Worcestershire Young Farmers County Rally 2017 - #FabulousYoungFarmers

On Saturday, Worcestershire Young Farmers held our 69th annual county rally in Inkberrow. This year was my third rally since joining Young Farmers in 2015 and my last year competing as a junior as I turn 18 this year and will be moving into the intermediate age category… Rally is always great fun and brings lots of new challenges each year. 

This year I took on the Junior Cookery, as this has become a bit of a tradition for me now! The brief this year was a dessert to the theme ‘Around the World’. I ended up doing a selection of 3 desserts: a S’Mores Pie, a Tiramisu and a Berry Samosa. It was a real challenge to make all 3 in the time frame but I managed it in the end, and I think they proved popular with the judges as I managed to come first this year! This was a real surprise and a delight as I have come second for the last two years, it was great to finish competing as a junior on a high…

I also entered the photography competition this year and produced an A3 presentation board to the theme ‘Great Britain in 3 Photographs’... I hadn’t done the photography competition in the past couple of years so it was a new one for me, nevertheless, somehow I managed to come first in this too! 

I did a couple on the day competitions, one was to dress up another girl from my club as Adam Henson from Countryfile using recycled farm materials… In true young farmers style, this resulted in a quick trip to my yard on the morning of the competition (which was luckily only 5 minutes from the rally venue!) to pick up some feed bags and bailing twine to fashion an outfit out of. I don’t think that we really captured the true spirit of Adam Henson, but a gilet made out of an Allen & Page Calm and Condition bag and a skirt made out of a Spillers Happy Hoof bag was the best we could do in the time limit! There’s nothing like a young farmers’ competition to provide some quality entertainment! 

Wythall had some fabulous entries in the craft, bake off, cookery, needlework, floristry, woodwork and loads more… Our ladies tug of war team put up a good fight in the afternoon and our soapbox looked brilliant! 

There was some really stiff competition on the day, the Tug of War was particularly fierce this year with the Tenbury and Bromsgrove Ladies’ teams standing out as well as the Upton Men’s team - they’re like a machine! 

Well done to everyone who competed at Rally on Saturday, we really showcased Young Farmers and all we can do! Big congratulations to Upton Young Farmers - very well deserved winners of Rally 2017… Roll on next year’s competitions! 

It's a tough job feeding the world - a piece for Farmland

Lambing season is well upon us and for some of us, it’s nearly over. This year I have done my first proper bit of lambing and so far I have absolutely loved it! I also learnt a lot, some of which I feel could be transferred to the general public to make farmers lives so much easier…  

I was nervous and excited before I got there on my first day, as I had never met the farmer and all I had to go by were my instructions for getting there which rather mysteriously included “follow the music”. Anyway, I rocked up in my waterproofs and wellies ready to get stuck in. Within five minutes of being there, I had seen three lambs born and was already getting my first job on the yard. It had soon become very clear what this mysterious music was as they had the radio blasting out over the lambing shed. I spent the next two days lambing, filling water buckets, bedding down, moving ewes and lambs and assisting with injections. By the end of my second day I had delivered over a dozen lambs, a good few of them solo and I was feeling way more confident.

However, I have noticed that most people outside of the farming community have a very limited idea about what goes on during these crucial months in the farmer’s calendar. There is a limited amount of reliable information available about lambing time unless people venture into the wealth of farming journals and websites which they might not even know exist! The agricultural community on Twitter along with other social media provide a great insight into the world of farming, especially at this time of year. Although it could be considered subliminal messaging, all of the cutesy lamb photos provide a first-hand look in at lambing that many people may not get otherwise.

My lambing experience really brought home how important it is to educate people about farming as it really does impact the whole world. Things like keeping dogs on leads when walking through the countryside and closing gates to fields could make our lives easier if people were aware of the benefits. With the use of social media, we can educate more people to make lambing time easier on everyone. To quote the girl I was lambing with - It's a pretty big job, feeding the planet…

YFC Stock Judging 2017 - #FabulousYoungFarmers

Myself and Ruth from Farmer Ruth are starting a new collaborate series! It will be following on from my previous #FabulousYoungFarmers series I did when I interviewed some young farmers on my blog. This is my first instalment in the new lot of posts and Ruth will be sharing her first post shortly... I hope you enjoy reading about my Stock Judging I did just last weekend and that you will enjoy the new posts! 

On Saturday, it was the Worcestershire Young Farmers’ Pre-Show competition day… This is where the Livestock Judging and the Carcass Judging takes place as well as the sheep shearing.

Last year, I took part in the Junior Breeding Ewes competition and it was my first ever time stock judging. I really enjoyed it, even if I wasn’t the most successful but it was after all my first time! I wrote a blog post about it last year which you can find here. I also took part in the Senior Stockman of the Year competition already this year which you can read about here. So by this year’s pre-show day, I had competed in breeding ewes, butcher’s lambs, pigs, dairy cattle and beef cattle judging which left only horses for me to try out.

