Miliking Parlour roof update

Progress has been quite slow with slating as it's not a job for frosty damp or windy days and roof is more or less weatherproof so no rush.
LED 'fluorescent' lights were installed yesterday and they are quite impressive - brighter than comparable size old type and come on instantly.
Not qute sure how reliability will be long term at this stage.
It sounds like some people have had about 10% fail in the first few weeks then remaining units seem OK.




(new) Mavic Pro aerial shots.

Slightly snowy ruswarp run

It was Ruswarp Market's second suckler sale and three bullocks were booked in.
It was quite concerning to see things pretty white at dawn but it tended to thaw even by 9am roads were mainly clear - though it continued to settle higher up.

Once before one of their sales was badly affected and a lot of cattle could not get there.

Barn roof update

Slow but steady progress with old milking parlour.
It's a big roof and will take at least two weeks just putting slates on.

Cattle back from down the lane

This has become gradually more difficult since we bought two off-lying fields more than 20 years ago.
When the youngsters were bucket fed they were much quieter and would more or less follow you home with little drama, it was still worrying when cars came the other way though!

Since 2010 they have got increasingly wild as suckler cow offspring, and the road is a little busier every year.
In 2001 they had to be trailered home due to FMD - it worked reasonably well but takes most of the day setting up a pen and bringing back 3 or 4 at a time in the trailer.
So last year and this year they were done that way too and though slightly scary it has worked reasonably smoothly.

Clearing old Milking Parlour shed

After about a week of hard dusty (and sometimes hot) work this is almost at the stage where reconstrucion can start,

Most of the timbers were in a bad way though the A frames were OK and are retained.

The two newer ones were installed when internal wals were taken out to install in about 1973

Second cut bales

Rather a lot of bales - about 150 - especially from the red clover ley sown last year.

Demise of the feed bin

This had started to look rather unsafe with corrosion at the bottom of the legs and a hole appearing by the hatch - and auger outlet disintegrating.
Rather than have it fall over in a winter gale when cows were in, it seemed prudent to get it broken up in a controlled way.

There was a real risk it could have slid of the foundation block rather than toppling where expected, but all went well and two hours later it was cut up and loaded in  trailer.

We now have access to refurbish the slate roof behind, which has been in a bad way for several years.
Two substantial holes appeared last winter!

Silage 2016

Silage has been delayed by foggy drizzly weather through May and June, however when it did finally dry up crops were very heavy. This was cut 25th June and most of it was picked up on 27th.

Houlstons have a much newer Claas Jaguar this year, and it made quite easy work of the huge rows even on the steepest field in this video.

There was an extra eight acres this year and as expected the pit was full without it so that got baled and wrapped the following day - just before a very wet afternoon.

That was annoying as the second field of hay was just about ready - I got more than half baled but at 2pm a sudden heavy burst of rain stopped that for now.

Cattle to Malton

Suckler calf bullocks have been going to Malton through March and April - today was planned to be the last sale for now, but could not quite fit four in so I guess the last one might go on his own next week or I might take another of some description with him.

The remaining ones were going out any day now, but the line between go out and sell is rather arbitrary. It's strange but there are only four heifers of this age so keeping them all as replacements.

 Prices for store cattle are down a little on last year but still quite strong with most of them this year making around £900

Ruswarp Market run

Taking some last year's lambs.
The Hero4 camera behaved well but did seem to get very hot in the case.
There's an alternative open back I should use for longer periods of recording perhaps.

Mucking out calving shed

I got a GoPro Hero4 a couple of weeks ago, and am in two minds about doing occasional video blog style videos.

The quality from it is brilliant really, and I already had a selection of mounts which came with a much cheaper SJ4000 a couple of years ago. The problem is that even a 3 minute video at 1080p is about 500mb and our increasingly left behind broadband speed of 373kb up needs all night to upload that.

This will become increasingly exasperating with no chance of faster fibre being laid to install a cabinet nearer than Castleton 3 miles away. (unless we do it ourselves apparently!) They were given £1.5 billion to connect almost everyone to 10mb+ but it seems very easy to claim outlying villages are too difficult even when like Westerdale we also don't have mobile cover let alone 3G. Meanwhile York is getting upgrades from 50mb+ to 300mb and they also have 4G