As the seasons come and go, life on the farm changes. Work loads change. Thankfully, we have extra help these days with Jayden and some work experience students who are coming regularly every weekend to gain experience and help us out!
Moving calves around this weekend which prompted me to explain to the students, that "there might be some shouting and swearing, so don't take it personally, its just part of the job!" But I need not have worried so. With some careful planning, we moved three calves through to the next door pen, making that pen hold 15, then three from the older pen into the middle pen,(now up to 11) and then fetch in the 5 yearlings from outside, who now live with the older calves (8 months) making them 10 and with the seven in my yard, that makes it 43 heifers for next year!!
I also got the Saturday team (don't forget Harry's home at weekends and he does loads of work with the new tractor, bedding, feeding silage, scraping up muck and loading dump trailer to move the muck away down the fields), to do some physical brushing up, and clearing drains so all this rain water from the roofs goes straight down the drain and not into our mucky yards!
November began last week with a couple of talks. One to Southwell U3A on 5th November to approx 280 in the audience. Wow, that was a big one! On the stage with my headset microphone and the remote for the slide projector, I whizzed through the talk and left 20 mins for questions, which I think worked really well. 2kg of Stilton cheese was sampled and hopefully, everyone enjoyed hearing of my tales from our farm. One lady asked if she could tape record my talk so she would do a write up later. Here is an extract:-
"When I first knew we were to have a talk from a farmer's wife I didn't expect to hear anything of particular interest. Her opening remarks were, ' I am Jane Barnes. I am a farmer's wife from Melton Mowbray in Leics in a village called Somerby. I'm married to Mark and Mark is a rare breed!' I realised immediately that I was about to listen to someone with a good sense of humour who would hold my attention and interest.
I wasn't disappointed!"
That was a relief then!
The next day I visited Trent Valley Mens Probus group of about 60 in Colwick, Nottingham. Mr President stood up and introduced me finishing with the words ".......now listen and learn. Jane commands your attention at all times, I know, I've seen her before......"
Quite worried I've turned into a monster on the stage! Well I've always liked to make an impression and enlighten the room, just like Guy Fawkes!