Feeling much more confident in my judging observations and my presentation of my reasons, I was keen to sign myself up for the horse category this year. I have been around horses my whole life so I thought that if I stood a chance at anything it should be horses.

Saturday quickly rolled around and I left early in the morning, with my shirt, tie, black trousers, white coat, riding hat and clean boots ready for a day of judging!

When we got there, me and the other girls from my club who were doing horses signed ourselves in and waited until they called our class to start. The first thing we had to do was the questionnaire that they had put together for the horse judging. I think it’s safe to say that we were all sufficiently challenged by it and there were definitely some tricky questions. The one that caused the most discussion had to be “In which discipline would you find a Trakehner?”. Those of you who are horsey will probably know that a Trakehner is both a breed of dressage horse as well as a cross country fence. After much discussion between the competitors after the questionnaire was over it became clear that half of the group had taken it one way and half had taken it the other, but much to all of our delight, the judges decided to allow both.

We then headed up the road to the riding school where the horses we were going to be judging were. The judges went in to look at them and decided that we were to judge them as family riding club ponies.

The juniors went in first and the horses were paraded in walk and trot for 3 minutes firstly, then we were allowed to handle them for a further 9 minutes. I placed them in an order I was fairly confident with and then started to finalise and practice my reasons.

We went back to the farm we were based on for the day to present our reasons, and once again the juniors were up first. Not wanting to stand around and forget what I wanted to say I volunteered myself to go up first. I went in and gave my reasons (probably too quickly as per usual) and came out feeling very relieved that I didn’t have anything else to do!

At the end of the day the results were presented and much to my surprise (and delight!) I had come second! It was a lovely day of competitions and well done to anyone from Worcestershire who competed… Bring on Rally!

Lambing Live 2017! Part Two

This week I have been lambing again… My last lambing placement was a very large scale, intensive indoor lambing set-up but I wanted to get some experience of lambing in a different setting. So I did what any young farmer would do and hopped onto the club group chat and started begging for work experience!

I eventually managed to get myself a couple of days lambing with one of the young farmers so I went there on Tuesday ready for a whole different kind of lambing…

I spent a lot of time riding around on the ATV and opening gates which is as to be expected when you’re lambing a fairly large flock outdoors. We moved lots of ewes and lambs in the trailer, I had already seen docking and castration at my indoor placement as well as marking the sheep. (For the record I don’t have a very good relationship with stock marker - last time I ended up with completely blue arms that made me look like I had been in a bad fight! This time I ended up with orange and blue arms, but it is nowhere near as bad as last time…) But this time I also learned about crutching the ewes to prevent maggots getting to them. At this farm, the crutching is done with hand shears after the ewe has lambed and before she is turned out with her lambs.

It is a lot harder to catch the ewes outdoors when they need help than it is indoors...

My favourite part of lambing (which is definitely not most farmers’) favourite part of lambing is the cade lambs. I absolutely love cade lambs. There was probably only a dozen or so at the time I was there but they are so playful and I loved feeding them.

I also helped to feed the ewes that were being kept in for various reasons (generally birthing complications) and give them water. They were being fed silage with pellets and I can tell you know that I have learnt the hard way that there are thistles in silage!!

Something really interesting, although not very pleasant, I saw was the technique of skinning a ewe’s dead lamb to make a jacket for a cade lamb. I’m sure that most of you know about this already but for anyone who hasn’t heard of this, I will run through my limited understanding of it…

A ewe that has lost a lamb can foster a cade lamb but sometimes she won’t take to it. If a ewe rejects a cade lamb and doesn’t have a dead lamb then the most popular option is to put the ewe in a lamb adopter (which I think is the sheep equivalent of stocks - as in the medieval kind), however if she does have a lamb that was stillborn or that didn’t make it you can use the skinning method. You have to try to remove the skin of the dead lamb in one piece with holes for the head and legs, ideally without getting any blood on it. Then the jacket that you have fashioned should be fitted onto the cade lamb you are adopting. This makes the lamb smell like one of the ewe’s own and thus she is more likely to accept it. You should aim to take the jacket off within 24 hours or so to prevent a smell… (If I have got any of this wrong please let me know!)

This way of lambing was quite different to my experience indoors but it was very educational and I feel that I have got a good grip on lambing now!

Worcestershire Hunt Point to Point - Chaddesley Corbett 2017

Yesterday we headed down to Chaddesley Corbett Racecourse for the Worcestershire Hunt point to point. It has been a couple of years since we have been to the point to point there as we haven’t been pointing that much in the last few years (except last year!) but we have been there before and it’s always a great one!

We packed our table (with table cloth), chairs and picnic, which consisted largely of Ragley produce (i.e. the entirety of the Hillers deli counter), tabbouleh salad, homemade lemon drizzle cake and some other bits and pieces and set off to the races.

