October 2007

Ever felt like you're paddling hard to stay in one place? That's what this month has been like for us. We said goodbye to Chloe as she returned to France and took Eric with her which started 6 weeks of us being alone on the farm. It's lovely to have the house to ourselves for a while but it has also highlighted that the size of our business here is not sustainable without regular and reliable help. So we have made a decision not to get any bigger, which means we now have to farm smarter... time will tell if we can figure out what that means and put it into practice!!!

October was dominated by dreadful markets which sort of wiped out the brilliance of last month. However, whilst the bank is snapping at our heels (again), we have managed to buy some steers that will see gaps filled in our meat supply over the 18 months, so that should bode well for business.

One of our original mums, Rabbit, calved at the very end of September... a lovely boy, so we thought. But not for the first time in our farming career did we go to tag and castrate him (which we do to all the boys born here as we do not have space to keep 2 bulls), only to find that he was a she! And so Ermintrude joined our happy band of 4 leggeds. She's huge and beautiful... doesn't seem to matter how many calves we have, it's still a wonder and a delight to watch them find their feet and their way in the herd.

Our abundance stream opened full throttle again this month with offers of whey and potatoes to feed the pigs and 60 new chickens from an organic farm which was culling their laying flock.

Lorraine had a tooth abscess which slowed her down somewhat... very painful things tooth abcesses. Our customers gave me lots of sympathy at the markets and the dentist gave me antibiotics which I took for the first time in my life - I don't know if I felt ill from the tablets or the abscess... either way, I was very pleased to have the tooth removed and find myself fully recovered, able to smile and talk about life with some conviction!

It doesn't really matter which way you look at it, living and working together full-time can be very stressful and Mark and I find that our relationship disappears into a black hole every now and then. This month we had one of those times... I guess aggravated by the extra stress of having no extra help. Fortunately for us, we have a friend, Rita, who is great at listening and offering space for being heard. This is such a skill... it does seem to me that there are so many people not really feeling heard and it is a gift beyond measure to be heard when you're upset. Somehow, just in the listening and being heard there is a healing. After 13 years of marriage, we have inevitably slipped into ways of being with each other that are not necessarily as supportive and loving as we'd like... so it's good to have a clearout, bring upsets to the surface and look at each other with compassion and forgiveness in an attempt to start with a clean(er) slate and move on. With that in mind, I started to wonder how I would be in a given situation "if I were in love". (You know, that first flush of love - my heart races and I get excited even at the mention of his name!). Well, it made a difference to how I felt, try for yourself and let me know how you get on!