All work and no play!

It's been a bad week!  Firstly, Monday we said goodbye to 4 barren cows (2 old Friesians and 2 young Ayrshires) after the vet had been the previous week to PD (pregnancy diagnosis) test about 30 dry cows.  Happy the two Friesians were going as they had worked hard producing calves and therefore milk for the past ten years or so.  But the younger Ayrshires had only had one calf!  Monday also saw the arrival of the first snow of the winter.

Tuesday, the snow was still with us and as we'd had a frost overnight too, the milking parlour froze up taking half an hour to defrost before morning milking could start.  Mark also found another Ayrshire cow looking poorly and called the vet out.  She wasn't going to get any better after suffering grass staggers in Sept and not really recovering from it, so we said goodbye to her.

Wednesday - the snow still on the ground and frosty overnight again, so more to defrost in the milking parlour and all the water troughs for the cows, youngstock and calves needed sorting too.  My horses go out into the field for some excercise and fresh air(!) to stetch their legs but soon want to come back inside to hay and shelter.  Still suffering from mud fever on their legs too, so best to keep in the dry.  During the morning, Mark noticed an older Friesian had fallen over when Ferdinande tried to mount her.  The cow had broken her leg so end of the road for her.  Another goodbye cow!

Thursday morning, Mark found ANOTHER Ayshire lying dead in the cubicle shed! What's happening this week????  That's 7 cows gone in one week!  Luck is not on our side at the moment.  Mark is constantly milking and feeding and cleaning out cows with very little let up.  The current weather isn't helping, just slows all the jobs down.  Lauren comes in every morning to help Mark but still so much to do.

Friday - Noel's 82nd Birthday!  How does he keep going?  Out every morning come rain or shine!  Alert, keen and to some extend still 'able' at his age!  He still drives the tractors and climbs on and off with no problems.  Feeding the milk to baby calves is his joy everyday, twice a day.

Snowing again!  Forecast for more on Sunday.  I know its winter and we should expect it, but life down on our farm is getting tougher by the day.  Roll on Spring!

TV Programme "Wild Weather of 2012" - see for yourself!

As promised, the TV programme "Wild Weather of 2012" can now be viewed on YouTube on the following link:

http://youtu.be/A0JcbTFiAs4

So to catch the three generations of the Barnes family down on the wet, soggy farm, then tune in and see for yourself how we got through 2012!

I would love to hear your comments, add to blog page or email to: jane.barnes@tiscali.co.uk.

Enjoy!

Happy New Year and welcome to 2013

Well, we've got through to the end of 2012 rather soggy but still here.  What a relief and nice change it was to have the sun shining on us this morning with a slight touch of frost in the air as the sun rose.

All the family are slightly tetchy this evening, as we all had various NYE parties to go to last night.  Our children went to a themed Young Farmers Party and we had a fabulous dinner party at one of our oldest friends home. But no one had a lie in this morning as all the animals are still expecting to be fed and milked as usual.  Poor Mark, who went to bed at 1am only to rise again at 5am.  He's looking forward to a night in, in front of the log fire and TV.  The festive season is OK if we had time!  I still think Christmas would be better for us in July.

Now we've made it to New Years Day and with the sun shining it brought a fresh new start of hope for 2013. 

We wish for a better year of weather - drier and a more temperate climate please?  We wish for greater milk yields from our 120 cows.  We wish for a better milk price as we're currently on 27.376 pence per litre.  We wish for our relief milkman to come back and help us asap. (He's recovering from a broken arm).

Then there was the infamous TV appearance on Sunday.  What a laugh!  Daughter Charlotte was cross she wasn't included in this project at first, but on Sunday night, she was laughing at her family's debut and glad not to be on it. What does that say about our performance?  Anyway, for those who didn't view it I'm hoping to get it linked to my blog page/website at some stage.  Our wider family thought it was great and many positive comments about all four of us.  We got the message across on the difficulties of farming in the wet, but also showed we had hope "that things can only get better"!
No phone call from Countryfile though.  There's still time.  Our best friends Helen and Charles visited us on Sunday too.    They've recently been filmed for Countryfile on the Schmallenberg disease which will be shown on 20 January.  Can't wait to have a laugh at them on TV.

To all my followers, I wish you all a very Happy New Year and better weather where you live too!www.farmwalks.vpweb.co.uk