GPS = WPS

Ganspflanzensilage = Whole plant silage

Everything in this field will shortly be harvested and silaged. Apart from the obvious sunflowers it may contain peas, beans, rye, wheat and or triticale, a hybrid of rye and wheat. It may end up being fed to cattle or used to produce gas and thereby electricity. Many organic farmers use WPS as maize is not allowed.

Certainly looks a lot prettier than maize and it's a whole lot better for my bees. However a ton of maize will produce 200 m³ of gas, GPS/WPS only 160m³. I don't like the idea of growing potential food for gas but full support use of waste to do so. However one has to look at the economics - slurry/muck only produces around 50m³ of gas per ton.

Taken on our morning dog walk, leaving Angie to keep farrier Richard well tanked up with coffee as he did the three horses. He had been due a couple of weeks ago but had been struck down with a very nasty bug or better, food poisoning. Fit again now though and as always his cheerful self despite the occasional shower.

Rest of the day was really very nice and relaxed despite the clouds and cool temperature. I concentrated on crushing grapes to make jellylike jam, experiment with two bottles of grape Schnapps and a few bottles of juice to be used a.s.a.p. In the evening set about stewing some rosehips to try these out for jelly-jam making tomorrow.

Angie did a late afternoon ride with Sultan with his new shoes and Luna, then when back a short foot walk with Flash and Luna before doing a home sauna session. I even had a quick session when she was finished and the oven had been turned off: 80°C is enough for me. Then Angie cooked a great dinner and enjoyed it with a beer and the glowing wood fire with a 90 minute episode of a Rosamunde Pilcher filmed I think in the Truro area.

So a great day until I saw Boris on TV. Dear Boris.....Germany banned ivory imports years ago as have many EU states. Has always been possible for countries to have their own laws. In fact it has been the UK who has time and time and time again vetoed scores of attempts by the EU to initiate various environmental initiatives. This is just another classic case of totally false representation by his likes.

I didn't think I would see the day when the far right wing governed Hungarians have shown themselves to be more enlightened than my own (small letters) socially democratic liberal country. And no, I don't consider 50.1% of my country folk to be Brexiteers - thank goodness.