the daydream fund challenge thread

Rummer

choille wrote: »

Hi Rummer - I've put old hay from the sheep on beds & the weed seeds that come up are incredible. I feed the sheep hay in the byre & what they drop provides nice bedding -sheep won't eat soiled food/hay, but when i clear the byre out I leave it to really rot down & put it in plastic sacks - old feed sacks & then use that. I think any dung should be well rotted down before using.

Cardboard over the weeded beds will keep them clear - I think.

I never thought that the hay would trigger more weeds :eek:

rhiwfield

Rummer wrote: »

I never thought that the hay would trigger more weeds :eek:

Hay spreading is one technique used to sow new wildflower meadows

Rummer

Oooooh I could put it down in my wildlife garden area! I have been trying to cultivate new things on that bit for years with out luck! I will use the shavings on the bed and the hay on the wildlife bit!

rhiwfield

Rummer wrote: »

Oooooh I could put it down in my wildlife garden area! I have been trying to cultivate new things on that bit for years with out luck! I will use the shavings on the bed and the hay on the wildlife bit!

Ah, but it has to come from a wildlife meadow to begin with

Ras: "Simon Fairlie's new book Meat: a benign extravagence. Does not leave many sacred cows intact" Ras, do believe that a bit of a joker lies behind that knowledgable exterior! But I find it very hard to imagine a countryside without dairy cows, and if you have dairy cows you have beef cattle.

Choille, I've only been to CAT once, and the cash register quip is understandable, felt the same way when researching home power gen and seeing that CAT want paying for downloading small pdf docs


Well, its a bit windy and very wet here, not a day for working outside. Makes me realise that one of our greatest inventions is the wellington boot.

One of our hens, Cherry the blacktail, has taken to sleeping in the nestbox which means there is a pile of poo in one corner every morning. She's also our best layer and each day we find an egg resting on the poo pile, kind of a cherry on the top

lostinrates

rhiwfield wrote: »

Ah, but it has to come from a wildlife meadow to begin with

Exactly! If I tried that with my hay I'd get a lot of ryegrass and some thistle!:o

I've not had much luck with small packets of wild flower seed either in the past. we have an area that will be our ''orchard''...very grand way to describe two rows of fruit trees either side of a track...and I'd like to underplant there with appropriate wild flowers. Also, In the area where we park at the front, where the hopefully one day smart garden will meet the farm tracks I'd like to ''wild it'' a bit. where there are weedy bits I'd like to replace with wild flowers.....a very artificial and maintained ''wilderness''.

Davesnave

First of all, a belated 'Hello again' to Rummer!

To get wild flowers growing naturally, one really needs less fertile soil that that found in most gardens, but there are still plenty of semi-cultivated species whch are attractive to insects and useful to birds. Here, I'd like re-introduce more foxgloves, but I'd also like to get rid of shoo-fly, St Mary's Thistle and oenothera, which are a bit too successful in the cultivated areas.

It's been exceptionally wet south of here overnight, but we only had an hour or two of the heavy stuff and it looks like it is clearing already. Makes me laugh that we can see live pictures of events all over the planet, but a few inches of rain in Cornwall and the Beeb are left fumbling with a few stills sent in by viewers.....

RAS

rhiwfield wrote: »

Simon Fairlie's new book Meat: a benign extravagence. Does not leave many sacred cows intact

do believe that a bit of a joker lies behind that knowledgable exterior! But I find it very hard to imagine a countryside without dairy cows, and if you have dairy cows you have beef cattle.

Came out of my fingers and I thought about deleting it but..

Simon comes from his own place but gives the more extreme vegan/veggie brigade a real pasting, not just for the reasons you quote but for lots of very spurious evidence and for failing to understand the logical consequences of their philosophies.

He gives the factory farmers equal stick and batters both the UK and EU governments. Even permaculture gets a slap for failing to understand that in the UK the most common permanent perennial agriculture is grassland.

Having made that sound rather violent, what he really does is take apart a lot of the myths and misconceptions peddled by all the above.

His own position seems to be that failing to grow meat from waste products and on land that is only fit for grass and low value scrub is inefficient, unreasonable and detrimental to our food security (he would approve of Dave's borrowed winter sheep) and that feeding good grain, fish and animal products to livestock is inefficient, unreasonable and detrimental to our food security.

lostinrates

RAS, this guy sounds really interesting. Beef SHOULD be a result of the dairy industry...that would be a good step forward ethically, but we have to convince people they don't need meat daily.

with reference to not feeding grain to stock some agri-scientists are warning the dry autumn and thus prolonged time at grass for cows this autumn will mean a drop in yields.

alfie_1

lostinrates wrote: »

Exactly! If I tried that with my hay I'd get a lot of ryegrass and some thistle!:o

I've not had much luck with small packets of wild flower seed either in the past. we have an area that will be our ''orchard''...very grand way to describe two rows of fruit trees either side of a track...and I'd like to underplant there with appropriate wild flowers. Also, In the area where we park at the front, where the hopefully one day smart garden will meet the farm tracks I'd like to ''wild it'' a bit. where there are weedy bits I'd like to replace with wild flowers.....a very artificial and maintained ''wilderness''.

for a bit of color... if you go into a supermarket..to the cake baking dept...buy a bag of poppy seeds.[supposed to be on top of bread etc.] sprinkle the "millions" of seeds [as opposed to the 20/30 in a seed pkt] antwhere and the prettiest small poppies come up. the australian ones are pretty lemons, pale pinks, lilacs and other colors . also provides seed pods for the finches etc in the winter if just left to die back. just an idea for a bit of wild color!

lostinrates

alfie_1 wrote: »

for a bit of color... if you go into a supermarket..to the cake baking dept...buy a bag of poppy seeds.[supposed to be on top of bread etc.] sprinkle the "millions" of seeds [as opposed to the 20/30 in a seed pkt] antwhere and the prettiest small poppies come up. the australian ones are pretty lemons, pale pinks, lilacs and other colors . also provides seed pods for the finches etc in the winter if just left to die back. just an idea for a bit of wild color!

I'd never thought of using bakery poppies. I adore poppies of all sorts! Thank you...no to find a supermarket that sells them....:)

In the rain now its getting cold we've been please to find that in the main our yard drains really well.....apart from one spot by the main gate from the yard into the winter turn out where a slight dip catches about 4 square metres of puddle which could get pretty nasty in winter. I've ordered 1 tonne of grit...I hope that lasts us..any one heard the winter predictions?