I hate February, roll on March!

Having made a nice cuppa, throwing jacket potatoes in the Aga and some Pork and Stilton sausages and stoked up the front room fire, I've just enough time to write another blog page!

I've just come in from a snow blizzard happening outside!  Boy the wind is cold and the little tiny snowflakes feel like tiny pebbles hitting your cheeks! Definitely the coldest and nastiest day so far this winter.  The snow is drifting and swirling through the yard and into all our buildings.  The horses were keen to come in tonight as they were shivering.  They've got an extra warm fleece rug on tonight.

This morning I went to Wellingore U3A in Lincolnshire to give one of my talks "Tales from a Farmers' Wife" and not a drop of snow anywhere, but jolly frosty and very, very cold.  It was very cold in the village hall too, but the audience were extremely friendly and made many great comments about my talk.  I do seem to meet the nicest of people doing this job.

Also, Mark is getting very tired and almost fell over going upstairs today, misjudging the steps.  And this was in the house not outside!!  Even with all the extra help and with Harry home for two weeks half term break, it doesn't take the pressure off milking at least 10 times per week.  Tomorrow the relief milker is coming for afternoon milking so Mark can stay indoors in front of the fire.  And does he need it.  As we had a very hard frost this morning, everyone got excited about getting the muck out of the farm buildings and up into the fields, out of the way, without making any more mess than usual.  They did nine loads and emptied all the sheds, then bedded the cattle with fresh straw.  Now that's quite an achievement

Talking of Harry Barnes, in between playing on the quad bike in the snowy fields, he's meant to be revising for the dreaded GCSE's.  His first Maths paper is the week he goes back at the end of February, so after lunch everyday (including weekends) "we" have been doing Maths papers and struggling to understand each question.  Luckily Charlotte did A level Maths so when she returns home is able to help us out.

Today is also Ash Wednesday (who forgot to make pancakes yesterday?).  I've announced to my family that I'm going to give up bread for lent!  The choice was bread or chocolate and I think bread will be easier! 

I hate February!  Roll on March.

Thank Goodness the Snow's Gone!

Hurrah the snow has gone!

Over the past two weeks we had snow on the ground.  It does cause so much MORE work on our farm.  For instance, our staff find driving conditions early in the morning quite dangerous getting to our village on top of a hill when the snowploughs and gritters haven't heard of Somerby let alone serviced the roads around here.  Frozen pipes, hoses and milking parlour add another half hours delay in getting started at 5.30 in the morning spending time defrosting before Mark can turn the machine on.  Then scraping out 100 cows worth of dung from the cubicle shed outside to the muck store, pushing it all into 6 inches of powdery snow, makes the tractor wheels skid round quite a lot, I've found.  When it comes to the thaw last weekend we found we were under water again!  This time ia river flow found a way into the milking parlour pit, then out in the feed shed where the cows stand (and deposit dung) eating their silage.  Consequently the flow of water washed out all the dung into the outside yards where it stood for a day or too!  Again, couldn't scrap out the cubicle shed into 6 inches of standing water!  All in all, the pressures on the family to do all the necessary work, at this stage of the winter, had its toll on us after two weeks.

So, through social media, we got the word out we were looking for more help in the form of a lad or two to help us.  Think we had about 4 phone calls, and invited all of them to come over and see us and show them what we wanted them to do.  One man said he could milk and do the tractor yard jobs.  Our spirits were raised and after exchanging payment terms, we asked him to come in for 7am the very next day.  Alas, it was 8am when the house phone went saying he couldn't get to us as his car wouldn't start!  I went to see Mark in the parlour, who was furious at being let down and his hopes were dashed again.  After seeking references, we decided not to pursue this guy any more.

Where are all the unemployed around here who are desperate for work?  Does no one want a regular outdoor job working with animals? A few months ago, I asked an 18yr old local lad in the village, if he would come round at weekends to do the tractor work in the yards for the winter.  He'd be finished by 9am so could get on with other things.  Couldn't believe his response.  He said he'd rather have a lie in bed at weekends due to spending Friday and Saturday evenings in the pub! 

Anyhow, we now have two young student lads, taking a few days each to help with all this winter workload.  All I can say is, thank you guys, we need all the help we can get.  Hope they stay till the end of winter - whenever that may be.

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

Here comes Christmas!! and our BBC TV programme!!

After all that over indulgence during the festive season, you might like to laugh it off by watching the Barnes family on TV in a weeks time.  The East Midlands version has a section at the end featuring the effects of the wet summer, autumn and winter has had on our dairy farm in Somerby. 

