Young Mulberry Fruit.

Today I am work  close by one of the Mulberry trees and I'm pleased to see that they at least don't seem to have been affected by the weather as there promises to be much fruit.

Because of all the rain we've been having most of my time  lately seems to have been taken up by grass cutting of one sort or another so its good to have this extended period of dry weather although having said that it was drizzling when I took the dogs out this morning so I wouldn't say the weather has entered a settled period.

I have Tom with me today, I only bring him out to the garden if the weather is fine and warm on account of his joints, it wouldn't do him good to lie around on cold wet ground.

Well must go and make the most of what is left of the day.

-- Sent from my HP Pre3

Krone BigM.

Tonight I've been cutting grass for more hay. For grass cutting I use this Krone self propelled grass cutter. It works well without any problems. It doesn't kill the grass as some mowers can do. You can either leave the grass spread out or in a row ready to be picked up with the forage wagon of forage harvester.

The Krone BigM can be downloaded HERE

Krone cutter in action on Churn Farm.

All finished and ready to go home.

Pictures By Bandicam.

Tonight I've been working on Churn Farm making some hay. I cut the grass last week and went though it with the tedder  at the weekend but wasn't able to get back to it yesterday. Below are some pictures of tonight's work.

I would like to thank Tyler Wilson for his comment and for being the first follower of this blog. He made a comment about the picture I posted so I will just take the opportunity to tell you the name of the software I use to record both the video and images from the game. It's called Bandicam and can be found HERE. You can use it for free but with limitations. I think the length of the recording is limited to 10 minutes and the Bandican name is always present in any recording you make. Or if you want you can remove these restrictions for a small cost.

Oakwood Farm.

This weekend, having got fed up of doing battle with Springhill Farm I downloaded Oakwood Farm V2 which is made by  Chris_7710 one of my favourite map makers. I don't intend it to take the place of Churn Farm, I'm just checking it out at the moment, although I am enjoying Oakwood Farm so who knows. I will post some pictures of Oakwood Farm shortly. The first job was to make some silage to feed the cows.

Silage Making.

From what I can see all the fields are planted with crops of Wheat, Barley, Canola, Corn and grass. There is one field of outlying sheep close to the farm so I will be able to make use of the cattle feeders. There are also some cattle in the sheds although I haven't gone in to what can be done with those yet.

I will leave you with a plan of Churn Farm, I'm only working fields from 1 to 21. I could work the whole map but I don't really have the time so am just sticking to the top right of the map.

Churn Farm

New Drill.

Tonight I finished off the seeding project that I mentioned in a previous post. I've rearranged some crops so that the grass is altogether in one area of the farm. Because I work the farm on my own it's easier if I can move from one field to the next instead of having to transport three or four lots of equipment across the farm. Anyway I got it all done tonight so I think the next big project is to make some hay. Below is a short video I made tonight when finishing off the drilling, it isn't to demonstrate anything in particular but as you will see I have a new seed drill, it one is an Amazon. It works well and sows a wide variety of seed. The only difference I can detect between this one and the old drill is the colour

Apart from the drilling I have also been doing some work on Springhill Farm which is another of the farms I like to work on. It's a good farm but I don't like it as much as Churn Farm. It gives the appearance of being a small farm but there are many small fields which take a lot of getting round due to the tight layout of the map so you tend to put in a lot of time and hard work yet don't achieve so much. I'm actually playing it as a bit of a theme farm in that I am trying to use machinery from a past time, although I'm not absolutely religious about sticking to a certain period as it's not always easy to find the machinery to do the job so I have to take something a bit more modern. Like for instance I was trying to use the small bales produced by a conventional baler. The only balers I could find weren't that inspiring to use and then I ran in to problems handling the bales so I've gone down a more modern route as far as baling goes.

Rearranging some crops.

These past couple of days I've been doing some seeding at Churn Farm, I'm re-arranging some crops to make things more convenient. I'm trying to get the grass fields grouped around the farm to make them handy for the silage clamps.

As you will see from the pictures below I use one of the standard seeders which works well and covers quite a lot of ground although some of the seeds that it will sow is unrealistic, like for instance potatoes but I mainly use it for Barley, Wheat, Canola and Corn. The tractor I use on this machine is my Ford TW25 which is a tractor I enjoy using. It's a pretty basic model but I like the sound and look of it and it works without any problems.

