Mary’s Cat is being followed and bombed by barn swallows wherever she goes. 
(Audrey close your eyes). Because these guys are about ready to take their first flights.
They are so patient these little birds. Out-growing their nest and watching the milking from above twice a day. Did I tell you that their nest is directly above the light in the milking parlour. There is always a swallow on duty. 
In case of premature toppling.
Daisy has returned to her usual self. Munching. 
These two are waiting for me to pay the grounds some attention. Fat chance.
With it being so dry, they are not getting a lot of use.
I know I had decided not to show you photos of the big pigs anymore, with them getting so close to the end of their stay. But this made me laugh. Out Loud. This photo is for you Mad. Over there at Mad Dog TV Dinners. 
This red pig was too fat to get up this tiny step, but he was just so hungry. I should not laugh but really this is an amusing shot. Since then, I have made him a new step by piling three old barn doors one on top of each other so he can get into the trailer and eat standing up. Like a good pig.
Good morning. TonTon is cleaned up. I think he must have only had a touch of the skunk, as dishwashing liquid did the trick this time. I have filed all your good advice for next time. Yesterday I took my trusty spade out into the field and grubbed thistles. Thistles in the field is the sign of a bad housekeeper. It is like a grubby front step.
But while I was out there, in the middle of the Dairy Mistress Field I watched with rising alarm as a monster of a tractor with a spray boom the size of a plane hanger roared into the fields around me and at top speed commenced to spray the soy beans across a hot wind. I had no time to get my animals in, or the washing off the line. Or myself in for that matter. And worse still absolutely no time to find a way to protect my bees. For that I would have had to lock them in the night before. The farmer promised me that he does not use pesticide. And swore he would warn me if he was going to. But this smelt very bad. All the other surrounding fields are being sprayed a fungicide with a top dresser (plane) and I know that smell. This spray was different. And we have monoculture GM cropping all around us for hundreds and hundreds of miles. There is nowhere to hide. But he could have WARNED me that they were going to spray!
If you stood up on the moon and looked down you would see us. We are that little dot. That little multi coloured dot. Desperately waving our miniscule sling shots. A tiny mote in the eye of manufactured green! This goliath we battle will not go down with one well placed stone. He has an army of genetically modified armoured ants that creep through every crack. It is like boxing shadows that have claws. He will just drench me in spray while roaring past in his air conditioned cab, staring straight ahead, eyes fixed on my beautiful horizon – which to him is shaped like a wallet.
My words were not printable as I put away my spade, hosed down my cows, paying extra attention to Daisy and her udder. I brought all the linen in off the clothesline for rewashing. I emptied all the water troughs, overturning the full heavy tubs with the strength of fury and set them to refill. The bees looked ok last night. But we all know that the bees out in the field yesterday will not have come home. I am not even going to discuss latent damage to an organism. You know it all. I am at a loss.
My accent gets quite British when I am angry so the message on his answering machine is very clipped. For some unknown reason he has not called me back to tell me exactly what we have been sprayed with. Fancy!
But there you are. This is the world I live in. I am doing the best I can and that will have to do. Heads up. Big breath. No whining. Remember to breathe out.
We will have a lovely day. (She says through clenched teeth, pounding at the keys) You too!
celi
On this day last year. Imagine this – it was hot then too! This post has my ten tips on how to survive a heatwave without air conditioning. This one is quite funny actually. I remember it made me laugh to write.
c
The Kitchen's Garden 
99 responses to “A Fat Farmy Day Drenched in Spray”
Celi, I posted a few links re neighbour overspraying and it sent my comment to your spam I assume as the comment generated an ‘Your comment is awaiting moderation” message 🙂
I will find them!! thank you!! c
Go to justlabelit.org They make it incredibly easy for you to register your opinion about GM crops as well as signing petitions to control them. I hear your complaint. I never get a heads up when they spray adjacent to our back horse pasture.
