Poultry Discussion

Why poultry discussion? Well we are chicken farmers and all too often when we talk with family and friends we start with talking about chickens then end up talking about anything from food and food safety, climate change, wildlife, birds, our farm. We started this blog to communicate what we are finding out about the world around us and how we try to farm in a sustainable way so that our farm is here not only for ourselves and our neighbours but for the future too.

Thursday, 30 September 2010

More bees

More bees!

Wednesday, 29 September 2010

Bees in September

Bees love phacelia and we are looking at ways of encouraging it to flower in September and October so that the bees can access food all through the autumn. Great to see the bumble bees still as busy. There is no shortage of bumble bees on our farm!

Flowers for bees and butterflies at the end of September

Wednesday, 22 September 2010

Wheat in the store

After all the rain we have finally got the wheat in the grain store to feed the chickens for the coming season. Hurray!!

Saturday, 18 September 2010

Holiday cottage

The holiday cottage is coming together... very exciting

Tuesday, 14 September 2010

History Walk

On September 11th we held a history walk on the farm - a great afternoon.

Sunday, 12 September 2010

Poppies

The fragility of red poppies ...

Friday, 10 September 2010

More food for birds

Wednesday, 8 September 2010

Autumn is coming!

Sunday, 5 September 2010

Winter bird table

The plots are ready in waiting to provide a source of seeds for seed eating birds to help them through the winter - mustard, fodder radish and sunflowers.

Hill Farm, Castle Frome, Herefordshire

Hill Farm is about 300 acres in size - an acre is about the area of a football pitch. This year we are growing feed wheat; winter beans, spring beans and oats. We also have 50 acres of woodland.

The wheat was planted in the autumn and will be harvested in August. We will feed the wheat to our chickens and sell some of the straw to other farmers who will probably use it for bedding for their livestock. We will bale some up for ourselves and chop the rest and incorporate (put it back) into the soil to improve soil structure. Beans were planted in the spring along with spring oats.

The woodland areas are traditional mixed woodland with conifers and areas of deciduous trees. There is a myriad of wildlife on the farm - mammals, birds, insects ... we will tell their story in this blog. They live in the woodland, fields, lakes, and streams. We hope that you will enjoy the story of our farm.