Farming Friends

Every Monday I try to post a guest appearance farming story that I have been sent by one of my readers. Today’s guest appearance is a little different as I wanted to share the thrilling news that I have actually had one of my farming stories posted as a guest spot on another site. Curtis from Growing Thumbs, who appeared on my site with his memories of milking the cow, invited me to share an occasion when I have used farming equipment in the garden. Curtis has written a great introduction to my story, “For some time now. I have been reading a very well put together blog called Farming Friends. It is a very informative and fun blog about Farming and Gardening. Sara puts you right in the action with all her adventures in farming life.”

My story, which is a true story, is called The Vegetable Garden Under Attack. If you would like to read it then visit Growing Thumbs Guest Spot now and then pop back and let me know what you think of my true story.

If you have a farming story, memory or farm visit that you would like to share then please send me your story and I will happily include it on a guest appearance post.

Every Sunday I write a post linked to gardening and nature as part of Green Thumb Sunday and over the weeks I have visited lots of excellent sites, learnt many gardening facts and viewed stunning photography that has left me inspired. One of the sites I visit every week and am in awe of is The BenSpark website. Drew is an amazing photographer who also replies to everyone of my comments personally which I appreciate very much. On a recent visit to Drew’s site I read about a trip he made to Shelburne Farm and found the photographs made me feel like I was part of the farm tour too. Read on to find out exactly what Drew got up to on the farm…….

I went to Shelburne Farm in Stow, Ma recently. It was partly for apple picking and partly for photowalking. You may be familiar with the picking of apples but the activity of photowalking might not be mainstream, yet. Photowalking is the act of going out, preferably with a group of people to take a walk around an area and take photos. That is the activity, taking photos. Whether it be in an ordinary place or at a fair or at a fun location, you can photograph anywhere and it is a good time.   

Shelburne Farm offers photowalkers and lovers of fresh fruit a plethora of activity. For the photowalker an Apple Orchard is a great place to shoot. Apples make good subjects and the beautiful day outside makes for great light. Mix in kids enjoying apples and you have the opportunity to take great portraits of families at play. For those into fruit and veggies an Apple Orchard is the best place to get our fruit and veggies because you picked the apples and know that they are fresh. 

At Shelburne farm there are many activities for kids. There is the hay maze and pyramid, the john deer tricycle tractors and a moon bounce. They even have a sandbox and a large tractor on display that they can sit on for photos. The farm has many varieties of apples as well as peaches, there are some more fruit varieties but you can check that out on the website. I was there to take photos. Sorry, it is what I do, I take a photo each day for my blog The BenSpark and I have been field testing a great device called the GiSTEQ PhotoTrackr to help me automatically geotag my photos.  I can then play the whole trip back through Google Earth; it is a fun program and a great product that never leaves my camera bag.

The farm has a farm stand and store where they make up old fashioned apple cinnamon donuts as well as cider, cheese, and various other items. They also sell some spinach squares and hot dogs for lunches. They also have candied apples, pumpkin pie, apple pie, kettle corn and other goodies. The area around the store is nice for families to sit and enjoy the day. Overall for a $14.00 bag of apples you get a wonderful day with the family and if you take your camera, many memories for years to come.

Click on this link to view all Drew’s Shelburne Farm Photographs - they are well worth a view.

Shelburne Farm By Drew From The BenSpark.

If you have a farming story, memory or farm visit that you would like to share then please send me your story and I will happily include it on a guest appearance post.

This weeks guest appearance is a true story from my husband Steve’s childhood, although he won’t want his family to know as he told me that I am the first person he has ever told this story to - let’s just hope that they are not reading this right now!

When I was a young boy I always used to help out at harvest time.  In those days the some of the grain was handled in bulk but some was bagged off the trailer and stored temporarily in bags. 

When grain is stored it must be below a certain moisture content otherwise bacteria and moulds can grow and cause the grain to spoil.  When it is stored in bags the moisture content can be higher (up to about 18.5%) than when it is in a bulk store or in bins (only up to about 16.3% moisture content). One can get a good idea of the moisture content of grain through experience and biting the grain to see how crunchy it is. 

