Jim Webster's Blog, page 12

Move along, nothing to see here

The feeling that the world is splitting into two different societies is becoming overwhelming. I recently saw a photograph on social media of a few people on a beach and somebody commented, “They should stay at home, nobody else is going out, even to work.” It’s comments like that which remind you how far some …

Spilt milk and social distancing.

The sun continues to beat down on us, things are distinctly dry, but there’s vague hopes of a drop of rain about Wednesday, so who knows, we might get some. Because things were so wet over winter, the rain that we’ve had has just about been enough to keep us going, but I’ve noticed some …

How do you slice the chocolate box?

It’s an interesting question, how soon should we open up the countryside and tourist hotspots to visitors. I thought I’d visit Towngill situated in the south of the beautiful Lake District and ask a selection of people. First I was chatting to George and Mary. They retired more than twenty years ago when George was …

Lockdown and the foodchain

When we start talking about the lockdown and when it should have started, we have a couple of fixed dates. The first is the 16 March 2020. This is when the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team produced ‘Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand.’ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/impe...   In the document itself …

Round here we use telegraph poles as draining rods

It has to be said that if I ran a scrupulously tidy place this could never happened. It’s just that some years ago, the utility company was replacing the poles carrying the electric wires. Initially the three phase was carried across two fields by three poles, one in the hedge and two more, one in …

So who is still working?

There has been a lot of talk about going back to work. But personally I think this is standing things on their head. Obviously in agriculture a lot of us work from home and self-isolate compulsively because we’re a miserable lot of beggars. Indeed the only people who cannot manage social distancing instinctively are Sal …

Ladies of my acquaintance

As you might imagine, I’ve been musing recently on the impact of arbitrary government diktats. Admittedly they’ve been part of my life for longer than I care to remember, but then agriculture has always been a field where Westminster felt it unwise to rely upon the ignorant and unlettered peasantry, and preferred to organise things …

The view from here

Well I apologise in advance for the photograph. I keep intending to get a better camera but at the moment the one I’ve got is on a phone that cost me £25 which included £10 credit on a pay as you go contract. I’ve had it nearly a year and there’s still £3.54 left of …

Well at least it’s rained

As it is, we’ve had a couple of wet days and frankly things are looking better for it. At the moment I might be surrounded by spring blossom and the trees coming out into leaf, but the important thing is grass. In another fortnight at the most we hope to be silaging. So this morning …

A change in the weather.

It has to be admitted that we were ready for this rain. As it was we’d neatly ricocheted from one extreme to another. This winter was ridiculously wet. We never had flooding as such, but there was standing water where the water table was now higher than ground level. So if we were ever going …