Also I've been working on Springfield Farm which is a small estate farm, with narrow winding roads and small fields. I've had a little go on it before when I was looking for a main farm but found it lacking in what I wanted but now I have Churn Farm I thought I would have another look at it just for fun and the challenge of the tight layout and learning a new farm.

-- Sent from my HP Pre3

Flower Borders.

The flower borders at Newby Hall.

For more information click [HERE]

-- Sent from my HP Pre3

Nweby Hall.

-- Sent from my HP Pre3

Day out at Newby Hall.

Today we are having a day out at Newby Hall. We have come to see the gardens but there is a vintage tractor show, somehow Vicki didn't seem to notice and walked straight past them al - a trip to the opticians seems in order!

-- Sent from my HP Pre3

Knerveland CLC Pro cultivator.

I haven't posted anything on here for a while, mainly because I've been busy getting a new farm established. I guess that might sound a bit of a daft thing to do considering all the time I spent setting up the last one but the thing is I'm always checking out new farms in search of the one that suits me the best. I didn't really fall out with my last farm, in fact I liked it but then I came upon what was supposed to be a new improved version so I just had to go with that one which meant losing the one that I was working on which would have been fine if the new version really was better than the old one which it turned out not to be, or at least it didn't suit me. Then one day I came across 'Churn Farm' which I really like and have now spent a lot of time building it up. Of course I can't help myself looking so I keep inspecting new farms as they come out but so far I've not been tempted away. Although funnily enough I do keep getting the urge to dabble with 'East Peak Farms' which is a bit surprising in a way because its a simple farm which is lacking in some quarters like for instance the crop rows are poorly detailed and the regrowth times are way to fast but there is something about it that makes me keep it was one of my saved games.

Anyway the real purpose of this post is to give a little demo of the Knerveland CLC Pro cultivator. I will just do a round of the field which may become a little tedious but at the end I will give you a close up look. As you can see this cultivator will rip turf therefore avoiding ploughing. I get the impression it might be a little heavy so a good tractor is advisable. Whilst it works well and looks okay with quite good detail I won't be using it on my farm simply because it's too small only being as wide as the tractor - I would be going round and round in circles all day in some of my fields but I would have no hesitation about running it on a small farm such as Higher Hills Farm, especially as the cost is only 630. So a good starter cultivator for smaller fields and when the cash is in short supply.

The Garden (June).

Here is this months picture of the garden plus the previous ones.

January

February

March

May

June

Preparing for the Diamond Jubilee.

This past week I've been concentrating just about all of my efforts on the walled garden preparing it for the Queens Diamond Jubilee party which the village is holding in the walled garden of the big house. One of the main tasks was to plant up the Dahlia borders. The Dahlia's obviously won't be in flower for a few weeks yet but the borders look better with some plants in and it was time to plant them out anyway so this is what I did on what I think were the warmest two days of the year so far so it proved to be quite a draining task, the best part of which was the watering in which saw me giving myself a good watering in at regular intervals. Unlike most of the other planting out to be done shortly all the Dahlia's have to be dug in with a spade so by the time I had finished it was as though I had dug over the whole of the borders.

In the picture below you can see 'The Long Dahlia Border', There are two more borders of Dahlia's in the Memorial Gardens which amount to a similar area as that of 'The Long Border'.

On turning out one of the boxes of Dahlia tubers I discovered the start of a wasps nest in among them which I thought was quite interesting, it's amazing where they choose to make their homes.

Apart from the Dahlia planting there were also a few other various containers to be planted up and a few lurking plants given a home so as to make them look useful instead of just lay-a-bouts hanging around on bench corners.

Because this part of the grounds is not usually open to the public I had to do a few things to try and avoid any accidents, one of which you can see in the picture below. The pots of Geraniums are put there to denote the edge of the steps which might not be obvious to someone not paying attention. I also had to cover the well, removing any low branches over paths so no one gets their eyes poked out and clean off the paths to avoid trips and slips.

The rest of the time was spend weeding and cutting which wasn't all that easy at times because the second part of the week was quite wet but we just about made it.

It was quite hard work at times, it's always hard work but at least having lots of visitors make it all worthwhile.