Farm Diary

WET but very much warmer weather as we cope with this depressing hour; it's about time we adopted European time, which would go a long way towards cheering us all up. I hate these dark evenings, and it seems so unnecessary to carry on with this gloomy tradition, when the evidence against is now overwhelming. We have the same number of daylight hours; it's just a matter of choosing at which time of day we would like to have them.

More doom and gloom on the economic front, and everyone is feeling poorer. This is turning into a disaster on the high street as we approach Christmas, where many shops and companies turn over up to 40 per cent of their total for the year, which in itself seems far too high a risk.

The major supermarkets are telling me that they are experiencing a huge percentage of consumers who are 'trading down the value chain'; that is buying food items that are more basic and costing less. Niche products, organic food, and other luxury items are in reverse.

The cows are very lucky indeed; they are untouched by all of this, despite my serious discussions with them about eating less and producing more milk.

Cows live for the moment, and have no concept of time, other than the built in clock that tells them that it's feeding time! They don't worry about tomorrow, don't really remember much about yesterday, it's all about how they feel right now.

We all run around keeping the 'hotel' nice and clean, with plenty of fresh food available 24 hrs a day. We clean and make the beds twice a day, provide a disinfectant foot-bath every morning, clean the water troughs, and so on.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette November 12