Friday 17 February 2023

We Get An Electric Pulper For The Smallholding..

 

Number one son came home with a secondhand  electric pulper the other week.  It's brilliant and shreds Fodder Beet for the pigs 🐖 in no time at all.

I found a video of one on You Tube for your perusal:


I have an handle hand powered pulper in the past and even cut up fodder beet with a spade and filled a bucket. I even sowed a field of it once and we harvested it by hand.  I hope it doesn't cost our eccentricity (leccy) too much.

Here's an Irish rural tale  for you:

Ru sitting comfortably? Good.  Well I will begin:😊

Years ago in Ireland Bachelors would go to dancers to meet Spinsters for prospective wives.  

The one thing that concerned them the most was whether they had all their fingers.  Back in the day it was common for a milkmaid to lose her finger or the top of one anyway in the Furze (Gorse) machine that they use for feed for the cart horses.

The Bachelor would not choose a Spinster with a missing finger because she would not be able to hand milk the cow!  

20 comments:

  1. we could have done with something like that for the seaweed we used to collect for the allotment. what a mean machine.
    Briony
    x

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  2. Hi Briony. It's a mean machine and the pigs love their pulped beet. Never thought of shredding seaweed. I'm going collecting some in the next few days.

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  3. An Irish rural tale? Squirm in horror. Poor lasses. No fingers and no husband

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  4. Exactly Linda. How times have changed. No discotheques in those days. Maybe a dance and a glass of red lemonade or Cidona or a "nice" cup of tea and a walk home under the stars?

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  5. Just like electronic car keys, I have no idea how that sophisticated pulping machine works. Could you explain it to me young man?

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    1. Haven't got a clue YP. I suppose electricity. It's like the wind. You can't see it but you know it's there. Could it be ghosts or banshees?

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    2. Didn't Quentin Tarantino direct a film called "Pulper Fiction"? I believe it was set on a farm.

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    3. I think it was set in Sheffield. They formed a band and had an hit single called Common People.

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  6. We had one for the cattle. I threw the mangolds in and they came out as chips. It was called a slicer. I didn't read your post until just now because the word pulper meant nothing to me. Now I see what it is. I was about 7 to 8 years old at the time and it was used throughout our time with cattle.

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  7. Thanks Rachel. I think there are pulper and slicer blades. My grandad use to grow manholes for the cart horse and giant cow cabbages for the cattle. Not forgetting the Furze machine.

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    1. It was plugged into the current in our barn. The cattle stood looking in over the door waiting for us to get their food ready. The mangold chips were fed to them along with sugar beet pulp which came back to us from the sugar beet factory, bagged up for cattle fodder.

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  8. Thanks Rachel. I have said it before you should write a book called Rachel's Farm. I would buy it!

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  9. I remember my uncle's hand pulper for his cattle. It looked hard work.

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    Replies
    1. Surprisingly Tasker even an hand pulper fills a bucket in no time.

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  10. Are fodder beet and mangolds the same thing? F remembers hoeing mangold as a kid (and not enjoying it) - paddocks of them on her uncle's small holding. The soil at their own farm was too light to grow beets. The mincer thing looks cool (and dangerous).

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    1. They do sound very similar Tigger. It's an awesome machine. I have een using my half moon, edging iron to chop them up.

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  11. It works in much the same way as the Mouli Grinder my mum used to make baby food with. It had different plates with different sizes of graters for puree and grated etc. Funny about the Bachelors checking the fingers of prospective wives.

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  12. Yes you're right River. It's like an agricultural/ industrial version of the Mouli Grinder. It's supposed to be true that they checked the Spinsters fingers.

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  13. Ah! I can easily see why number one son is number one! I have never seen one of them, but it looks like something that will make your job a lot easier.

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  14. Charlie Chan use to call his sons by numbers Debby. It's a great machine for pulling or slicing fodder beet for the young pigs in particular.

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