My second attempt at a post here. Last night the one Had written managed to vanish itself somewhere. Hadn't even saved it, very odd, but never mind, I will try again.
Yesterday in the morning I went with MLO around a few of his farms, all in the Orcop and Garway area of Herefordshire. An extremely beautiful area of the country. Mind you, having said that , all of Herefordshire is beautiful. Driving round with him yesterday made me realise how lucky we are to live in such a lovely place. Fertile green fields, rolling hills, woodland, a salmon river, beautiful orchards, even moorland in parts of the county. We even have a mountain. Herefordshire is one of the largest counties in England, but also one of the least populated, which means there is plenty of peace and quiet.
Anyway back to the farms, MLO works for National Milk Records, a farmer owned company whose job it is to record all the dairy animals details onto a database, and to sample the milk from each animal once a month whilst in milk. Then test it for all sorts of things, such as fat content, protein content, as well as testing for the first signs of certain notifiable diseases. It is essential for farmers to know exactly what fat and protein percentage each animal is giving, as for each liter of milk that is produced, the farmer has to buy, or lease a quota from the government, to entitle him to produce and sell the milk.
Each quota bought or leased comes with a specific fat and protein percentage. If the farmer under or over produces protein, or fat and even liters he can then be fined quite severely by the government. So the recording enables him to alter feeding programmes accordingly to reduce or increase protein, fat or liters. Also, when it comes to selling, the farmer has a contract with whoever buys it from him, to produce a certain fat and protein content, they will reject an entire load of milk if it doesn't conform, which can mean a loss of hundreds of pounds per load (before costs, not profit)! So MLO is the chap who turns up at 4:30 am (or even earlier), and takes milk samples from every animal. He then puts the information onto computer, along with all other details such as when the animal is served (mated) who did the deed, calvings, deaths, when an animal is dried off (withdrawn from milking to rest) and a 1001 other bits of information that make that dairy animals in this country the most traceable, and with the most information held per head anywhere in the world.
One of the places we had to go to was just on the edge of Garway village. A village that has an incredibly interesting history, very wellknown now thanks to the Da Vinci Code, Bonekickers, and hundreds more conspiracy theories. Phil Rickman a local author also writes about the place, but not so many conspiracies there thankfully.
Today. Tuesday, I am not feeling great, an egg salad disagreed with me last night, so had to take the day off work, as I feel pretty rotten. The other girl who works there, on my day off wasn't too impressed being woken up at seven this morning, I apologised, but she didn't seem to accept it. So I spent most of the morning in bed, as I was awake most of the night until about four-ish.

At least the sun has come out now, and is actually really warm now. MLO said I had missed an enormous thunderstorm this morning, so for me to have slept through that I must have been utterly pooped.

Anyway, that's enough for now. Will maybe post again later if the mood takes me, or if anything so incredible happens that I cant keep it to myself. TTFN.