I will sherry thank you.. every little bit helps .. i cannot believe the lack of control here.. c
I’ve been reading your blog for a month or so now and never felt so compelled as today to comment. I am just so sorry for your being bombed by whatever was being sprayed at you. I truely respect what you are doing and the sheer amount of hard work that is needed to farm in the responsible way that you are doing it. Again, I’m so sorry this has happened to you.
well firstly thank you so much for reading, knowing you are out there reading about what we are doing makes the world of difference, it does feel like I was bombed but we just have to keep carrying on! thank you again.. celi
Your post has made quite a few people angry and I am one of them. I am so sorry you feel you are fighting a battle that may never be won. I say keep doing what you are doing – and don’t cut that jerk any slack….it takes many of us little dots on a map to do what we know is right to finally make a difference. I hated the part about the bees out in the fields….that makes me so sad. 😦
Hope tomorrow is better!
it is sad when you know your bees have just copped a mouthful of nastiness.. c
Loving the tour of the Farmy – great photos:) The birds here have gone a little ga ga lately too – the other night 2 were locked together by their feet just making one heck of a racket.
that is too funny.. poor birdies! c
I am horrified at the spray story and devastated for you. It must be terrible trying to maintain your own healthy farm while that other kind of agriculture takes place all around you.
Nature has the power to cleanse and renew, given time. And even people who use sprays can one day have their eyes opened to what they are doing. There are people in NZ who have gone organic after their health was affected by their own constant spraying.
It is a wonderful thought that nature can cleanse and renew.. thank you for your positive note .. c
At the moment I’m in my other life in Oxfordshire and about to get on my soap box re sustainable gardening. Argg, that’s so maddening. We are trying to have a very small organic meadow here at West Cottage. Just a very, very small one, just for the bees and burnet moths, a family of swallows and our cat. It’s an uphill battle. Isn’t it? Yours in wholehearted support. 🙂
We were sprayed a few years ago by planes, trying to kill some tiny little caterpillar…it felt like we were in a war zone…I would pack the children up and head out to Piha to spend the day with Mum…we didn’t eat out of the garden for about 18mnths and I would come home and hose down the decks and the slides etc…terrible business.. all the time they were trying to tell us the sprays were safe ha…what a joke!!!
Take care Ce
Still loving the blog
Arrrrgh! I feel your pain. Two weeks ago I looked out our windows to our neighbors’ yard and there was a man spraying along my property line with this sprayer attached to a gas blower. He was a pesticide company and he was blowing that @#%^ all over my yard, and my organic compost pile under the deck! Not enough to spray, mind you, but to attach one of those motorized blowers to it so it can go everywhere!!! And was hired by my neighbors who have 2 young children, a baby and another one due any minute…and they play in that stuff! I ran out and gave him what for and told him it was MY property he was spraying, too, and even if somehow he missed my compost that stuff would runoff right into it and my garden, too. And my cats…I keep them in whenever these folks have the pest guy or the lawn spray guy…yep, they spray their lawn, too, so it will be green…can you say toxic? I just don’t get it. I’m sorry, but most people are idiots.
Off the soapbox, meant to add that piggy shot is hilarious!
Classic cat photo! How you get these shots!! And the pig!!
As for the spray – UGH. Islanders LOVE Roundup to spray on the rampant roadside foliage. Not even a dust mask while spraying.
Filipinos love it to spray around their garden perimeter to keep weeds from jumping in. If I ask at a farmers market if they use poison on the produce, they emphatically answer NO. Just Roundup around the perimeter (!!)
It’s a shame we can’t get the whole world on board with organic gardening and farming. Really, it would set us free, in so many ways. Set THEM free, though they don’t know it yet.
So sorry you’re having to deal with this.
While I am not a farmer, I still have some understanding of your anger about the toxic chemical assault upon your farm, perpetrated by the mass marketers of poison and the merchants of greed. Though from a distance, I still share your outrage.
Celi, this made me cry. I am so sorry you and the Farmy got sprayed. Do you know the owner or grower of the crop in that field? Can you go and talk to him, once you are feeling totally calm of course… And tell him what happened to you? You never know, he may be reasonable industrial fat head farmer. For you the Farmy and all of your critters I certainly hope so!
I often get dreamy eyed over some of the smaller farms for sale around where we live, but then I look at our oak buffer zone and I am glad all over for our little hidden acre.
xo, Lynda
I’ve just read that since the arrival of GM in the UK, soya allergies are up 50%. Hmm. Thought of you and your silly farmer.
(As you’ve asked for heads up about connected posts, I’ve just written a bit about nutrition too over at mine, some scary facts).
🙂