OMSCO, Honey DNA Analysis

We are in the season of misty mornings and gilded leaves and for few days now, no rain after a very wet couple of weeks.
The cows are in their cubicle sheds the work each morning has increased with scraping the sheds out, putting down down fresh bedding and bringing in silage to the feeders.

Last week the Farmer & I had a couple of days away to attend the AGM of our milk buying company,OMSCO, the Organic Milk Suppliers Co-operative(). We travelled up to the the Midlands staying a night in Herefordshire with family before heading off to a hotel near Kenilworth to join a group of about a hundred fellow OMSCO members. It was a very stimulating and interesting couple of days. In addition to it being the annual AGM it was also celebration of the 25th anniversary of the founding of OMSCO by Sally Bagnall who was present. Once the business of the AGM was dealt with we had presentations from a number of guest speakers including Henry Dimbleby talking about his role in National Food Strategy with DEFRA & Cynthia Guven, the Agricultural Counselor at the USDA in London(United States Dept. of Agriculture) and representative from the American organic company Organic Valley. All the speakers were very positive about the role of organic farming in the future of British food production and in ongoing trade deals with both Europe and the US(whatever the outcome of Brexit negotiations!) All this serious stuff was fascinating but we had some wonderful light relief provided by the after-dinner speaker Miles Jupp the actor and broadcaster, who was hilarious and had the audience of cynical farmers roaring with laughter. We came away from the conference with much food for thought on the future of British farming, most of it positive though with a few concerns over international trade and food standards but on the whole organic milk production seems secure.

Two years ago the Farmer was asked to submit some honey samples to a Ph.D. research project on pollen DNA. Today we had the results back and very interesting they are too. The sample was taken from honey extracted in July 2017 and the results are showing that the plant species identified by the pollen analysis as being most evident in our honey were Rubus sp. or blackberry, Trifolium repens or White Clover, Brassica spp. or Cruciferous Vegetables, Cabbages, Mustard or Rape and Rosa spp. or roses. The last two species were a very small percentage while the blackberry provide 70% of the plant DNA found present and the in the overall analysis of the samples taken from all over Britain the picture is the same. So, bramble thickets and hedges are more vital to the bees than we had realised.
We have a very good honey crop this year and the Farmer has been busy making new hives in preparation for next year. We have about ten hives at present and hope to go up to twenty or so. This will involve a lot more active bee-keeping but the Farmer is happy to be a bee-keeper rather than just someone who keeps bees...there is fine distinction between the two!

Storm Damage, Organic Milk, Stained Glass

Following last evening's beautiful flamingo-tinted skies at sundown we have a lovely clear frosty morning which cheers everyone up after the seemingly endless miserable weather that we have had to endure for months. Daffodils are flowering everywhere and the snowdrops are beginning to show their cool-white streaked with green in patches around the farm & on the verges and hedgerow bottoms & birds are singing. However, we must not think that Spring has arrived, February & March can turn out to be harsh and cold. We shall just have to wait & see.

At the beginning of the week we were battered by Storm Imogen which resulted in the second polytunnel being badly damaged, though the plastic sheet did not fly off the frame but was ripped and pulled away from its anchorages. It will be a fiddly job to get it back and patched up which we must do otherwise we have nowhere to bring the sheep in for lambing at the the end of the month having lost the whole sheet on the other tunnel in previous storm. The Farmer is just waiting for a calm wind-less day to put the replacement sheet on. Unfortunately today though dry is not without a breeze.

As from the beginning of February we are now full members of OMSCo, (Organic Milk Suppliers Co-operative)(www.omsco.co.uk). We ended a 56 yr contract with First Milk (formerly the MMB)along with 40 other organic milk producers across the country to become part of OMSCo who have been buying our milk through First Milk for anumber of years anyway. It just seems to make sense that we sell directly to them as full members rather than as associate members. They supply milk to Yeo Valley Yogurt amongst other organic dairy processors & are doing lots of good work in the USA with British manufactured organic cheese, Kingdom Cheese, which is proving popular.

Yesterday I spent a lovely long day at Cariad Glass (www.cariadglass.co.uk), a local stained glass studio, making a rather pretty, though I say it myself, coloured glass hanger. It is very intense, satisfying creative process from choosing glass from a huge library of incredible colour, variety & texture, to cutting out the shapes, and then leading them into place. It was my second time on a Cariad Glass course and so I was able to make a rather more complicated design than my first one.

OMSCo & First Milk promote Kingdom Cheese in US, Pheasant Shoot, Jack Russell Puppy to new home

The cottage has now had its redecoration all done and everything put back in its place...so it is all looking very spruce & smart. The warm pink of the walls of the sitting-room works well giving an air of cosiness and with two sofas and the wood-burning stove is just the place for relaxing and enjoying a peacedful country holiday.
Plug over, now onto other stuff!

Yesterday the Farmer & I went to the delightful small town of Narberth in Pembrokeshire for a meeting held in the Plas Hyfryd Hotel by OMSCo (www.omsco.co.uk) the organic milk buyer who, with First Milk (www.firstmilk.co.uk) sells our milk to whoever needs it.
It was a good meeting with the usual group of attendees (& only 3 wives) in which the chaps from OMSCo explained the current market regarding the organic milk industry. OMSCo is the largest organic milk buyer in the country and supplies organic milk to many retailers and manufacturers of organic products. A very exciting developemnet for the co-operatve is the huge success of Kingdom Cheese in the States. This is an organic cheddar-type cheese that is produced solely for the American market & is proving very popular over the pond. It has just won three gold awards in the International Cheese Awards held in Nantwich, Cheshire recently which will give it even greater attraction to American cheese buyers. It seems the demand for organic cheese in the States outstrips supply hence OMSCo being able to promote a British made organic cheese there.
Although Kingdom Cheese is not available in the UK we have been given samples of it and it is very good.

