January 2010

Happy New Decade!

What a beautiful white winter we have been having. A right royal pain for anyone needing to get somewhere and do something... but it's been a very long time since we've seen the countryside blanketed in this way and for us on the farm with our four-wheel-drive tractor and 4X4 for any emergency trip into town, everything looked decidedly magical.

Our problems revolved around the frost. When temperatures go below -4, the water pipes in the barns freeze and that can mean and lot of fetching and carrying of the liquid stuff to the cows. I'm sure I've written about this elsewhere because it's something we keep a watchful eye on in the winter. We've now got a system that works reasonably well, as long as the weather man doesn't lie! When we put everything to bed and lock the barns for the night, we turn off the mains and drain the pipes to one tap. In the morning, we connect everything up and providing the bit of pipe from the ground to the stop tap is still flowing, we can at the very least run a hose from that free tap around the barns as necessary. You know it's REALLY cold when you have to turn off the mains and disconnect the pipes during the day too!

We had a few little heart stopping moments when the brakes on our little van didn't work because of ice in some technical bit of the braking system (don't ask me, I just drive it!). And the tractor hydraulics did decide to take a day off so the silage needed to be forked into the feeders by hand. I think it just wanted to remind us not to take it for granted!

Anyway, we all survived very well and the animals have, as always, taken the white stuff and everything else in their stride.

Having said that, one of our horses took sick with a sore foot. The vet decided in the light of the inclement weather, that she would be better being looked after in the barn. But this ½ tonne of horse didn't want to be moved in spite of our coaxing, cajoling, pulling, pushing, being big and fierce, bribery... even a big stick made no difference to her, that just made us feel really bad. The four-legs just stayed stuck, so we decided to leave her for the night. The following morning the ground had softened with another fall of snow, the other horses were chasing around and guess what, she came in eagerly.

You will have read in December that I've taken to needlefelting and this month I attended the workshops to create King Winter. He is a magnificent figure all white and blue. Mine has a cloak with an icicle collar. He has a silvery crown and carries a staff of ice. I've set him on the sideboard surrounded by fairy lights and silvery things. If you're at all interested in creating some of these figures for yourself there are many places you can find needlefelting on the internet... but do look at Emma Tyer's website: www.growingwithyourchild.co.uk . This lady is really quite an inspiration.

The markets started really well this month. Perhaps it was just good timing with people eager to get out having been snowed in at home... or maybe they've been restocking after the Christmas festivities, but we often find that January is a good month for us and indeed, it's nice to be back out meeting our customers again. It would be great if sales continue in this manner, but past experience dictates that we will be disappointed if we hang on to that hope.

It's my birthday in January. Mark escaped for the weekend to attend a Phillipe Karl riding clinic. Whilst he was off gallivanting around Germany Emily took me out to Stroud Farmer's Market, perhaps a bit of a busman's holiday but a really lovely thing to have done. It's a really interesting market... I love food and particularly market shopping. We bought lots of new and different things, had a look around the shops, bought an outfit (!) and had a delicious lunch in an organic cafe. When we got home, Emily cooked a 3 course dinner and I didn't have to even think about it!