Montezuma's revenge

Sorry to all those who have suffered from my outpourings of late but it's quite a common phenonomen affecting traveller's away from home. Annoyed myself as I haven't got around to doing more than a quick visual of other journals and find out how MissWF is faring. I won't be looking at a certain Blipper who using devious routes has found herself in warmer climes and didn't invite me.

I also need to make my position clear on UKIP - I, and I suspect the majority of "Mainland Europe", agree with several of their ideas, just as several of the thoughts of the ultra left, semi communist party here in Germany are right. Are our banks, tax dodgers, multinational companies playing fair with us "Normalos"? New political parties have their place such as the Greens here in Germany who were ridiculed at first but then brought about a major rethink.

HOWEVER the big difference, the communists and the Greens don't rely on the basis of whipping up fear and we all know from yesterday's events where that leads us.

Europe needs the UK, especially the Brits sense of justice, supporting the underdog, not to mention their humor and much loved eccentricity. Please help to change those things wrong in the EU and probably the recent outcry in the UK helped in yesterdays ruling by the EU court in favour of the German government who refused to pay a Rumanian social security although she had been here for 4 years. In that time she had never looked for work and was physicaly fit. Shouldn't that be the case for nationals as well as "immigrants" not pulling their weight in our "social" states? Just as in the UK, there are hundreds of thousands of "immigrants" working hard, paying taxes and enriching our social system.

And please don't think that being in the EU means giving up your national identity! Just come to Bavaria or better still ask a "normal" German what they think of Bavaria. Even ask a Bavarian from Franconia what he thinks of a Bavarian from Swabia. Just as the French farmers will continue to block the motorways, the Brits will still be able to put mint sauce on lamb.

Oh Oh I think I need to go to the small room again...

Today the sun again tried and failed to do much and so feeling somewhat lazy. Knowing though I would be in big trouble with Ma'am if I didn't ignore my own problems and thereby let the animals suffer, went over to the nearby grass drying factory to buy a trailer load of grass pellets.

Our friendly farmer, Franz, is our usual source but his silo is brimming full and it's difficult to get out just a small quantity until he himself starts feeding it to the cows in winter.

Normally farmers bring their grass and get exactly that grass back, either in the form of pellets or as jumbo "hay" bales. They also do maize pellets. However they always have the odd farmer who has too much grass or maize and they buy this surplus and sell it on and that's what I bought. It's thus pot luck as to where the grass came from and the original quality.

In the Blip clockwise from top left the process:

1) the farmer or contractor bring the loads of grass and dump then on individual piles on the concrete forecourt.

2) the loader brings these batches individually to a conveyor belt where the grass is chopped and freed of any "foreign" (sorry) material.

3) grass goes in to a massive tumble drier and then squeezed through a press.

4) the batches normally go in to silos, the farmer being called to pick his up and emptied straight on to his trailer. In my case the excess production put in to concrete bunkers.

I got 520kg in the trailer, exactly the same volume as the sugar beet pulp Blip a few days ago which weighed 230kg.

The mild weather means there is still some work for the factory but I guess it won't be long before they go in to winter closedown as Bliped last year.