Future Food

Not sure what it was but felt a bit "under the weather" all day. Was a nice day for autumn (sorry Angelique) but not quite as good as forecast, however weekend should see late summer back.

So poor Angie had the brunt of the work and while I was dozing on the sofa, took off to the local grass/maize drying unit and loaded a trailer full (400kg) of grass pellets - by hand, shovel for shovel. When she got back, I did manage to get to the vertical and unload the pellets - by hand, bucket for bucket in to large plastic airtight drums.

We feed two of the horses (Sultan seems to get colic from them) with perhaps a half litre of dry pellets/day as a sort of treat, added to their evening wet sugar beet pulp. There's no real nutritional reason, the pellets are rich in protein, vitamins and beta carotene and at least they are from local fields, dust free, easy to handle and the horses seem to enjoy them.

In the next weeks, the unit will be busy making maize pellets which are fed to cattle for energy with their high level of starch.

In the background of the photo some of the mass of grapes on a vine that has been very productive this year and was planted more for decoration and to hide a large water tank. The grapes are very small and contain lots of pips, so are not a great joy to eat straight off the plant although the chickens have clearly enjoyed eating all they could. I will probably pick the grapes now and cook them up to make a jelly/jam. Also have an enormous amount of rose-hips that are crying out to be cooked up. Perhaps a good source of healthy things to keep me fitter over the coming winter (very very sorry Angelique).