Wilson's of Westray

Experimental Crop Update

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:31:00 +0100

So far so good. The winter rye/spelt and tares mixture is growing well and is well in advance of local spring barley crops as can be seen from the brown fields in the background. No tramlines means no pesticides, herbicides or artificial fertiliser but the crop looks clean (so far) and a good colour!

I have grown these crops before down south and they can reach 6ft tall so keep tuned for more updates!

More Flooring!

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:05:00 +0100

Johnny McEwen applying the self-leveling screed. We had to let this cure for three days due to the cold and damp weather.

Me mixing.

Altro safety floor cut to size and rolled out.

Applying the glue, one side first and then the other.

Floor glued down with edges weighted down. We’ll leave this for two days to cure and then we’ll start welding the seems which should be fun!

Inside, outside and from the bucket...

Wed, 01 May 2013 19:15:09 +0100

This is what is happening inside our buildings. This is our cheese store with the walls fully painted (twice with waterproof paint) and the ceiling fully clad with plastic sheets.

And above is our creamery…

And this is what our hygiene control area looks like with a ceiling.

And now for some pics of the floor - it is a many-layered thing! The blue layer is a damp-proof membrane, the green layer is a primer. The next layer will be a self-levelling screed and the cherry on top is the ultra-hygienic Altro flooring. Two layers done, two to go.

But now for some pictures of what is happening outside - our crop, which is starting to charge. The first pic is just to illustrate the shade of green it is - spring green.

Fingers crossed that it continues to thrive and that we have decent weather at harvest.

And finally, some pictures of our fast-growing calves. Our count is now at 9, the latest born just yesterday evening. We had to delay milking a little on account of her arrival (yes, another heifer), but are pleased to report that she was up and sucking pretty pronto. The oldest calf will be a month old tomorrow - jeez, what a month! The bucket-feeders we are using are called Milk Bar, a New Zealand company, and although we did get some single feeders, we are using the five-teat buckets. We just hook them on the hurdles and the calves do the rest. It can be a bit of a scrum to get in the door and get the buckets hooked on - a bit like wading through calf-mud. They haven’t knocked me down yet but boy they are getting strong.

That’s it for now, thanks for checking this out. More pics than words today, hopefully seeing is believing.

Cows, calves, and a little bit of chaos.

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 20:46:00 +0100

Well the good news is that on the morning of the 9th April we introduced our cows to the milking parlour. Hallelujah. I would be a stone-cold liar if I didn’t admit that this has had its nerve-wracking moments but for the most part the cows have proved very amenable to their new jobs.

Our calf count now stands at 8; 3 bulls and 5 heifers. Two more still to calve, fingers crossed they go alright.

Because we aren’t yet ready to process the milk, this time is about training the cows in the parlour - the pregnant ones get walked through the parlour too although obviously they haven’t had the clusters on them yet. The milk is used for the calves, and that’s where the chaos comes in. We took the calves off the cows yesterday and started training them on buckets. Noltland has been a very noisy place for the past two days! But it is all going well. We’ll post some pics of the calves soon so you can see how bonny they are.

But first, this pic should give an idea of the cow housing I mentioned previously. We have bedded down the slatted court - the cubicles we built each have a comfy rubber mat on the base, and we put straw on top of that. We scrape out the central passage when we put a new bale in for them in the ring feeder, which is at the back end of the court.

It seems to be working well.

But now back to the milking. Here’s a few pics of the girls in action…

GIRLS WAITING

WELCOME

GIRLS IN PLACE

We milk twice a day, and one of our cows gave 11 litres just at the evening milking today, which we are naturally thrilled about. They should be going out onto grass in the next few weeks so it should be interesting to see the impact that has.

The grass is definitely looking promising so hopefully there should be plenty to keep the girls occupied.

Our experimental crop is starting to come on too, tomorrow is supposed to be fine weather so a picture of that is on the cards.

As far as the building work goes, oh for more hours in the day. The cheese store is just waiting for the Altro floor and the shelves, the creamery is waiting for the Altro floor, then the cladding on the walls and then all the stainless steel gubbins. The bulk tank room and hygiene control area are likewise waiting for their floors and the walls to be clad. But all the ceilings have been clad with white plastic sheets so it is all starting to look quite fantastic. Pics of these spaces soon.

That’s it for today, thanks for checking out what we’re up to. Cheese is on the imminent horizon…

And then it happened...

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 21:59:48 +0100

Introducing the newest member of the Noltland herd, our first calf born early in the morning on the 2nd of April. Born bright and up and sucking in a blink - great. Since her arrival there have been three more births - touch wood all have gone well and calves seem sound. Our Ayrshire heifers were in-calf to a Shorthorn when we bought them.

And as you might imagine our parlour is not done yet but in between calving we are working away like lit fuses on completing it. We’ll keep you posted on that.

