So, the last thing that happened was that we had a new calf on the 18th of November (2011). It’s been nearly a week since then, and what a lot has happened! A lot of stuff is going down here in Botton with the new manager, but I am not at liberty to discuss any of it, so last weekend was a bit of a “Oh your god is this really happening” weekend. Always nice to know I came home to a battlefield.
But, what has been going on on the farm (Would you put 2 “on”s there?)
17th November 2011
So, on the afternoon of the 17th we shifted a bunch of reeds that were cut in one of the fields. The aim of this was simply to clear it all off so the grass could grow underneath. They’ve been lying there for so long now that some of the grass is dying under. We were supposed to be clearing it by hand, around 2 tonnes of the stuff… Maybe 1.5T… And initially that’s what we were doing. The farm trainee, Tom, went and asked a guy working on the drains in the field, “Steve” if we could borrow his dumper truck on tank tracks, but he said no, so we carried on. After lunch, the main farmer (Gilberto) came down to the field, up came Steve and offered his dumper truck 
So, we shifted the piles in one afternoon, rather than a few days, and got them all squared away by the walls to pick up with the tractor later. During milking I found out how to make the bull do this rather amusing thing with his nose:
I did know the name of this as I did a project on cattle behaviour in my 2nd year of International Wildlife Biology, might post it up at some point….
18th November 2011
In the morning I figured out how to upload blog posts from my phone… Hence the calf post, which was actually written on the 14th of November 2011.
We shifted all the reeds from the wall where Steve had stacked them with the dumper, and we picked them up on the trailer. Steve gave us a hand again with the digger to get them into the trailer…Little bit of overkill… Tom had his first go with driving the trailer, though not officially….
19th November 2011
Farmers market! Didn’t take many pictures here as I was kind of busy. In true farmers market tradition (As the ones I’ve been to before were in the summer….) I had an ice cream… It was about 4 degrees C… Still, tasty ice cream…
In the afternoon Ulrike and I went for a walk up onto the moors to eat chocolate and take photographs:
These were all taken with my dive camera, so I’m rather pleased with the results
20th November 2011
Just a normal Sunday… Relaxed, had lunch, played with bows and arrows in the forest with Ulrike…
I wish they’d put my LG Viewty camera in an Android phone…
21st November 2011
Didn’t really take that many pictures, just one where all the cows were sleeping in the same way:
Even the calves:
22nd November 2011
Mucked out the barn using the front loader, the field was so slippy, so when I was emptying it onto the muck heap I really tore the field up….
So, and now it is the 23rd….
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