Lawnmower Types - Pros and Cons

Looking for a lawnmower, but puzzled by what seems like an infinite variety of lawnmower types?
Well, here are a few pointers to help you understand and eventually select the one that's right for you.

Push - scissor action

These are those great usually steel mowers that you push along.

In terms of technology, they would have been familiar to our ancestors a century ago. As you push the mower along, a rotating blade turns along a rotating horizontal axis. It then simply cuts the grass in a scissor-type action.

Pros

Close control cutting. Many perfectionists swear by these mowers and say you can't get a better finish...Read More

Farming and Sun Health - Top Tips

For at least 30 years there has been fairly consistent communication of public health announcements and warnings about the dangers of over-exposure to the sun.

The dangers come from the very real physical issues associated with immediate over-exposure (i.e. the old term 'sunstroke') and the more insidious long-term cumulative effects of over-exposure that leads to skin damage and perhaps eventually cancer.

Although many sectors of the population are getting the message and changing behaviours, there's some suggestion that agricultural workers might not be. That's because being out all day over years may have toughened their skin leading to the impression that they're somehow 'immune'....Read More

Crime Rears its Head

 

Sad to say, the news recently has indicated an increasingly number of rural thefts and related criminal activities.

One farm over in Gunning had several hundred pregnant ewes stolen and there has been a spate of break-ins over a wide area.

Of course, it’s a myth that crime is restricted to the big cities and in the countryside we’ve always had the odd incident to contend with but the scale of recent thefts is alarming...Read More

Eating Fruit and Vegetables is now Non-Green

Just when you thought you’d seen everything by way of crazy news, along comes a US scientific study claiming to show that eating fruit and vegetables is bad for the planet.

Say what (as our US friends might say)?

Well, a group of scientists have apparently done a lot of calculations and have come to the rather strange conclusion that if you look at water consumption, energy use in harvesting, fertiliser making and lots of related activities, it takes more in greenhouse gasses to produce fruit and veg than meat. So, if you want to do your best for the planet then this group of scientists would argue that you should eat far less ‘healthy’ food and much more beef, chicken, pork and so on...Read More