Family Day Out @ Livestock Event

Had a great day out with my husband, my son and my father yesterday.  We treated ourselves to a day with other dairy farmers at the NEC.  It's ridiculous really as you spend most of the time at these shows bumping into and  talking to your neighbours from down the road, catching up with the latest news and gossip!

Anyway, we took Harry and he met up with two school friends from Somerset so that took care of him and we didn't have to spend our time looking round new tractors and machinery with him asking why can't we buy one?  Of course, we'd rather spend our time around the Ayrshire Cattle breeders and watched our new friends doing the cattle showing.  Everyone was pleased to see us again since the AGM in Kintyre and they all remembered our names.  Impressed!  Harry has now finished his schooling at Somerset after three wonderful years.  Last Saturday we had our last trip to Brymore for the Schools Open Day.  We had to take a trailer to fetch his DT project.  Whilst most boys made a tool box or hen hut, our lad decided to make a feed bin for the calf food.  It was a hugh 1m x 1.2m x 1.5m checker plate and angle iron welded box!  Needed a tractor to load it up and unload once we got home.  Anyway its a useful item to have and we needed one!

Later on I found my way onto the DairyCo stand, and attended the launch of their new campaign #discoverdairy which I hope you'll support.  Is a campaign I'm already involved with - teaching the general public about what goes on on a dairy farm.  Everyone's familiar with the end product, but just how do we farmers actually produce this food everyday?  It's right up my street and I'm happily taken the "bull by the horns" (excuse the pun) and started "tweeting" messages about what we're doing now on the farm. Go on, take a look and follow me or at least do some "likes" and give me some support!!  DairyCo have managed to get Adam Henson as their ambassador to head the campaign which is aimed at 18-35 year olds.  Hence the social media interaction!

By the way, look out for my profile on DairyCo's website www.thisisdairyfarming.com under Meet the Farmer tab.  Quite impressed - like the picture too.

They announced their website will be upgraded at the end of July making it more picture stories rather than words and asked me to do some guest farmer blogging!  Hey, getting with it now!

Getting to the NEC is easy pezzey down the M42.  Parking free and an easy walk to the event.  Air conditioning was exactly right, we weren't too cold or hot.  All was perfect until we went to buy some lunch!  Wow, how can it be that in a permanent exhibition centre it takes 40 minutes to queue up to order and pay for a hot roast pork pannini costing a whopping £6.95 each!!  Ouch, that's beyond counselling!  This year I took my own bottle of water as I remember being charged £1.95 for 50ml bottle last year.  We've only been getting 24.19pence per ltr for milk in June!

Here's a picture of  "Somerby Sunflower" during milking this morning.  She loves cow cake but hasn't learnt to shut her mouth to eat it!  Ha Ha!