Tomorrow sees the the first shoot of the season for the Farmer & Younger Son. They are busy sorting out guns, cartridge, thorn-proof clothing and making sure the dogs are in fine fettle for a good first day. The weahter should be quite kind to them though even it is raining stair-rods they still all seem to have a wonderful time.
I shall be spending the day, or the morning at least doing a changeover in the cottage. We have had a delightful Lancashire farmer & his wife staying for 3 nights having come down to collect their Jack Russell puppy from us. If prosepctive dog owners are prepared to travel so far then I am always confident that the puppy will be going to an excellent home.

Ethical Trade Standards - OMSCo & Yeo Valley

About  year ago the Farmer & I were invited to a meeting with OMSCo (http://www.omsco.co.uk/) & Yeo Valley Organics (http://www.yeovalleygroup.co.uk/) to discusss the possibility of securing the Soil Association Ethical Trade Standard on the milk supply.
We had a letter this week telling us that the application for the standard had been accepted and that from the 1st of March Yeo Valley products will carry the ethical trade mark on their packaging.
OMSCo is now the only major dairy supplier to have the Ethical Trade Standard & Yeo Valley has been awarded 'Ethical Trade' Accreditation by the Soil Association.
With consumers becoming more & more interested in where their food comes from & the methods of production it is important that a standard of ethics be available. It encompasses all aspects of food production from animal welfare to the working conditions of the employees on farms & in the factories.

Organic Milk Sales, Beach-combing, Clear Blue Skies

http://www.omsco.co.uk/
Yesterday the Farmer and I attended a meeting with representatives of OMScO  the organic milk co-operative that buys our milk.
The meeting was to give us, the producers, a yearly update on the state of the market in organic milk and how it is being sold.

20-25% of the organic milk produced in UK is being exported to Europe;
62 large milk tankers (1.5 million litres of milk) are crossing the English channel every week and the milk is then distributed to  throughout  France, Holland, Belgium and northern Germany where the demand is growing. In July 2009 the sales of organic milk to Europe were 1475 million litres, by February 2010 the figure had grown to 5425 million litres.
Here in the UK things are not so good. The sales of organic milk for cheese & yoghourt production have fallen, though the demand for liquid milk has remained about the same as last year.
The demand for organic milk in the UK is heavily reliant on promotion and the British government and press are not interested in organics. The Food Standards Agency report that came out last year did not support organic production and there appears to be active opposition to organics the UK. As far as the media are concerned organics are an old story.
In France the demand is growing and the French government is very supportive and encouraging of organic farming. In the USA is has now been ruled that all school meals have to contain an element of organically produced food and this is also happening across Europe but not in Britain. Our buyers are fighting an uphill battle to sell organic milk in Britain and it is the same, if not worse for organic vegetable growers and other producers.
There is a perception here that organic food is expensive. This is not necessarily true. In the larger supermarkets own brand organics are cheaper than established commercial brands such as Kellogs & Nescafe. The consumer likes organics, but sales are heavily dependent on PR in order to keep the public awareness up.
The other fact that was given to us was that the retail price of milk has averaged 82p per litre for the last 2 years, but the price that we get as organic producers has gone down over the same period. At present we are getting about 27- 28p per litre.
Despite all these facts & figures the atmosphere of the meeting was a lot more positive than last year when a room full of organic farmers who really believe in what they are doing, was not a happy place as the buyers were not particularly up-beat about the coming months. However, thanks to the export deals they brokered we are able to see an increase in sales and demand this year. We must hope that the demand will increase here in the UK as more farmers go into organic production on the Continent who will be able to satisfy their home demands and will not require imported British organic milk.

As an antidote to the politics of the milk industry the Farmer & I went on from the meeting which was held in east Pembrokshire, to the lovely small town of Narberth and trawled the antique shops there and then drove over the Prescelli Mountains from where we had superb views of the Irish Sea and the hinterland of Newport  to Newport Beach and walked along the lovely expanse of sand in glorious early evening sunshine.
The tide was out but coming in quite slowly and we walked along the high-tide line through wreaths of bladderwrack and the ribbon seaweed known as furbelows. It is always fascinating to see what has become tangled in the seaweed and we found many hazelnuts and acorns, many of which had been opened by squirrels and even a sprig of holly. How these things end up on  large beach in the knots of seaweed is a puzzle. There were brine-buffed, sea-smoothed small nubbins of wood and a few small shells of musssel and razor and tellins which look like opened butterfly wings. We came across two or three very large jelly fish which had clearly been left by the tide and had dessicated in the sun. There was surprisingly little plastic in the debris, just an occasional bottle top or length of polypropylene rope which glared their vivid colours out of the muted sea-softened tones of the seaweed & sand.

Out walking the dogs in this glorious weather I noticed that the sky is completely clear of vapour trails thanks to the Iclandic volcanoe and the closure of the airports. Our skies are usually criss-crossed with trails of the transatlantic flights, sometimes we have counted as many as 15 or so separate vapour trails at any one time. Today we really do have clear blue skies.