We are also preparing our cheese store. As we are using a waterproof parlour paint in here too it needs time to dry out and not smell before we trust it with any precious cheese. The shelves will be made from untreated kiln-dried larch - and as soon as we perfect the trick behind human cloning Jay will get right on that. For now just imagine…

So lots of activity at Noltland and believe it or not we have been enjoying some amazing weather. Okay, today we had a little snowstorm, but generally the last week has been sunny and bright and beautiful. This is good because we have been painting sheets of ply outside!

Good luck to everyone in the middle of lambing and calving, and especially if you are anxiously waiting and watching for the grass to start growing. Thanks for checking on our progress - this pic makes me smile everytime I think of it - who doesn’t love a back scratch?

Bring on the Spring

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:59:52 +0000

(Our experimental crop, pic taken 03/03/13)

It is over a month since our last update. In that time my dad had a serious stroke and is still in hospital now. He is undergoing some pretty intensive therapy which will help him adjust to his altered abilities. He is receiving excellent care with the NHS and they have our thanks and respect for this. Naturally our attention has been drawn by this family crisis meaning that our building project has had to limp along as best it could. We are very behind schedule, there is still so much to do, and the cows are due to calve imminently. That’s life, get on with it!

On the upside, it is a seriously beautiful day today. Here is a pic of the heart of our u-shaped steading. You can see the new double doors that go into the creamery, and loads of soil waiting to be transformed into a garden. It is already a great space, but hopefully one day it will be space for folk to enjoy while they visit the castle, which you can see at the edge of the picture.

And now here is a pic of our milking parlour which is very nearly done:

There have been further changes made with our cow housing, so we will be posting about that soon. We are always open to new ideas and ways of doing things - how do you know unless you try, right? And the 45 acres of new ley that we sowed last year? Well, it has come through the winter relatively fine, and we tried to be as vigilant as possible about chasing the greylag geese off whenever they tried to settle - we have seen some pretty big flocks. Let’s hope this slowly warming sunshine makes everything burst into life! Bring on the Spring indeed.

More pics

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:12:00 +0000

One of the great things about our building works is that they take place indoors! So even when it is blowing a gale outdoors and snowing/hailing/sleeting, as long as you can get from the house to the barn, you’re winning.

It’s all going on somewhere in there.

We are more fortunate with the current weather than many other parts of the UK - watching Countryfile and even the recent documentary ‘The Year that Britain Flooded’ serves to remind us that you don’t have to live on an island to be at the mercy of the weather. Everywhere you go, there it is. We’ve had a fair amount of storm damage from the high winds so we’re busy sorting out insurance claims and all of that stuff. If you look above the bonnet of the jeep you will see one of the new ‘skylights’ on our tallest barn roof.

To all those farmers with fields underwater and a bleak start to the new year, hang in there, we need you.

Our experimental crop of spelt/rye/black oats/vetch is looking a bit worse for wear at the mo - I would post a pic, but it would be one of mud. Hopefully as soon as the sun comes out, so will the green shootlings.

But here’s a pic that’s not of mud - the view from the front of the house, snow on the castle and the hills, quiet and quite lovely.

Noltland Castle

And now some more images of the blur of activity that is happening within our beautiful old stone buildings. As you know we are effectively building a shell within the old buildings to house our milking parlour and creamery - this was the best way to meet modern environmental standards for making cheese. And it is the most cost-effective way to ensure that we can use old spaces on the farm that might not have been used for a while, without having to make too many changes. Even though we are building new walls, we are very aware of the old building that surrounds us. The new block walls are attached to the old stone walls with wall ties which are basically small steel wires. On the outside of the buildings we are going to re-instate the traditional lime render. This will waterproof the walls while still allowing them to breathe; we can’t wait to see it but we’ve got to have the right weather first.

Dem bricks

Insert Milking Parlour here…

We’re only going to be milking two cows at a time but even so it’s starting to look a little too cosy. We’ve bought a two stall abreast parlour from Larchfield in Teeside and somehow J needs to find the time to drive down there and extract it. Luckily its just around the corner from where we have to pick up our cheese vat. Barry from Loch Arthur is kindly letting us use his old vat which is down at Botton Village.

Meet the Bulk Tank Room-to-be

Next door is the Hygiene Control Room, but you can call her Gene…

A bit messy now for sure, but this is our future Action Station, the site where we will make cheese. You have to use your imagination, but that’s what it’s for.

All the walls and ceilings will be clad with hygienic cladding and the floors with Altro safety flooring. The hole in the wall is for a set of uPVC patio doors which we have subsequently decided on installing. The great thing about these doors is that they will enable visitors to view the cheese making from the u-shaped steading facing the castle. We would like to make this weather protected area into a garden in the future, so watch this space (ha, ha).

The walls ARE closing in…

And that’s it for now. Thanks for looking and stay tuned. Cows are getting bigger, days are getting longer, plenty more news in the offing.

