Bird Table News

can’t believe it’s TWO MONTHS since I started off these notes about harvest. It’s a long harvest this year.

I wanted to show the seasons progressing and how the countryside changes and how the rhythm of the seasons continues. 3rd july first post

I also thought I’d point out that we only produce 60% of our own food.

If our food supply from abroad ever dries up we too could be searching for food like our friendly garden birds do now.

My 4th note was on July 25th - nearly ready for harvesting. Still feed the birds. At the moment we have a supermarket stocked full of food. Let our birdtables be the birds own supermarkets!

If you’d like to see the other harvest notes then just click in the searchbox on the right side of this page.

We grow two types of corn, barley corn and wheat corn. All the barley corn has been harvested but it was a very slow job. We are now harvesting the wheat crop.

Here is the barley corn harvested and baled -

We are now harvesting the wheat.

In some ways the price farmers get for their corn is determined by the weather. If the weather is good then a high quality wheat corn is produced. The large companies who buy corn pay more for high quality corn.

• Milling wheat ( for beer etc)

• Biscuit Wheat

If the weather is bad and the corn quality is low then the large companies will pay farmers a lower price and the corn will be used as

• Feed wheat (for animal feed)

At the moment (and I say again at the moment) our wheat corn still seems to be good enough for biscuit wheat. We never grow corn for milling wheat.

Lets hope it doesn’t rain and the corn is harvested quickly.

We use the straw as bedding for our cows in winter, but we don’t have enough to last through the winter so we have to buy some in.

Everyone knows their jobs in harvest.

• Mr A drives the combine.

• Mr B looks after the corn dryer (yes, because of the wet, wet, weather we have had to use a corn dryer even though it is not cost effective). Mr B also makes sure the corn is stored properly.

• Mr C drives the corn traler to the combine and brings back a load of corn to be tipped into the dryer. Then off he goes again back to the combine.

• Inbetween this the cows need milking twice a day.

If you would like to see my other notes about harvest then type ‘harvest’ into the search box somewhere on the right hand margin

IMPORTANT - BIRD FOOD INFORMATION -

DON’T FORGET IF YOU BUY ANY ITEM THROUGH MY CURRY’S LINK IN MY SHOP I WILL USE ANY COMMISSION I GET TO FEED THE BIRDS. WE CAN FEED THE BIRDS TOGETHER

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What happened on 31 August 2007 - Bird Table News peep into the past. I really believe we should keep cats indoors

Tags: harvest