New Milking Parlour Up & Running

Here is the first cow in the new milking parlour, now fully installed and up and running with the first milking session in it taking place last night. After a very busy, long and stressful day the first cow made her way in and the others followed her lead with a little persuasion from the Farmer & Sons and enticing cake in the feeders...it went very smoothly and once everyone, the cows and the men are all used to a completely new system it will mean that instead of milking taking 3 hours it will all be done in 1 hour. The new parlour can milk 16 cows at a time instead of only 6 as in the old parlour. It has taken about 7 months for this project to be completed which included the building of a new shed, digging drainage systems, plumbing in the washing systems and all the other mechanisms necessary for milking cows in a herring-bone parlour. I have nothing but admiration for my boys as they have worked hard and long on the project as well as doing all their usual farming activities.

While everyone was enjoying the sight of the cows in the new parlour our old parlour puss-cat was very confused...he was waiting in his usual place in the old parlour and nothing was happening. It will be interesting to see how long he takes to venture near the new parlour and find a place to watch as he always has done.

Storm Ophelia

We have survived Storm Ophelia with nothing more than one tree down across the lane, no electricity for most of the day & a general feeling of being battered. We did not get the full brunt of the storm but it was still uncomfortable. Without any power everyone was anxious about milking the cows but fortunately we do have a generator which is powered by a tractor so that was brought into play in the early afternoon and ran until about 6.30pm when it was learnt that the mains electricity was back on after a phone to a neighbour to find out the situation. Of course there was time when every farm ran a generator as matter of course before mains power was brought out to country areas. Electricity came to Penyrallt only in 1958. I can recall one of our older neighbours, now no longer with us, saying he remembered the sound of humming generators across the valley as each farm started milking every day before everyone was connected to the national grid. Thank goodness we still have to have a back-up power source for the rare occasions like today when the mains system goes down. We have friends who live off-grid and have their own systems of wind turbines and solar panels to run their homes and workshops but none of them have cows to milk. If it wasn't for the milking we may well be off-grid ourselves but the powere needed to run a milking parlour and the cooling of the milk in the bulk tank is too great to be reliant on alternative power generation.
There are reports of serious storm damage across west Wales and many trees came down to say nothing of tidal surges and flooding along the coast.
It is now a beautiful calm, clear morning with sunshine lighting the autumn colours against a blue sky and the rambler rose outside the farm office window is full of fat little sparrows chattering away without being buffeted about by the winds of yesterday.

Call Ducks, Puppies, New Milking Parlour

On returning from an outing on various errands a few days ago the Farmer announced that he had bought me present. Now I'm always slightly suspicious when such things are said as eager anticipation can be dashed by the arrival of a new garden fork or a handful of buckets. However this time my suspicion was mis-placed as what duly turned up were two pairs of call ducks. I've always wanted ducks on the pond and while we have wild mallard making brief re-fuellling stops they never stay stay more than a few hours at most, so to have some tame, hand-reared ducks to live on the pond is lovely. They have settled in very happily and already the mat of weed is receding as a result of their feeding habits. Their duck house is on a small floating island and so they have a good chance of not being caught by Charlie Fox which is usually the doom of poultry not surrounded an electric fence as are all our laying hens. The two drakes are handsome in black and white plumage while the ducks are dressed as usual in discreet shades of tawny & khaki.

The puppies continue to thrive and get jollier by the day. They now bark when I go in to them which is very grown-up and they startle themselves somewhat by it.

Work going well with the new milking parlour and we were discussing how the first 'training' session of the cows will be handled. They have to be shown the new parlour and walked through it a couple of times before theya re actually milked in it so that they can become accustomed to the new building and the new layout of a herring-bone system after the old abreast parlour as well as a different set of noises. Cows are creatures of habit and need to be handled gently and with care in any new scenario.

Puppies, Autumn Arriving

The puppies are now three and a half weeks old so the they are being introduced to solid food. Some are keener than others and have picked up the skill of lapping quite quickly. However,they all paddle through it and then spend the next ten minutes cleaning the food off each others coats. They are beginning to find their feet and lurch around their nest in a drunken fashion trying to locate each other to snuggle up in a warm huddle once again.

Autumn is arriving rapidly, the trees are changing colour and the wind is blowing tides of golden leaves into swathes around the yard. The swallows have not yet left us but no doubt will do so in a couple of weeks and just in time as the temperatures are beginning to drop and the wind has an edge to it. The time for getting out our warm winter coats and gloves is fast approaching.

We are in the middle of calving now and with four or five calves being born some nights the feeding of them takes a lot of the Farmer's time especially as the calves are distibuted through four different sheds. We have just invested in a new calf feeder which has ten compartments each with a teat so each calf gets the right of amount of milk. It is working very well.

After a long and busy summer with the holiday cottage we waved off our last visitors this morning. The cottage is empty for a while now and though I miss having the guests around it is nice to have a break from it. We have had lovely people staying from all walks of life and from all over the country. They discover west Wales with great enthusiasm as it little known...everyone has been to north Wales and Snowdonia or Pembrokeshire & the Gower but few know that the Teifi Valley exists so finding it is always a revelation.
Once the puppies are all off to their new homes in a month or so the Farmer & I are promising ourselves a few days away in someone else's holiday cottage. We have not had a proper break for nearly three years (the three day dash across England in August for a wedding does not really count as a restful break!) and so it will be something to look forward to.