Jim Webster's Blog, page 32

Never quite a passive observer

Back when I was between O levels and A levels (probably around ’71 or ’72) we were encouraged to borrow books out of the libraries of the various science labs at the Grammar school to read over the holiday. I borrowed two from the physics lab. One was slim and seriously cutting edge. What had …

Transhumance

This is a fancy technical term for spending your life chasing after sheep, (or in extreme cases, goats.) Actually people forget that livestock have always moved about a lot. This isn’t just some modern development. If you read about Rob Roy and the 17th century Highlands, an important part of society was the Yorkshire cattle …

#Northern

You know what! It wasn’t a good trip home. The day itself was fine. I was there at Sledge-Lit 3, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy convention hosted by the indefatigable Alex Davis. (An all round nice guy and really good convention organiser.) The day drew to a close, I loaded the unsold books, my convention goody …

You’ve been robbed!

If you produce milk there are very strict legal guidelines. One of which is that the proportion of butterfat in the milk must not fall below 3.5%. Before you throw your hands up in horror, remember an ordinary sliced loaf can be over 3.9% fat. Mind you, we bred and fed for milk quality and …

Point of Comfort

Now this is almost, but not quite, real history. By that I mean it’s what I remember of what my Dad told me, and that depends on how he remembered things. My dad was born in Askam and at the age of fourteen went into farm service because he didn’t want to go into the …

Soft Focus

There’s no doubt about it, winter is coming in. I’ve caved in and lit the fire in the living room for one thing. Not only that but I find myself wearing a jumper and a jacket when I go and look sheep in the morning, even if it isn’t raining. Yesterday morning was a bit …

Noises off

With farming life you get seasonal sights and scents, but you also get seasonal sounds. I remember stopping the tractor on top of the silage pit where I was buckraking grass. I sat there and listened and could hear seven forage harvesters working on seven different farms. Since then, four of those farms are no …

Getting the timing right

It’s interesting watching the effect that changing the clocks has on livestock. With dairy cows they adjusted very rapidly. If you were an hour ‘late’ they were all queuing in the cubicle house muttering to each other, wondering where you’d got to. If you were an hour early they were all sitting snoozing in their …

Linguistic good taste.

  I took the car in to get an MOT and service this morning. As I walked home two women passed me walking in the opposite direction. As one said to the other, “He were having a fag behind the recycling bins.” Such is the joy of the English language that this probably means something …

Apple Chutney and Refrigeration Engineers

Way back, probably in the late 1960s, the Milk Marketing Board decided to try and move farmers away from putting their milk in churns for collection and shift over to bulk collection. It would save them a fortune in labour and suchlike. Also the MMB paid for the churns, farmers had to install their own …