Farm Workings
How A Farm Works
How does a farm work? Farms are businesses for growing food. The farmer is trying to breed his or her animals and crops to give enough extra to sell and make money to run the farm and buy more young animals and seeds. Lambs born this year are sold before they are one year old, some might be kept to grow up and have lambs themselves.
Crops are the plants grown on farms. They might be sold after harvest as food for people or animals, or the farmer might kep some to feed his/her own animals through the next year.
Here at Gorgie City Farm our crops are wheat (in mini-fields!), vegetables, fruit and, of course, grass. The animals we breed to sell or breed again are pigs and sheep. Some hens, turkeys and ducks are hatched out each year to replace those too old to lay eggs.
The Farming Year
A typical year of farming at Gorgie City Farm.
January: Lambs born to the flock of Suffolk sheep.
February: Gardens and fields dug over and manured. First seeds sown outdoors and in greenhouses/polytunnel. Some of pigs mated, piglets born 3 months 3 weeks and 3 days later.
March: Hen, duck and turkey eggs collected and put in incubator (warm box) to hatch out for Easter after 21, 28 and 28 days respectively. Ryeland sheep have lambs into April.
April: Chicks reared.
May: Through Summer, as February, pigs mated to produce piglets (usually around 10 per sow). Preparation for Summer agricultural shows.
June: Early potatoes harvested. Sheep sheared. Highland Show.
July: Throughout Summer into Autumn: garden produce (fruit and vegetables) harvested for sale.
August: Peebles agricultural show. Suffolk ewes tupped (mated-lambs born 5 months less 5 days later).
September: (till January) Manure bagged for sale (500 bags).
October: Ryeland ewes tupped (see August). Apple harvest. Lamb sales (sale of surplus Spring-born lambs).
November: Manure sales. Tidy, dig and manure gardens/fields
December: Manure sales. Prune hedges/trees.
Year-round: repair buildings, pens, fences, gates, plumbing, wiring, roofs, drains, roads, tools, harnesses etc etc.
Bi-monthly: Pony's shoes checked by farrier.
Fortnightly: Buy straw for bedding and hay for feed for the livestock.
Weekly: buy cereal and other feed for livestock.
Daily: Livestock checked, fed and watered morning and evening, eggs collected, pens cleaned out, fresh bedding laid down. Go, check and feed sheep being kept at Currie field the farm has use of.
