria find much easier to digest as a lot of the work has been done for them.

So successful is this system that we are beginning to think that we will in due course be able to look to increase the power output of our system by running a second engine.

Tucked away in the middle pages of only some newspapers at the weekend was the tiniest paragraph telling us that Andrea Charman has been re-instated as the head of Lydd Primary School, Romney Marsh, Kent.

This is the lady who was forced to resign by a baying mob for taking the school lamb to slaughter; that made front page headlines of course. Now we find that Romney March and district '˜activists' are firmly in the minority as Andrea Charman has been re-instated due to overwhelming support from parents and members of the community.

Many parents are disillusioned with education policy in this country and good evidence suggests that boys underachieve due to the unsuitability of the current approach, is that any wonder, when we have knee-jerk reaction by a minority of parents and activists, with a swift media trial of someone who does the most natural thing with a lamb; send it off to slaughter?

With all the nonsense and exaggeration surrounding important topics such as animal welfare and climate change, pedalled by people haters, the disaffected and dysfunctional in society, and of course let's not forget the odd '˜rock-God' like Brian May and Paul McCartney to name but two, who want us all to cuddle TB infected badgers and eat lettuce; it is high time for some common sense.

Will we get it; with a general election looming?

Not without a fundamental change which is unlikely. The media call the shots now, they influence decisions every day of our lives; be it drugs policy, immigration, Gurkha's rights, you name it.

A '˜celebrity' will pontificate without accountability (they don't do accountability), and the politicians will run for cover, terrified by their '˜spin-doctor', afraid to spell anything out, that could actually, make this country a better place to live in; putting off decisions that are unpopular, quietly hoping that someone else will inherit the ballooned cost and unpopularity some day in the future.

Do I care about MP's expenses? No I don't. What worries me is the real issue at stake here; that they got themselves into this bother by being too spineless to award themselves proper salary increases in the past, taking the easy route of '˜maximising' expenses to make up for it.

They were afraid of the media (mistakenly called public opinion as we have now seen yet again with Andrea Chapman), and for their sins they have paid a heavy price, incurring the wrath of genuine public feeling as a result of their collective weakness.

I do hope that we can get back to proper order after the election and that whoever wins will govern, tell us beforehand that they are going to govern, taking the responsibility that goes with that. Who knows, it might even be a vote winner.

n It seems that I am in good company when I bemoan the loss of '˜Crocodile Dundee' spirit in Australia; increasingly crushed by the '˜nanny-state'.

Mark Webber, Australia's Grand Prix star commented that Australia had changed significantly since he left for Europe to pursue his racing career in the nineties.

'˜We now have to read an instruction book when we get out of bed, telling us what we can and can't do'¦..put a yellow vest on and all that sort of stuff. It's a great country but we've got to be responsible for our actions, and it's certainly a bloody nanny state when it comes to what we can do - and Lewis has found out very quickly' he said.

His comments came after Lewis Hamilton had his car impounded and was interviewed for over half an hour by Victorian police after he '˜burnt some rubber' for his fans as he left the Grand Prix paddock before the race.

I think I was bothered most, when over in Victoria, by the culture of '˜dobbing others to the police' for using a hose-pipe in the garden; or being fairly sure of being caught even in the countryside for not wearing a helmet when cycling, which is fostered by such state induced control.

I think Victoria leads the way as it easier to keep an eye on everyone, and is more '˜urban' if such a word can be used for Australia.

Farm

Diary

by Gwyn Jones

Spare a thought

for those in north

who are lambing