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.

Wednesday, 22 July 2009

Rape nearly ready

The bees even like the thistles

The bees really are busy - even on the thistles!

Monday, 20 July 2009

Conservation Headland

These photos are of a conservation headland in the wheat - a margin between the hedge and the crop.

Cover crops are changing

The cover crops have changed a lot in just a few weeks - check them out.

Saturday, 18 July 2009

Bees in the garden

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

Sunday, 12 July 2009

Butterflies

Walking on the farm with the camera I spied these two types of butterfly on the cover crops that we have planted. The brightly coloured tortoiseshell and the white butterfly. The cover crops were alive with white butterflies about twenty flying around ... a beautiful site.

Cover crop plots in July

Just a few short weeks and the cover crops have changed completely. The mustard and the fodder radish are now producing pods of seeds.

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.