Tuesday! 23rd August

This is actually from yesterday… but it rained all today so I didn't get any pictures really… Apart from this one:

Monday the 22nd

Ja, so another time-lapse today! This one is of making leaf hay!

We did have it in the tractor as well, but the batteries ran out

Spraying again! AGAIN!? Oh yes….

So, the life of a farmer is glamorous as ever.
 
Tractor fashion accessories. Two brand new top link pins make oh so beautiful earings….
After a long hard days work, during afternoon tea break, we all sort of got a little silly, and with some new tractor parts, such as link pins and top link pins, decided how best they could be used.
A trailer link pin became a wind chime, that made a similar noise to the bull banging against the barn door, not sure who would want that ambiance around their house…. but you never know….

Stirring 500! And looking about 15… what on earth… For the record, I am 22….

And this one needs no explaining…. But I shall anyway.. We decided to try and see if you could get your head inside the vortex… Phillip tried and succeeded…

How to change the keyboard on the Dell Vostro 1500 (And possibly others… Who knows what standardised systems dell have!)

Olé! I spilled a large amount of hot chocolate over my laptop the other day, and the E button stopped working, I popped the keyboard out and cleaned it to no avail, so I had to replace it. If you find yourself in a similar situation, I would recommend getting a new keyboard…It is so nice to work on really nice responsive keys etc etc… Dunno, just feels like having a new laptop again. Anyways, here is how to switch the old out, and the new in:

First of all, you need to order a replacement keyboard, these can be found by looking on ebay for Dell Vostro 1500 keyboard, or by searching the model number and getting an official dell version from somewhere. I am not going to say which I did….But I got a keyboard that works.

So, once you have your shiny keyboard, you need to get the old one out. First of all, you need a small posidrive screwdriver (positive one… with a + end) and a larger flat head screwdriver.

With the larger flat head screwdriver, locate the slight hole in the top right corner of the laptop, on a panel containing the power button. Put the flat head here and wedge the panel upwards. (I used a knife as that was all I had around me… farmer remember…)

The whole panel should come up, with some slightly unnerving cracks and crunches.. but all in one piece:

Dethatch this to expose the innards of that section… You should see 2 + screws, at the location of the red arrows in the below image:

Remove these!

Pull the keyboard back, away from the screen, and pull it up at the same time, it should come away, but be careful, it is still attached!!

There is a small connector above the trackpad, with a blue tab, lift this tab and it should allow you to pull the keyboard wire tape clear of it’s little plug thing.

The old keyboard should come free now, so just remove it. The new keyboard now needs attaching. First try and get the wire tape into the little clip you just got the old one out of. Keep the blue tab lifted, and try and force the tape into the bottom. There are 2 little lugs on the side of the tape, these should go inside the clip, and prevent you from pulling the wires out again. When this is clipped on, push the blue tab back down, clip the keyboard back in and pop the 2 screws back in the top.

Then, reattach the plastic panel with the power switch, starting from the left side, where there are 2 lugs that need to clip into holes in the main body. Then push the rest of the panel down with your hand

And you’re ready to rock!

Enjoy

-Skip

Time Lapses! Wooooo!

Yar, so I bought an Android app called TimeLapse, quite a fun little app, which I’ve been using to make some time lapse films of assorted things on the farm, the first of these is Spraying and milking on Wednesday:

Wednesday Time Lapse Fim

I am snoozing a lot as it is 5 in the morning…

Tuesday

Today we were back on Falcon Farm to help finish the Onions off, and get the last ones in the boxes, but no boxes arrived… So we rendered assistance again with weeding….

After this Tom, the “Farm Manager”… or just the farmer… and I fixed a broken Silage bale, which had torn on the road, by rewrapping it in this agricultural grade Clingfilm stuff… weird stuff!

Bit of a catch-up: Monday

So! When I last left off I’d just moved into New Botton Farm on the Sunday. Since then we’ve all been busy!

On Monday afternoon we were sent to Falcon Farm, a nearby farm, to help pick Onions and box them up. Not entirely sure how many there were in total, probably around 800+ onions we harvested before we ran out of boxes.

