I’d eat them both! How do you make “clotted cream”? I’d like to give it a go. Is it really as simple as at sounds or is there more to it? And is there a use for the left over milk?
I was “bullied” into doing a lot of rope work/rock climbing in caves by my dad and older brother as a kid/teen. And I have to climb grain bins and other tall objects now for work. But it never gets better—I still hate it and will get short of breath and shaky if I let myself think about it at all. I would always HATE jumping out of a plane. What I don’t know is if the adrenaline rush of the fall and landing would compensate enough for the initial “fear”. For the cave exploration the benefits were well worth the cost—especially looking back now. At times then I wasn’t so sure! I know about bad experiences as a kid too. I still don’t enjoy water sports of any kind because I nearly drowned a few times starting at age 2 and finally stopping at age 19. LOL. I don’t aim to do it again! Did you get injured when you were pushed off the rock wall?
I did it once, and will never do it again. The pain was unbearable, and afterwards the insides of my thighs from knee to the crotch was all purple and blue and took a long time to heal.
Going to have to raise my prices folks. A front tire I had to replace cost what a rear did a couple years ago and it’s half the size! I am thankful there are a few left in the supply chain and it only took a couple days to get it.
Oh wow. Nope nope and nope for me. That would be beyond my capabilities. Scraped up and bruised only, fortunately. It was about an 8 foot drop, but for a 6 year old, really scary. I was being stubborn about jumping and a friend thought they would help me decide. There was also that time I fell off the second tier of a high tension tower around age 14. The stupidity of trusting the neighbor kid saying 'I'll stand on this end of the (6') board and you stand out on that end...." That one I was unconscious when they carried me back to the house.
Holy cow! Hope no permanent damage. The week before I visited Zephyrhills, the drop zone had a 'bouncer'. That cured me of absolutely any urge to try it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clotted_cream Now here's the clever bit, the left over milk or buttermilk as it's called is used to make the scones. Here's a recipe, let us know how you get on. https://theviewfromgreatisland.com/stove-top-clotted-cream-recipe/
New tyres? How the other half live hey? Paul won't even buy a new inner tube let alone a new tyre. He'll get out the tyre levers and the repair patches and glue. I promise I'm not exaggerating here, I've seen inner tubes with 30 patches on them. Some of the patches have patches.
Missed the edit time limit. I posted the recipe before reading it so it's not what you want. This is more accurate but not very informative. https://www.jamandclottedcream.co.uk/2010/03/homemade-clotted-cream.html A bain-marie seems like the way to go so it never boils.
There is a local bakery that serves up blueberry scones with clotted cream. That is some seriously good stuff.
LOL. Yeh, I would have put a tube in it (not me, the tire guy—I don’t have the tools to do big tires in the field) but it had no tread left. It’s a front wheel assist (MFWD “mechanical front wheel drive”) tractor so no tread means slippage which means increased fuel usage per acre. And fuel ain’t cheap either! My uncle I worked for summers through high school and college seldom bought anything new. His equipment was all old and cobbled together. I have a lot of that kind of stuff as well—I own his old small square baler.
Plugs are now being planted. I am trying to cover this area with a ground cover I can admire in the spring and ignore the rest of the time.
Threshed this morning for a couple of hours and finally finished off last year's straw. Probably about 2 tons of thatch. Will be cutting this year's in a couple of weeks. After drying for a couple of weeks (weather permitting) we should be able to cart it to the shed and start stacking it second week of August. Last year was disrupted by the concreting of the stack yard in October which meant equipment was stuck in the vehicle shed for a month waiting for the concrete to harden. This year Paul is hoping to get it all done by Christmas. Several reasons for this. First of all spring and summer are too hot for the hard physical nature of the work. Bearing in mind the average age of the gang is in the mid 60s. With temps around 30C this week we've threshed 3 times but can only do half days. In the autumn and winter we can do a full day, processing 5 or 6 tons of straw. The main reason is loss of yield though. Over winter the rats and mice burrow deep into the stacks to keep warm and to eat the grain. They also chew the string holding the sheaves together which means they fall apart when you pitch them up to the guy feeding the drum. Instead of going in parallel to the drum the straw goes in crooked and gets bent by the buncher. This reduces its value as the thatcher gets less usable straw per bunch. The crows contribute to this too by pulling the straw out of the stack to get at the wheat. The grain is also badly contaminated with droppings. Getting it all done earlier will vastly reduce the loss of grain (and probably the size of the rodent population) with the added bonus of it being less dusty and easier to pitch as there would be fewer chewed strings.