Even so, back in the 1970’s we had an electronic moisture meter to measure this parameter as accuracy is very important.  These were precision instruments and very expensive - ours was manufactured by Marconi and was a large grey box with dials and knobs and an elecrically operated needle a bit like a speedometer on a car which would swing in one direction or another depending upon the moisture of the grain.

Before the grain could be tested it must be ground which we did in a mill (that we also used for producing animal feed).  After grinding the flour like material was placed into a cell where it was compressed and then the machine would take it’s reading from this compressed flour.  The spent flour was emptied back into the sampling scoup and then tossed over the wall into the pig stye, where a lucky pair of fattening pigs would get a treat each time a sample was measured.

I was taught to use the moisture meter from an early age and I was probably only about 8 or 9 years old when I went to test a sample of grain.  I completed the test and tossed the spent flour over the wall and into the pig trough to hear a clunking noise as the flour hit the porcelin trough (made from an old drainage pipe, concreted into the pig stye).  I had inadvertantly thrown a piece of the moisture meter with the flour over into the pigs!  The pigs had immediately jumped up to get their treat and within seconds one of them had this piece of metal in it’s mouth and was chewing it.  What to do?  I didn’t want the pig to swallow it, nor did I want to chase the pig and for it to drop the piece of metal somewhere in the deep straw where I couldn’t find it. Luckily the pig dropped the metal after what seemed like for ever but was probably only about 10 seconds.  The metal wasn’t damaged so I replaced it and said nothing about the incident, that is until right now (about 24 years later).  I was always more careful after that day.

A Treat For The Pigs by Steve @ Vintage Tractor Engineer.

If you have a farming story, memory or farm visit that you would like to share then please send me your story and I will happily include it on a guest appearance post.

Curtis @ Growing Thumbs has been gardening for almost 20 years and his website is full of gardening tips and tricks he has learnt along the way. We have become blogpals via comments left on each other’s sites and I recently learnt that Curtis lives near his grandparent’s farm and thought that he might have some interesting farm memories that he could share with us. He does and he has, so if you are sitting comfortably then Curtis will tell you about the………milk cow on the farm. 

When I was about 8 or so my Grandmother bought a Jersey milk cow so she could have her own milk. Lucky for me and my parents, we lived next door so more milk and cream for us.

At first getting used to this milk was difficult. This stuff was full bodied with a little cream still in. Once we got used to it, drinking milk at the school or while out tasted strange and thinned out. My Grandma had enough milk that she sold it along with butter. Butter talk about work!

At this time she had chickens making eggs for us and to sell. I remember them buying the chicks there were 100s of them.

Milking a cow is no easy task. Milking is one thing. Having to milk in the morning and evening day in and day out is something else. When the cow had a calf you had to milk her some for the calf which we hand fed and the rest for the dogs and cats. Because there is a certain period after giving birth when the milk will not be any good for human consumption. I think it was six weeks then.

After my Grandparents going through nearly two milk cows and all the work that came with it. They sold the last one. Again going back to store bought milk. A change that took time to get used to it. But now when I do drink milk, it’s skim milk.

So the next time you go out and buy a gallon of milk or other dairy product. Remember there was a lot of work put in it.

Milk Cow On The Farm By Curtis @ Growing Thumbs

If you have a farming story, memory or farm visit that you would like to share then please send me your story and I will happily include it on a guest appearance post.

I recently visited This Is My Patch - a lovely website that records the sights, sounds and events in Louise’s “patch” in West Sussex. We have regularly been commenting on each other’s sites and I was delighted when I received an email entitled farming story from Louise. Excitedly I opened the email to reveal the bold heading -A memory from a holiday spent down in Cornwall in the 1970’s. So if you are sitting comfortably I will transport you back to the 1970’s for a Busman’s Holiday …

…..when I was a kid my family and I went down to Cornwall to stay in a self catering cottage which happened to be on a dairy farm.  It was early evening and there was a knock on the door, standing there was the owner who explained that he was having trouble with delivering a calf; as my dad was a pig farmer and had delivered many a piglet, he was able to help out with emergency assistance.  As my dad ended up delivering the calf ‘single handed’, the owner, to show his gratitude named the lovely little steer, Steve, after my brother! … a memory I shall never forget.

