• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Rain

We had a bit last night, too. Very welcome, but nowhere near enough. I don't have a rain gauge, but 14mm was forecast. Sadly there is no more forecast until a week on Sunday, and then...
20mm. I hope they are right.
S
 
Seven weeks here without rain, and not a drop in the forecast for the next two weeks.
 
It's been a long time since we had any (I can't remember how many weeks). Sadly it was just a shower (albeit a fairly heavy one) so it's left it feeling even more humid. The temperature's supposed to drop a bit for tomorrow so at least that will bring a bit of relief.
 
I read a lot about the present Al Nino weather thing. Maybe this is causing all your low rainfall and heatwaves. Here in the UAE it is business as usual 48 to 50 deg C many days and then the strangest thing of heavy downpours with hail very regionally. Strongs with all the gardens, veggies and lawn! At least the woodwork workshop heaters get a rest I presume.
 
Someone on one of the local FB groups spotted a drone flying over their property. Now there are strict rules about where you can fly a drone in France, but this person thought it might be the Water Police checking to see who is using a hose pipe.
S
 
Steve Maskery said:
Someone on one of the local FB groups spotted a drone flying over their property. Now there are strict rules about where you can fly a drone in France, but this person thought it might be the Water Police checking to see who is using a hose pipe.
S
Click to expand...
SE Water use drones now, not to check for hoses (as far as I know) but to track the streams and water courses leading into the Medway. They also check big gullies this way that run under the railway lines. One such stream runs adjacent to us. They check for blockages and excessive plant growth that will block the flow when the weather turns and suddenly the streams are full. The house opposite us (across the lane in Medway direction (ie North)) has a bridge and two water courses, one of which is now completely dried up. As it did last year. They said it has only happened twice in the 30 years they have lived there.
 
Karookop said:
.......Strongs with all the gardens, veggies and lawn!....
Click to expand...

Thanks! Luckily, the veggies are OK as we're allowed to water that with a hose, and the lawn will eventually recover. The garden, though, is a disaster.

For the Brits here unfamiliar with South African lingo....."strongs" (sterkte in Afrikaans) is a standard expression meaning "stay strong".
 
We had a shower this morning, just wet the path.
All dry now.
First rain sinceā€¦. I have lost track, but must be two months ago.
 
Slight rain here too in mid Kent. Lasted maybe 10 mins, not enough to do anything useful, but we have grey clouds so hopefully more is on the way.
 
We had four very heavy downpours yesterday evening with each one lasting about 5 minutes.

On getting up this morning the grass is already going green again (having previously looked dead).
 
"Oop Narth" has been freshly well washed this past week; grass and gardens are recovering. On the runup to the deluge, farmers were hammering away, baling and threshing all hours.
The wind is the problem now, constant and quite strong. Typical low pressure I suppose.
 
I hope the weather is going to be reasonably sensible. We are just into grape picking season in the Kent vineyards (and around and about). We are volunteering for one of our suppliers (Sugrue South Downs). It's been a difficult year for viniculture as well as farming - very late severe frost took out a lot of budding grapes on the weald and downs. Grain is all in around here (though the ground is too hard to drill) and the sunflower crop (which seems to be taking over from oil seed rape in this area) is clearly ready, if rather small.
 
Tonight's BBC bulletin: "crop shrinkflation" and major short falls in crop yields expected by the farming industry.
I suspect vintners' problems may pale into insignificance compared to those expected to supply 'standard' and more prosaic food-stuffs.
 
SamQ aka Ah! Q! said:
Tonight's BBC bulletin: "crop shrinkflation" and major short falls in crop yields expected by the farming industry.
I suspect vintners' problems may pale into insignificance compared to those expected to supply 'standard' and more prosaic food-stuffs.
Click to expand...
It's going to hit all businesses growing stuff similarly I'd imagine. Whether your crop is prosaic or posh it'll still hurt your profit margins.
 
Agreed Al. My point was, that with daily foods being more regularly consumed than hooch, and in much greater quantities, their decreasing supply would be felt more acutely and more quickly(?) than 'disposable income' items.
Sorry if I didn't make that clearer, first time.
 
SamQ aka Ah! Q! said:
Agreed Al. My point was, that with daily foods being more regularly consumed than hooch, and in much greater quantities, their decreasing supply would be felt more acutely and more quickly(?) than 'disposable income' items.
Sorry if I didn't make that clearer, first time.
Click to expand...
Ah I see. Yes, the problems of food shortages could be felt by all of us, not just the farmers/growers.
 
SamQ aka Ah! Q! said:
"Oop Narth" has been freshly well washed this past week; grass and gardens are recovering. On the runup to the deluge, farmers were hammering away, baling and threshing all hours.
The wind is the problem now, constant and quite strong. Typical low pressure I suppose.
Click to expand...

Yes we've had a few downpours and some overnight rain at times, grass needs cutting again but at least once instead of twice a week.

The wind has been an issue today. I was booked to go trout bashing with a mate today but got a text from the fishery at 7.30 am to say they had to close the large lake to boats as the gusts were dangerous. So the wife dragged me out shopping instead. :mad:
 
Dr.Al said:
Ah I see. Yes, the problems of food shortages could be felt by all of us, not just the farmers/growers.
Click to expand...
A lot of farmers are making a conscious decision to try and move away from food crops
 
It's the same here.
I bought a punnet of strawberries at the weekend. A fiver for 250g. They did have an excellent flavour, to be fair, but they were the size of grapes rather than pullet eggs, which we are more used to.
S
 
Dr.Al said:
Ah I see. Yes, the problems of food shortages could be felt by all of us, not just the farmers/growers.
Click to expand...
Yes, but the emphasis (short falls) will be on daily foodstuffs, which, being more crucial to survival than vino collapso, and consumed in greater quantities, they will be more 'visible'

By comparison, although the vintners will experience the same growing problems, as their contribution to our diets is markedly less, their shortfalls will be viewed as of less importance.

"You're complaining about the price of plonk? Have you seen what they're charging for bread and breakfast cereal?"
 
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