From here, whilst waiting for new boxes to arrive from Stormy Hall Farm, we helped weed some Chicory, which looks surprisingly like a dandelion, making weeding very difficult.

For Tea break Phillip brought his camera, and we just played around with that:
Picture by Phillip Mg(White T-Shirt)
Picture by Phillip Mg

The above 2 photographs copyright to Phillip Mg.

After tea break we put up an electric fence to strip graze a field, a process where the cows consume all the grass available in one region, before we move them on to the next, more efficient than just letting them go wild in the whole field.

Turfed Out–Sort of…

Yes… So I’ve been moved out of my house in Thorn as my grandfather and his wife are staying… But I’ve been moved into New Botton Farm, the farm house for where I work, Botton farm… and it is a very very nice house!

Spraying again

Ja, so we were out in the fields again spraying “500” preparations today. I had a junk sprayer pack, emptied itself far quicker, which had the upside of me carrying less, but meant I had to pump out 15L of water just to cover half a field, and topping it back up and pumping it out again. But hey! at least it wasn’t stiff as hell..

And here is a picture of a chicken being a sniper and using cover effectively:

Mobile blog test and prep spraying

Ole!
Just installed the Blogger Android app on my shiny HTC wildfire s.
So, today I wad spraying what they call "preparations" on the fields. Preparations are a homeopathic ...thingy for the fields, and while I don't believe in it doing anything, there are people who do. But whatever my opinion on its effectiveness, it is good fun to make and spray it with a group of people, you have a good laugh and some good excersise, so in the end, it doesn't really matter whether it works or not. But jokingly we were spraying the left overs on cars, walls, trees and the tractor...if I come down tomorrow and there is a huge tractor in place of our old one....mind blown

Sheep Sheering in Stormy Hall

This is old news actually, but my phone refused to upload it as it was in an “I hate Skipper” mood, then I lost it in a field, and have only just replaced it and been able to get the pictures off with my shiny new HTC Wildfire S…. more on that later
So, on the 17th of June (Yes, it’s very out of date) we moved our sheep flock up from Botton Farm up to Stormy Hall Farm, about a mile away on the other side of the valley. We have about 35 sheep (It’s either 34 or 36, I never remember), a mixture of lambs and mothers, and one “tup” or male sheep. The purpose of the move was for the sheep to be sheared.

We moved the entire flock by hand, a few in front, and a few behind, but we sort of lost the flock as they all split up and ran. A couple ended up in a leek field, some ran the right way to Stormy Hall…. in the end, with the help of the neighbouring farmer, Mr Tate, and his well placed quad bike, we managed to chase them out of the fields back up the road and into the Stormy Hall barn.
In there the farmer, Colum, demonstrated hand sheering, manhandling the sheep and using clippers rather than an electric cutter to remove the wool. I took one of the last sheep to be done, and begun to cut the wool off, first from the brisket, then down the hind leg. After a while, Jana, a garden trainee, came along and wanted a go, so we both took part in sheering this sheep….. I think the average time for the experts is about 3-5 minutes… I am pleased to say ours took 2 hours to sheer one sheep…… Though we didn’t cut it once!

Morning Milking and stacking bales

 

Morning milking has some obvious drawbacks, it starts at 5:30, so you’ve got to get up and get the cows in at 5:00AM in the morning… IN THE MORNING DAMNIT! But it has some distinct advantages. The above picture is one of them… When you’re awake at 5:00 you see amazing mist patterns in the valley, the morning sun coming over the hills, and when the sun starts to shine, and you’re taking the cows out at 7:30 to the fields it can be spectacular:

These are some pictures I found on my phone after I did an import of all the pictures. One of the neighbouring farms, Stormy Hall, uses a bale barn, instead of the hay barn set up that we have on Botton Farm. This means after mowing and drying, they bale up the hay and bring it in on a tractor. To bring it in they stack it up into… stacks… which they can pick up with a bale clamp on the back of the tractor. This was my best piece of work:

Look at it! It’s so square! I was proud of this one. Just showing that Botton Farm leads the way! Ooorah!