Busman’s Holiday by Louise from This Is My Patch.

If you have a farming story that you would like to share then please send me your story and I will happily include it on a guest appearance post.

Recently my in laws decided to take a day trip to Sunk Island and came back saying what a lovely place it was and how it was worth a trip. It was then that I came across this new website Sunk Island where I was able to find out about what life and farming life is like for the villagers of Sunk Island. The story you are about to read was sent in by Sally from Sunk Island. Sit back and enjoy meeting ‘Bronte’ the dog and be thankful that you cannot smell him!

It was a bank holiday Saturday in the summer. The sun was bright and warm, so the doors into the garden were wide open.  We were expecting visitors & as I made last minute preparations, I noticed something move out of the corner of my eye.  I looked again, and saw a dog, that had darted in from the garden, and was standing silently in the corner of the room beside an armchair.

He was a middle sized dog - and very ordinary.  He was an ordinary shape and an ordinary colour - so ordinary that he was quite appealing.  He was a browny, cross-bred type, with a hint of corgi, but the size of a bulldog. He had a long tail, at half mast, which vaguely waved, periodically. His collar had a metal tag with the name ‘Bronte’, and a phone number.  We shut the doors, so that Bronte would not escape, and telephoned the number on the collar.  Bronte’s owners answered and promised to collect him, “a bit later”.  They lived on the other side of the island, so Bronte had travelled 4 or 5 miles across the fields as the crow flies.

We soon noticed a smell, which grew stronger and stronger as the sun streamed through the windows and heated up the room.  It was definitely the smell of pig slurry and as we looked more closely at Bronte we realised that he was covered in it. 

In those days we had a large slurry lagoon where all the waste from the pig unit was pumped.  It was very deep, and full of a bubbling, slimy slurry. It was securely fenced with barbed wire & netting to keep people away, as the lagoon was a danger & people could  drown if they fell in.

Bronte must have crept under the fence and jumped in.  What a strange thing to do.  We took the smelly dog into the wash house and put him in the large sink filled with warm water and gave him a good shampoo.  He stood stoically as we washed him thoroughly and then made sure that all the dog shampoo was rinsed off him.  He seemed quite happy for us to rub him dry, and then he went to sleep on a heap of towels.

We were beginning to worry that no-one was going to collect Bronte, when there was a knock on the door.  It was Bronte’s owners who had had visitors for the day.  To prepare Bronte for their guests they had given him a bath, first thing in the morning.  They said that Bronte did not like being bathed and that was probably why he had run off.  But they were horrified to hear that he had escaped to the slurry lagoon, probably hoping to get rid of that special bath time fragrance!

The strange thing was that Bronte came for three or four years running, always on a May bank holiday, and his first stop was always the slurry lagoon!  Even so, we were pleased to see him and greeted him by name. It was not until he had visited us on several occasions that we realised that Bronte was not Bronte after all, but that his owners were Mr & Mrs Bronte!

‘Bronte’ The Dog - by Sally from Sunk Island.

If you have a farming story that you would like to share then please send me your story and I will happily include it on a guest appearance post.

My regular reader and blogpal Boggywoggy from Oregon and I share a passion for animals especially guinea fowl. I found BoggyWoggy’s site on Technorati when I searched for guinea fowl and over the last few months have corresponded via comments on each others site. I always love reading BoggyWoggy’s comments as they are both complimentary and humorous. So you can imagine it was no surprise when I read this comment left last week……….

“I just downloaded a video onto YouTube in your honor! It’s called, ‘Moo!’ I created the video while visiting a local ranch with our Swedish exchange student, Albin. He’d been here for about a year and was due to head home in mid-July. The owner of the ranch took us up in the hills above his home for a “new-American-style” cattle drive. Yep, that’s right…we rode up in his HUGE Ford Expedition, watched as he opened a gate, and yelled, “C’mon!” All of the cattle came racing over the hillside in the background, then stopped and just looked at all of us. I pulled out my camera as they made the decision to go through the gate he’d just opened…”

Moo by BoggyWoggy from BoggyWoggy’s Cache. 

If you have a farming story that you would like to share then please send me your story and I will happily include it on a guest appearance post.