march

Old Farming tip - Feed the body to some pigs before burying any remains. And the bonus is lots of Bacon.

Anyone know if this is actually true?

Your lucky - here they have just completed a repair on our lane, they don't even bother to fill in the potholes, they just put the tarmac around the edge so there are no sharp edges as your car falls into the hole! Words fail me.

Kind of topical 🤪

Thanks for the comments - have just been lent a LG TV and it's awful (A real budget TV I suspect so probably an unfair comparison). Have plumped for a Samsung that is on sale (2021 model) that gets good reviews so will see how that goes - hope it's better than the LG. Comes with a 5 year warranty from John Lewis. As an aside - just met a power company repair chap at the farm entrance and apparently our neighbours transformer was hit by lightening - literally just the other side of the lane from us. Also we are now the only house / farm on the lane that has broadband 😎.

Big thunderstorm, Big thunderclap, Big lightening, Big Bang from TV followed by small mushroom cloud above said TV, no more TV and knackered broadband router. Tonight is going to be hell - No TV! 😱 Upside is I am feeling a bit smug as I made sure we had a spare router for just such occurrences and we are now googling for new TV. Any suggestions for a good budget TV?

Well it's been a new low for our GP practice (who before Covid they were brilliant). Carina had very dangerously high blood pressure (from home readings and reference to NHS website) and tried to book an appointment with the GP - the result was a text to a phone we don't have (the practice was told not to use the phone number as it was no longer valid) telling her to amend a dosage - No contact, No looking into underlying reasons, no nothing. F/*£k doctors pay rises if they are going to behave like this - we don't live at the doctors, they are generally lucky to see us one year to the next so we are hardly a burden on their services. Currently looking at private options.

The Detectorists TR7 has just been sold at Mathewson's auctions and went for £30,200.00 plus auction costs (owned by Mackenzie Crook). https://www.mathewsons.co.uk/auction/lot/236-1977-triumph-tr7/?lot=13117 Unfortunately I suspect there will be no more Detectorists as BBC4 cancelled the series (God knows why as it's the best thing they have produced in years). One of the very few series I have been able to watch over and over again.

Our bore hole has a few filters: 5 micron rope filter - £10.00 (annually changed) UV light filter - £35.00 (annually changed) and we have a gravel filter which contains a pH balancer (limestone chunks added) (about £60.00 every 5 years or so) We pay someone annually to service the system (approx £200.00) which I could do myself if I wanted as most most of the kit is fit and forget until it fails (which it has done once in 18 years) - repair was about £400.00 and is still going strong. Pumping water is of minimal cost (even free most of the time due to solar panels) And the water tastes lovely! Pure Devonian spring water. I do not know what the costs for water are nowadays but I suspect it is considerably more than this. The big bonuses are - 1. we are not beholding to South West Water as from what I can tell - from previous experience - they seem to be a total bunch of crooks 2. I can spray my hose wherever and whenever I like 😁.

I believe you only need one if you are taking more than 20,000 litres a day. That's quite a lot of water! https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-if-you-need-a-licence-to-abstract-water

Just been speaking to some guys drilling a bore hole for our neighbours and they said South West Water are trying to get as many people as possible to install bore holes as SWW are worried about running out if water . If anyone is interested drilling the bore hole is £4500.00 and not payable should they not find water, you then need the pump and stuff which I guess is another £2000.00 fitted - then it's free water from then on.

It's a Kentucky law apparently, they cannot be destroyed but have to be resold at auction - so I heard on the news.

The lane to our house has finally been eroded completely away by cattle crossing and there is a chance the Esprit will not make it out without bottoming out the front lip. The council have absolutely no interest in maintaining the lane even when I have pointed out the amount of road tax we pay. So maybe selling Esprit later this spring. Even main roads are not maintained properly around here and whatever patching is done generally falls apart within a couple of months - seems a bit of a scam to me between the council roads department and the road repairers. The best bit is they will come out and patch a few holes and then leave others a matter of meters away from the patched areas.

The good news is that Rimmer Brothers have been excellent, they are going to refund me the order and pay all postage. They say they are also going to take up the quality issues with Britpart. Just need to send it all back and get some real Land Rover parts.

It's turning into a bit of a nightmare at the moment (this one was meant to be a quick fix) with lots of poor quality parts being supplied, bodges being found (who fits 2 right hand race calipers onto a car) and incorrectly made specialist parts having to be modified.

