Humble

First of all, a very heartfelt thanks for all the congratulation messages on my 1825th (5 years’ worth) of Bliping. Wholly undeserved for the worst Bliper of all time. I got a warning note from Blip a few days ago that the anniversary was coming up and intended to turn off comments for the post so as to avoid the embarrassment. However, again in arrears, I fired off several back Blips and forgot.
 
Looking through the comments and with some from Blipers I didn’t know or don’t regularly follow, I looked at their journals and was once again humbled by the great photos and texts. What a wonderful community we have. Friendly, tolerant, supportive, caring, creative, interesting, thought provoking and from all over the globe. What a great world we would have if these values could be spread to a wider audience.
 
I have actually been Bliping for over 6 years, since being introduced to it by Nogbad on 21st February 2011. A bumpy on-off first few years but eventually settled in and the relationships that develop over time have become an important part of my daily life. However my main motivation remains in recording my life for my children. We are geographically separated by many miles and even more kilometres, and thus Blip is a super quick, visual medium for them to know what stupidity the old man is up to. But it is also a way for me to record events in my younger years which they have never known or perhaps forgotten. Only after my own father died, did I realise how many unanswered questions I had for him.



So I don’t apologise for my occasional very old Back-Blip, regret however that the counting system awards me with honours that are not due, especially when I see the journals of some many very dedicated daily Blipers.


Thank you, the Blip shareholders, the Blip directors and as written in every company’s annual report, the most important asset of all, the “employees”, the thousands that are out there daily, regardless of wind and weather to bring us our daily Blip.
 
Well today was the final wonderful end to a great spring week. Started rather early with the twice a year cess pit inspection and testing and was later followed by Farmer Franz arriving with a few thousand litres of slurry for three of our four horse fields (see extra photo). He did us the honour of using his big Basildon built New Holland T6020, normally he uses one of his older Deutz tractors for the mucky jobs but at the moment he needs to be a bit careful with his health and the NH is somewhat more comfortable.
 
An interesting tale he told: he had recently heard a presentation from a German at a local farmers meeting. He had a few years ago gone on a visit to Russia and fell in love with it and took up farming there. He now has a herd of 31,000 milk cows and over 3000 employees, not far from Moscow. He gets 47cents/litre for milk and pays 20 Euros rent for an hectare of land. Building permission to add a small shed for another 3000 cows takes a few days. Compare that to Farmer Franz and his 60 odd cows – he gets currently around 27cents/litre, rent varies from 500-800 Euros a hectare and planning permission for an additional 10 cow shed would probably never be given. One section of the Russian community that isn’t suffering from western sanctions.
 
Before Franz came, Angie had started up her BMW (Bavarian Muck Wagon) tractor to clean up the field where the geese had been last year and the netting had not allowed the grass to be cut. Have to say, a year without horses on it and the geese having regularly deposited fertilizer, has done the grass a power of good. Angie carefully and very professionally winds her way between lamp post, trees, fence posts and electric fence wire to get in to all the corners and even avoids the late crocuses that are just pushing leaves out. Farmer Franz later didn’t!
 
Finally, as my Blip mentor Nogbad would say, my day of “Tractor Porn” is rounded off by another extra photo of my evening rolling the sand school with my 1965 John Deere 310. Had earlier in the day done several clearing up jobs with the bucket and the old girl with her somewhat basic and nowadays crude way, did what was needed.