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, 25 November 2012

Biomass video from the farm

Check out the video

Sunday, 11 November 2012

Late Autumn Sunshine

Spent a day this week on a farm in the Cotswolds - great to enjoy some late Autumn sun

Sunday, 14 October 2012

Boilers

Sunday, 7 October 2012

Wood chip heaters

Sunday, 30 September 2012

Woodchip - a new fuel for the farm

Sunday, 23 September 2012

Planting

As I have driven around this week lots of farmers are starting their planting and in some areas the seeds are germinating in the fields. The rain today has been welcome and we too are turning our thoughts to planting our winter wheat. It is probably to late for the oil seed rape so that will have to wait until spring.

Monday, 17 September 2012

Harvesting finished

All the harvesting is completed. We were really lucky that the weather turned when it did and we had a could of really good weeks of weather. Now to think about planting

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.