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.

Sunday, 29 May 2011

May podcast

The oxide daisies are abundant

The oxide daisies that we have planted have just started to come into flower ... beautiful

Sunday, 22 May 2011

Visitors arriving to see the baptismal pond

It is the time of year when we start to get lots of visitors to the pond. They come to visit from all over the world.

Monday, 16 May 2011

Bird walk 2011

The bird walk in Castle Frome this year gave us a chance to walk around a neighbouring farm at 6am. I should have been taking pictures of birds but I just wasn't quick enough ... so I took some photos of some of the other beautiful areas that we were lucky enough to visit.

Friday, 6 May 2011

Cider fruit in blossom

This is not a photo from our farm but Herefordshire and Gloucestershire orchards are full of blossom - just beautiful.

Sunday, 1 May 2011

Its raining

After what seems like months of no rain it is finally raining ......

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.