We arrived at the point to point for 1 pm, an hour before the first race and parked up our cars. There were already lots of people there so we set out our picnic and tucked in.

Then we headed up the hill for the first time to go and check out the different trade stands and have a look at the horses for the first race. There were so many young farmers there and I even bumped into the farmer I went lambing with by the bookies.

We watched the first race from the top of the hill with no bets placed and then decided we were ready to pick a winner! We made our first selection for the second race and I headed to the bookies with my Dad to place our first bet. There is great visibility of the course from the top of the hill - you can virtually see it all the way around… Unfortunately, this didn’t assist us with selecting a winner but we crossed our fingers for the next race!

I picked our horse for the next race, Dad placed the £5 bet and we walked down the hill to watch the race… We walked down right to the track to watch the race, and to our great surprise, our horse won!

With £15 in winnings, we were feeling confident but we were rushed on making our choice for the next race. Somehow, we messed up and ended up betting on the wrong horse for the Lady Dudley Cup, it was a fantastic race but it’s safe to say we didn’t win. We had broken even on our bets and wins so decided to quit with the betting while we weren’t behind (not very confident that we would ever get ahead!)...

We watched the second to last race from the car and then headed off home to beat the influx of cars leaving at the end of the day…

Overall, it was a fantastic day and I want to thank everyone who organised it for putting it on. I look forward to Chaddesley Corbett 2018!

Washing the Goats and Horses

Today we went up to the yard to do the ‘spring baths’... This is not something lightly undertaken on a yard of now three Pygmy Goats and two horses (one being 16.1hh and the other being 17.2hh).

We started off with the goats, seeing as they are the smallest and more feisty of the animals meaning we were more likely to be soaked. With Beattie being a new edition to the yard this year (see my previous blog post for more on that), we decided to do the two boys first and leave her to last. I trimmed their feet which was a relative success and only resulted in one casualty, being a minor battle wound to my hand. Then we got on to washing them, despite some general fighting and jumping about they were quite good about it. They always have more of a spring in their step after a bath, it must feel good to get all of the dust build up out of their coats. Beattie was very well behaved for her first bath and her feet are starting to get some good growth after they were in such bad condition when we got her.

The next big task of the day was to bath the horses. This is a doddle compared to the goats as they aren’t nearly as wriggly! We wash all of the animals with tea tree shampoo which leaves them smelling fresh and gets them very clean. 

I cut Oliver’s tail as it was getting very long but didn’t want to take too much off as we’re coming up to horse fly season soon (oh the joys of neem oil!) but didn’t tackle the almighty job of mane trimming. Last time I got the solo comb out after a long day I was accused of making Joshua look like ‘the village idiot’ so I think we will save that for another day when we have more time…

During the day we also ‘rolled’ the fields. I say rolled tentatively as we were using our neighbours old grey Fergie with a crate of water containers hooked up. It’s no high-tech operation but it did its job of flattening the fields nevertheless.

Overall it was a very productive day and I look forward to getting the horses fit for the summer over the next few months (once we’re all done with exams and rally!)...

Women in Agriculture - a piece for Farmland

I recently wrote a piece for farmland magazine that was published in their latest edition. I really enjoyed writing a piece to promote women in agriculture... I didn't know how many of you had had access to the magazine so I thought I would post it here for you to read. You can read the magazine here as there are some great pieces in it! 
Without further ado, here is the post: 

These days as young girls we are told that we can do anything. We can be teachers, lawyers, doctors, firefighters, anything we want! So why are so few young girls considering a future in farming? They say that farming is the biggest job on the planet so why leave women out of it?

Many girls struggle to get into farming because they are told that it isn’t a woman’s job, it’s too demanding or they aren’t capable. When in fact, women can be just as strong and just as capable as men. Some of my friends say that when they’re out and about in their wellies and boiler suits that everyone presumes that they are horsey and not farmers, just because they are girls. It is important to open people’s minds up to the idea of women in agriculture, so it becomes more commonplace and is more widely accepted.

Another friend of mine was studying Agriculture at College but decided to switch to doing an Animal Science degree specialising in Agriculture as it would give her more opportunities than she would have gotten as a female farmer. Sexism definitely does exist in the industry in simple ways such as a lack of good quality, affordable and durable work clothes for women that are readily available for men. I know that we are starting to break through the barrier but we are far from being rid of the problem.

There are so many inspirational women to look up to in the industry doing great things for farming, especially in the UK. One of the women that inspires me is Amanda Owen (Author of The Yorkshire Shepherdess) but there are so many more out there! It is important for any girls interested in the agricultural industry not to be put off by antiquated responses towards a career in farming. If you are a young person trying to make your way in agriculture I would say don’t give up, you have to step out of your shell and show them what you can do!