This BBC programme will be aired on Sunday 30th December at 5.30pm on BBC One and its title is "Wild Weather in 2012".   They filmed Noel (my 82yr old father in law) on his memories of past wet seasons of weather over his lifetime, my husband Mark on the effects the present rainfall has had on the land, my son Harry (15yrs) on his thoughts of the weather can have on this farm and myself, who had the nice warm Aga in the kitchen for the interview.  Countryfile's Adam Henson, eat your heart out!

Talking about this wet year, we've had another deluge over the past couple of days.  My rain meter in the garden can't take more than 1.5 inches so we've had more than that.  Consequently, we are daily underwater throughout the outdoor yards and with 120 cows housed inside, we've been unable to scrape out the muck to the muck store.  Mark's getting rather stressed about it and has now got a cold to boot.  Why can't Christmas be in July when all the cows are outside feeding themselves, spreading their own muck and don't need a daily bedding with fresh straw?  We'd have time to enjoy the celebrations instead of having to fit Christmas in before afternoon milking.  Barely time to open all my presents, eat a roast dinner and have a glass of something alcoholic!

So it's the day before Christmas Eve, Charlotte and I have finally found one of the last Christmas Trees available at the local garden centre and decorated it before lunch.  "So Santa now has somewhere to put all my presents!" exclaimed Charlotte.   No help from the boys in this household, just Beattie the puppy who took off as many baubles as we were putting on!

Just been Carol Singing around the village, which was fun and definitely filled us with  alot of Christmas Spirit.  Or was that the Mulled Wine and mincepies.

Anyway, don't forget to watch "Wild Weather in 2012" next Sunday at 5.30pm on BBC One, for a good old fashioned belly laugh!

Have a good Christmas and New Year.  Roll on a much drier 2013!

I should be ironing but it will soon be Christmas!

Can't believe how close to Christmas it is!  With all the yard jobs done by 4pm, I'm in the house and plan to catch up on the huge pile of ironing whilst we've got dark nights so early.  But here I am, finding another job (distraction) to do instead - writing my blog!

Most of the Christmas shopping done online this year, so just waiting for some extra presents to arrive and wrap.  Christmas cake made and iced (we do love rich fruit cake - I always make ours but have to hold everyone back from eating it before the big day), two dozen mincepies in the cake tin as well as a chocolate log (homemade of course, I bet that doesn't last the week!).  All this baking is because we're still getting four fresh eggs per day from my White Leghorn hens - think we'll call them after the Telly Tubbies - Tinky Winky, Dipsey, LaLa and Po.  You can't tell them apart but every morning I let them out of the hen hut, three have already layed their eggs, and one (Dipsey - I think) runs as fast as she can to the straw barn, as if in desperate need to lay her egg!  Sure enough ten or so minutes later, she announces she's laid her egg in a feed bucket of hay!

Back to Christmas preparations.  I always worry we'll run out of heating oil, tractor diesel, cow cake, horse feed etc as everyone will close down on Christmas Eve for the holidays!  It seems that most of the world is having a few days off work and we're the only ones still working on Christmas Day.  I've been brought up with it of course.  All the cows need milking, feeding, scraping out and bedding down before we can open a present!  Usually breakfast comes before that too so its well into the morning when we can think about sitting down as a family to open our presents together.  This has turned into a family tradition.  I've done this all my life and it's funny to see my teenage children still want us all to sit together and see each present opened. 

Christmas lunch is always at 1pm in our house.  That's because we're outside again just after the Queens Speech to do the milking and feeding round.  We have my parents coming round this year - who are semi retired farmers now - and my in-laws will join us for lunch too. So cooking for 8 this year.  I don't mind as it seems easier to have everyone here than rush off to another house for lunch which might not happen until 4pm!  I usually cook the "bird" overnight so its cooked by breakfast anyway.  Just leave it to rest in the bottom oven of the Aga whilst preparing the rest of the meal. 

It's sad we just don't have time to go to Church on Christmas morning which would be nice as we would see some of our neighbours and we live on Church Lane.   Some years ago we went to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, which was lovely but again, we're up early next morning with so much to do before breakfast, it just doesn't fit in.

This cold snap we've had these past few weeks has been a blessing in disguise.  We love the dry, solid ground and only once has the parlour frozen up during the night.  Some of our yearling heifers are still outside and we're taking hay to them daily.  Some have turned alittle wild and nomadic as they've got so many acres to graze and shelter from.  Sadly the forecast is for more wet weather and warmer temperatures this weekend, which is bad news.  Sometimes, baby calves hate the change in temperatures which can lead to them getting pneumonia.  If left untreated they can die from it.  So listening out for any slight cough or runny nose in the youngstock.

Well, this is not getting the ironing done.  I wonder if I can pay Charlotte with cakes to clear the ironing pile.