And good luck to everyone in the middle of calving and lambing now, hope it all goes well for you.

Another tourism video but this time from above.

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 17:24:41 +0000

Another tourism video but this time from above.

A video showing some of the attractions here from a peedie while...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 17:03:36 +0000

A video showing some of the attractions here from a peedie while ago.

Archaeology!

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 18:40:00 +0000

Links Of Noltland.1

Links Of Noltland 2

Links Of Noltland 3

Or just google archaeology Noltland.

We feel so privileged to have this important work happening at the bottom of the farm and to get an insight as to how people lived here so long ago.

Happy New Year

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:26:30 +0000

Our first Christmas at Noltland, celebrated with a houseful of family - mum and dad and Sam and Danny and their 2 kids Ben and Maggie all the way from Sydney, Aus! Ben is only 22 months old but we managed to get him hooked on farming already. Good times. We were sad to say goodbye to everyone, and look forward to seeing them all again soon! Thank you for coming so far to see us.

Work continued in the buildings over the festive season, sometimes with the help of our visitors - this is what happens when you come to visit us. The creamery, bulk tank room and hygiene control area are now really starting to take shape. Due to the bad weather at the end of December we had to postpone the second part of concrete pouring - for the milking parlour and cheese store - until the 10th of Jan. This has now been done, our thanks again for the great job to Daniel Harcus Construction.

Orkney Aggregates concrete truck

Concrete being taken into the building. (Noltland Castle in the background.)

The new floor for our new cheese store.

Coming together - where our bulk tank room, hygiene control area and creamery will be.

There is a huge amount of bricklaying to be done and equipment to be installed. And of course the deluxe flooring that has to be laid on top of the concrete.

As regards our cow housing we found that our idea of using sand in their cubicles was not working. They stayed clean for about 3 weeks and then it all began to get a bit messy. So, with the good weather over Christmas (we had some seriously beautiful days, mild and crisply clear) we put them out for a bit to clean up while we freshened up their housing. The rubber mats we ordered took ages to arrive so they were out a bit longer than we anticipated, but on the upside, when the time came to get them back in they were waiting at the gate! Good girls. Each cubicle now has a thick rubber mat in it. So far so good.

Stay tuned. We are expecting the calving to start at the end of March - it all has to be ready by then. Wish us luck!

A good foundation...

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 21:21:00 +0000

We now have a fantastic concrete floor in our dairy - specifically where the bulk tank room, hygiene control area and creamery will be. It was not that straightforward to pour the floor - the telehandler had to transfer the concrete from the lorry into our building because it is a tricky little space. That said, it was a good thing we had the professionals in - thank you Daniel Harcus Construction. We still have to apply a durable hygienic floor over this one, so it needed to be of a high quality.

Obviously we are pretty thrilled by the new floor - a good foundation indeed.

Preparations.

Telehandler entering the barn.

Easy does it.

Danny directing.

Smoothing.

Nearly done.

Wow.

A marvellous sight.

Let the building begin.

Man at work.

Woman at work.

In early for winter....

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 18:19:00 +0000

We brought our cows in on Friday afternoon. The ground is very wet and it is getting a lot colder. We were also very keen to try out our new cubicles. The housing is a work in progress, and we haven’t quite worked out how all the feeding and mucking out will happen. But the important thing is that after a few misfires, our little cows seem to be lying the right way round in their cubicles, and are munching happily from the ring feeder we put in there every time we go and check on them. We have been working next to them for most of the day in the building that will be our milking parlour - nice to have company. Cows are always so curious - a bit like Wimbledon for them watching us go back and forth across the yard.

Good to be spending more time with them too - we have to introduce them to milking in a few months, so the sooner they understand our weird accents, the better.

This is where our milking parlour will be - long way to go! This building will house the milking parlour, a bulk tank room, the creamery and through the wall at the end, the cheese store.

This used to be a machinery shed, and before that a grain barn - a very useful building indeed. Looking up, the guts of the old grain machinery can still be seen in the rafters:-

Interesting year round grazing for cows.

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:19:39 +0000

Interesting year round grazing for cows.

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eye off your goal."

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:16:06 +0000

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eye off your goal.”

- Henry Ford

"Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted."

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:14:20 +0000

“Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.”

- Albert Einstein

Our Vehicles

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 21:46:00 +0100

‘Donkey’ our Daihatsu with Nesta, Clover and Bell.

‘Doe’ our Deere which has 12,000 hours on the clock!

And last but not least ‘Missy’ our Massey 135.

Another clip of our beautiful organic crop, we’re so proud...

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 21:19:00 +0100

Another clip of our beautiful organic crop, we’re so proud of it as you can tell but it was probably a bit too thick for the undersow even though it only went in at 75kg/acre.

Not too shabby!

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 18:29:59 +0100

Not too shabby!

Wrapping silage.

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 18:25:39 +0100

Wrapping silage.