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.

Showing posts with label bees. Show all posts

Saturday, 15 August 2015

Bees enjoying the wild areas

Sunday, 20 July 2014

Bee feast!

Sunday, 10 February 2013

Bumblebee hotel

Saw one of these bumblebee hotels on my travels!

Saturday, 16 July 2011

Busy bees

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

Saturday, 28 August 2010

Bees in august

Bees come in all shapes and varieties.

Thursday, 1 July 2010

Buzy bees

The bees seemed a little dozy because of their nectar spree!!

Sunday, 6 September 2009

Bees still busy

The bees are still busy in the cover crops - the picture is a little fuzzy because they were proving illusive.

Tuesday, 25 August 2009

Bees on the sunflowers

One of the other plots now has sunflowers in bloom so the bees have moved on and seem very happy with the next plot we have grown

Wednesday, 22 July 2009

The bees even like the thistles

The bees really are busy - even on the thistles!

Saturday, 18 July 2009

Bees in the garden

There were a myriad of bees in the garden - check out the photos

Saturday, 27 June 2009

Bees in abundance

Two of the cover crops that we have planted fodder radish and phacelia have been alive with bees this weekend. I am a very amateur photographer and the pictures don't really do the scene justice - there were literally hundreds of bees working away across the flowers. Imagine if all farmers just planted a small field corner or gardeners planted a part of their flower bed - it would make a real difference to the bee population.

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.