Thought I’d post a bit on hay production. I’m putting up a small (10 acre) field of alfalfa/orchard grass mix hay today. It will be fed to horses, donkeys, sheep, goats, and some camelids (alpacas/llamas). The cows generally get straight Alfala hay or another forage like cane or rye hay. Raking with a v-rake about 15 minutes ago. The field after raking was completed. Some uncut hay along the irrigation pipe showing the orchard grass and alfalfa. I’ll be baling this hay this afternoon or tonight depending on the humidity, temperature and wind speed this afternoon.
Hay has all been done now, Paul did grow half a field of clover last year next to his Atlee wheat (1940's variety spring wheat grown for a local flour mill and bakery who want it threshed old style because it is cut slightly green) but I don't know if he did again this year. Reaper binder will be coming out of the shed soon to be greased up ready for cutting the wheat. In fact the harvest may have already started, I've been at work for a couple of days and not had a walk about the farm. I did catch him for a chat a few days ago and I asked him what percent of the farm did he think was hedgerows. He knew exactly because it was on the survey. 5 acres. It's a 100 acre farm so the maths was easy, 5%. You can understand why everyone cut down the hedgerows to grow more wheat for the EU (EEC at the time) subsidies back in the 1970s. On the big farm estates of several thousand acres 5% extra land is a lot of money when you have a guaranteed market at an artificially high price. The fields on this farm haven't changed in size or shape since Anglo-Saxon times which means the hedgerows are over a thousand years old. Fortunately, these days the farm subsidies are paid for keeping your hedgerows and other things beneficial to wildlife and habitat rather than intensive farming with high amounts of fertilisers and sprays. Paul gets paid by the meter to provide 4m wide untilled ''wildlife corridors'' on all the crop fields and he's allowed to take the resulting hay off them. The meadow I'm in gets a little extra money because it has a rare orchid growing in it. A guy from the ministry comes to check if it's still here every 5-10 years or so.
The hay is a little in the dry side but it is looking like it might rain before the dew comes on to bring the moisture level back up. I’m rolling it up. The brains of the operation below. Information on if the bale is forming correctly with equal quantities of hay on each side of the baler. It also shows the diameter of the growing bale in inches so you know how close to finished the bale is. It warns you with audible beeps when the bale is almost complete and again when it is complete and you must stop while the baler automatically wraps the bale. It takes about 20-25 seconds to wrap a bale and eject it before starting another. You can set the number of layers of wrap, bale size, core density, and force an incomplete bale to wrap with the monitor as well. It also has a resettable bale counter and a total bale counter you can’t reset so you know how many bales a baler has made if you are buying a used baler etc. or to determine when certain preventative maintenance should be done. A completed bale is 69.5 inches in diameter if you do everything right. This type of hay will weigh around 1600-1800 lbs per bale depending on moisture content. This type of hay gets 1.9 wraps of net wrap. Straight alfalfa gets 1.5-1.7 and things like wheat straw get 3-3.5.
The harvest has begun. Half a field has been cut and bound and some of it has been shocked. The red ears identify it as Square Head Master. The New Harvester will be a couple of weeks behind which helps stagger the harvest.
I don't have enough land to farm and it is for the best. I would lose my shirt. Farming is much more than being a sodbuster.
Wish I could be there. I think I told you before my uncle had a binder and used it in the summer when I was a child. But never when I was around. My brother and I would play in the shocks of cane feed out in fields when we visited at Thanksgiving time. I sure hope Paul teaches some youngsters these things!
I was told by old timers when I got out of college on average a farmer breaks even about 6 years out of ten, loses their shirt 2 years out of ten, and makes money hand over fist 2 out of ten. It’s a pretty accurate analysis in my experience. We all lose our shirts!
