Global Milk Price - is it affecting you?

[Localmotion]

I only buy bottled water on the rare occasion I am thirsty between here and Lisbon Airport, but it does cost an enormous amount more than milk in the supermarket. The milk in these service stations will cost a lot more too I suppose. I think you will be like me and can probably find wine for less than some bottled water. I do like Spanish wine - never had one I did not like. Occasionally when my son visits we make the trip to Plascencia and just fill up the estate car with whatever takes our fancy. 59c a litre bottle for some very tasty reds a few years ago was probably our best trip. We did not count in the Supermarket and had a total of 119 bottles of mixed table wines. We would have bought one more if we had counted.

Our local Bodega here is 79c per litre - and is pretty good stuff! For a really good "bulls blood" wine, we buy one litre from our village and one litre from the next village (which is 90c per litre) and mix them. It makes a great full bodied red - although can leave an unfortunate headache the next day if you're not careful...! Unfortunately the wine grape trade here is currently very similar for the farmers as the dairy trade in the UK - with prices struggling over the last eighteen months. In contrast the eating grape trade is very lively - lots of farmers are currently replanting and spending lots on setting up overhead wire frames in the fields to change over from the ground growing wine grapes to table varieties. It probably helps that in Spain everyone eats 12 grapes along with the "bongs" on new years eve :laughing:

I was looking at your website - what type of farming were you into?

 

[Localmotion]

Take a look at this satellite image....
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0297557,-87.2828192,317m/data=!3m1!1e3

That sure is a lot of tyres - I don't envy them when sheeting the clamp :laughing:

The system of cleaning and re-using the bedding sand (called green bedding) has never taken off in the UK - slurry separators are not that common and those that do have them generally do so to minimise the size of slurry storage needed on farm, using both the solid and liquid wastes as fertiliser instead of bedding. There was an article in the UK magazine "Farmers Weekly" about a month ago which stated that the UK may even ban the use of green bedding soon as there has been no credible research into the affects of it's use on long term cow welfare - they are actually appealing for farmers using green bedding to come forward so that the necessary research can be completed... my guess is that at the moment UK dairy farmers have enough to worry about without having to change their bedding system!

 

[OldMcDonald]

I was looking at your website - what type of farming were you into?

I have a favourite expression - It is in the Book. Download the free sample of my book from the website (you do not need to read it, just check out the Chapter headings) and you will see how varied a farming life I have had - from smallholding to farming in Northumberland to 3000 acres plus sharefarming in Australia. Then back to Scotland and now Portugal. I enjoy it. My current venture is preparing for a new planting of 650 almond trees next winter.