December 2009

I think we need to look at fertility on the farm. The girls have been running with Cumulus, our bull, on a rotating basis since he arrived over a year ago, and we certainly sold some of the mums who were in calf back in the summer, but I was expecting a few more from our own here. Anyway, Patsy announced one morning, with her usual dulcet tones (not), "GOOD MORNING EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, I HAVE A NEW CALF!!!!". She still looks like she's carrying twins, but that's our Patsy. I hope the little one will have a playmate soon.

The weather turned very wintry - fog, frost... and SNOW :-) The only trouble with snow is that our beautiful white fluffy cows look filthy in it... but the farm looked lovely and whilst it did threaten our Christmas deliveries for a short while, we were able to get everything done on time and as needed, even though the markets during that period were among the coldest I've done.

As it got colder outside, some sort of furry four-legged must have decided that inside was a better place to be and took up residence in our attic. We were being kept awake at night by mouse warming parties or rat-raves or something, and although we're not keen on poison, something had to be done before they brought the ceilings down. Having spoken politely with them on a number of occasions, we gave them an ultimatum and lay down some piles of blue stuff. Not heard a peep from them since... phew!

Now, right in the middle of the pre-Christmas build up, the mincer in the cutting room (no, I'm not talking about the butcher!) stopped working properly. Instead of nice clean cut wormy shapes there was a mushy meaty mess coming out of the machine. It was decided that a new blade and plate were needed... not bad given we've had it for over 5 years and not needed to do anything but replace a couple of fuses and a bit of cable since then. As she's rather an old girl and would be very expensive to replace, I dread the day when she dies... but the general conversation is that these machines go on forever... perhaps she'll outlive me yet.

We said goodbye to an old faithful this month. The little Nissan Micra, lovingly names Lewis, went to a new owner via eBay. He was bought by us when we moved to the farm for Anna and Emily so they could learn to drive. That they did and Emily has been driving around in him ever since. But now she drives Anna's rather swish Polo (well, by comparison anyway!) and Lewis needed a new gearbox or suchlike. Funny but now he's gone I'm actually missing the bumper sticker he sported that my mother gave me years ago - "Arms are for hugging".

We have spent weeks in the run up to Christmas dealing with orders and turkeys, beef, pork, deliveries, bacon slicing, sausagemeat making and strings and strings of chipolata's... then suddenly it all goes quiet and we're left here with nothing to do. Well, when I say nothing to do, what I mean is nothing except for looking after the animals and each other, mostly done as a team with a great deal of humour and at a gentle pace.

Well, that's yer lot for this year, hope you've had a good one... see you in 2010.