Well I have spoken to Rimmer Brothers, all very nice and civil but basically amongst all the statements made it boiled down to OEM doesn't really mean anything at all. It all seems a bit of a con to me. Anyway I need to send photos into customer services and see what happens from here on. Worst case scenario is that I have an expensive bit of scrap metal as the parts will not be going into the engine but hopefully they will take them back. Rover SD1 going into a TR7 V8.

Thanks for the above - I think its fairly safe to say that a 'Britpart' part made in China is not an OEM piece of kit. This was supplied by Rimmer brothers so not a supposed fly by night company, I will contact them on Monday as I have just gone down with a nasty bug and talking on the phone is a bit of problem. Not very hopeful as I have found Rimmer's do not have a particularly good name for customer services.

Does anyone know the true meaning of OEM? I have just bought some OEM Land Rover parts that have turned out to be pieces that are of a lower quality than the parts I am replacing (oil pump gears so fairly important) and made in China. Is it legitimate to call a part OEM if its not as good as the original and a Chinese knockoff. I thought I was buying a part that was manufactured by the 'Original Equipment Manufacturer' but not labelled as Land Rover and would be of equal quality as the original.

Yep - Ford Sierra went for £596,000.00 at RaceRetro last weekend .

Just binge watched Clarkson's Farm 2 - Bloody brilliant. I haven't laughed so much for a a long time. Again it shows what is so good about farming but also what is so wrong with British farming along with all the petty bureaucracy, both local and National. It's good to see it's not just the Dartmoor National Park Planning Department that's either corrupt, incompetent or both. It enthused me so much I went, fed the cows and cut some hedges and did a Clarkson to my little pinkie the following day (being a proper farmers I only needed a plaster not plastic surgery) 🐄👨‍🌾.

Thanks @Barrykearley and @jep. We do seem to have been let down by local trades people. The electrician is a proper electrician but wont give us a certificate because he has not finished the installation (we have a couple of rooms that need finishing but we called quits on the work due to the amount of stress everyone was causing due to their perceived lack of quality - not his to be fair at the time). I have asked for a certificate on several occasions for work completed but he won't issue one. We also had a new boiler installed but I don't think we ever received any certification (highly recommended Worcester Bosch certified installers, largish local company and not cheap). We did fall out with the boiler fitters as they located the boiler outlet next to the bedrooms and forgot to mention that it sounded like a jet engine when running (oil) so had to have it relocated so we could sleep at night - fortunately they did not attempt to charge us to relocate it. And they were the better trades people we dealt with...

Thanks Bibs but the problem we have is we sell by the quarter or 1/8 so we do not know the exact weight / price until we pick up the meat from the butchers so an online shop would not really work for us. We also have to pick up the meat direct from the butcher and deliver as well as we do not have the buildings and government certification to handle meat beyond that (it is just not worth the cost and hassle to us). Normally if we do not know people we take cash or bank transfer before handing meat over unless we know the people (Carina new this person) which does not stop people making orders and then changing their mind - I think the first person to muck us about was probably just out to cause trouble (probably a Vegan). We are going to have a think about how our small farm operates going forward. We have been cutting everything back on the farm as it is to get through the current financial climate and these type of customers really do not help. On a general note - Have people become more selfish since the start of Covid. It does seem to me that more and more people think the world revolves around themselves, certainly around here. Peoples driving seems a lot more aggressive, if something happens it's someone else fault, if they want something they are going to have it and not worry about can they afford it, etc... just general people seem to be more sh1tty these days. Oh and here's one for @Barrykearley - is there someway of reporting an electrician for unsafe work? We had our main fuse box upgraded (that had never gone wrong) under our electricians insistence, since then the fuse box has gone up in smoke (loose, not screwed in Neutral's) and two of our ring mains are no longer ring mains and are connected to one trip rather than the original 2 they were connected to. And he will not even answer our requests to put it right.

We have had our 3rd person to muck us around on our Beef sales since just before Christmas, this brings us to over £1300.00 of lost income. At least the first two just just mucked us around having ordered the beef and then not wanting to pay for it when it was time to deliver. This latest one really grates though, she took the beef and then never paid for it and now claims she can't afford to pay when chased - FFS you know when you buy something whether you can afford it but not her - she wants the finest Organic Beef free. If you can't afford it buy cheaper food - there is plenty out there, to me this is theft. I am really sick of people at the moment. Rant over!

Oh Yes!