Teasing Star a little bit…

So, I’m currently working on some fencing in one of the fields near the back of the dale, and afterwards we usually bring the cows in around 3:30PM for milking. One afternoon I decided that I’d put my work gloves on the cows horns, just to see if I could….

So we now have  a cow that looks a little bit like a Moose or Reindeer. She doesn’t seem hugely impressed….

I tried last summer with my hat in Botton Farm, on one of their cows (Cherry) but she didn’t really do anything exciting, and the hat didn’t fit on her head…

Cows go out

So, the cows have been going out in the day time for a week and a bit now, but now finally all the young stock are out too, for the summer. Hopefully they won't be coming in until November time or so, we shall see. Should save a bit of time on routines.

Review: Before The Dawn; Rise of the Phoenix

So, I’ve got a new album from one of my favorite artists, Before The Dawn. I reviewed their album “Deathstar Rising” in the summer (Hey! Listen!) and it has become one of my albums for Summer 2011, and is still regularly played when I’m driving the tractor.

(This is pretty clever, new little widget from Spotify)

My overall feelings about this album are mixed, I love Before The Dawn, they’re up there at #2 favourite band, but this album was a bit of a let down. I love harsh vocals as much as the next man, but the reason I like Melodic Death Metal is the blend of harsh and clean vocals, that’s one of the reasons I loved Deathstar Rising so much, it had that blend of clean and harsh vocals that just made it epic and listenable. This album has some decent tracks, but overall the lack of any clean singing really just means this is gonna be on my shelf for listening to only when there is nothing else.
So, I’m only going to review those tracks I really liked,
first up is Exordium:



This is just an intro track, but I still rather like it. Some rather nice little riffs in there from the lead guitar.

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The second track, Pitch Black Universe continues with the same musical riffs, but with a distorted guitar, and some harsh vocals:

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The 3rd track, Phoenix Rising, was one of the pre released tracks, and I did listen to it quite a bit. It got me very excited for the album, and while the rest of the album has a similar epic music style, there is no clean vocals….Something I didn’t really notice in this track though:

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Skipping on to track 5, (Track 4, Cross To Bear is an okay, track but it’s not really one that sticks out) Throne of Ice, another one they pre-released, so I’ve got a fair listen of this one, and again, it is an epic track, but no clean vocals!

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Track 8, Eclipse, another pretty nice track, but again, not one that sticks out.

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Track 9, Closure, I quite liked this track, it’s pretty mellow and relaxed at the beginning, then gets a decent slow heavy and epic part later on, too much harsh vocals though…

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Bonus Track 10, Unbreakable. This is a remake of one of the tracks off one of their old albums, My Darkness from 2003. Loved that album, and this is a nice remake, definitely one of my favourites off the new album

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Last bonus track, (On my copy anyways), Track 11, Deliverance. Another pretty nice mellow track, no harsh guitar, it’s just a nice melodic track, nice!

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So, to conclude, I’ve got mixed feelings about this album, it is a nice album, and there are some decent songs on it, but it’s not really what i was hoping for. I was hoping for another one like Deathstar Rising, but this is a much harsher album. I like harsh sometimes too, but I was really in the mood for another Deathstar Rising. So, I do like the tracks and the album, its much more like the old Before The Dawn material, which I love too by the way…
So I do quite like the album, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes the old BTD material, to anyone who isn’t quite into the fully harsh MDM, maybe go buy Deathstar Rising instead…. but I do like it… I’m gonna go listen to Deathstar Rising now though…


On another note, I'm liking this new thing from Spotify! It's pretty nifty, just right click on the track or playlist and go "Copy Embed Code" then paste, for the little ones change the dimension to 80 instead of 380. Shweet!

Fixing a few machines

So, I’ve been fixing some machines recently,

first of all was the potato harvester:

This is before;

This is the extra part, the funnels, potato's are dropped down the chute into the ground.

So, finished with the chutes attatched:

Nice quick fix.

 

Next one was converting a cultivator thingy into a bed maker:

So, the central blade was removed, and 3 pieces of threaded M10 bar to mark the beds out. The side blades are in line with the wheel base to create a path between the beds, and the threaded bar marks out lines in the beds.

The link arm pins were completely rusted up and you had to bash it onto the tractor to make it fit.. Not a smart design, so I cut them out, and reversed the new ones, so you could hook the tractor on the inside instead.

Worked like a dream!

Review: Phillips inear Virtual Surround Headphones

So, in my everlasting quest to find the perfect sound I've got some new headphones. It was also to try and see if the ipod issue I've been having, with the ipod pausing randomly, was due to the ipod its self, or if it was the headphones.
So, I got the Phillips Virtual Surround headphones from HMV (£19.99). Apparently they've got some sort of outside resonance speaker... No idea.
Anyways, this little speaker thing on the edge looks a bit naff, looks like you've got the headphones the wrong way in your ear....
To be honest the review is overall quite negative... The headphones were bought to be a replacement for my Sennheisers, as I thought that's where the problem lies, but the sound quality is terrible, no where near the Sennheisers. The ipod pausing issue still remains as well, so overall not a good pair of headphones! Don't buy them, get the cheaper and better sound quality Sennheisers.
Piece of junk.

Job swap

On Wednesday the 19th,as a part of the foundation course we had a job swap. (i'm writing this after as I've no internet for a few days and my phone internet struggles to post pictures.) A list went around the young coworkers and we could sign up to a different workshop. Since I'm a dairy farmer, I figured that the creamery would be a pretty interesting experience as we could see where our milk goes.

It was pretty interesting, we started out with a tour of the creamery, with a look at the cheese stores, where they have all the cheeses maturing, some for periods of 12 months! (for a mature chedder cheese) apparently the mature cheeses sell better outside Botton as peoples are after the more exotic flavours rather than mild plain cheeses, I presume plain cheese is the most common in supermarkets then.
Within Botton people seem to think the mature cheeses are too strong, so opt for the milder continental cheeses like gauda and my favorite, bree.
In one of the refrigerated rooms at about 10 degrees were the bree cheeses maturing, you could see the beginnings of the white penicilliun fur beginning to grow, by the weekend they should be almost all white.

We actually began the process of making a batch of bree, first we pasturised the milk by heating it up to 65 degrees (i think, around there anyway)
After this it was held at this temperature for a while and then cooled to a mid 30 degrees. The bacteria strains were then added and allowed to grow for 45 minutes, then the rennet was added and the mixture became thick. We then cut it up to get the whey out from the cheese, and 3/4 were drained away.
The rest was then packed into cheese molds and more whey was drained off. This is where my involvement in the process ended, so I'm not sure where it went from there.
The rest of the time was spent washing the cheeses, a not especially pleasant job, but one that was good to do with a largeish team.
So yea, creamery was an interesting experience, learned something about where our milk goes, and found out just how long it takes for the milk to become a mature cheese.... The one downside is that it smelled and I have a sensitive nose...

Snow again?

Well, the weather this year is just plain weird.. its now mid-april, and we're experiencing more snow....
Well, when I woke up this morning the wind was blowing, and howling around New Botton Farm. I had a walk back to High Farm in the snow, blowing around like crazy. Got ever so slightly cold.
Now, in the wfternoon, the sun has come out and the temperature has gone up to 7 degrees, some very weird weather. Problem is that the fields are too wet to take the cows on, and we're running out of hay. We've started feeding silage from another farm to the cows, and we're going to have to buy in more, going to be a big drain in our budget....