planning for next winter

The house is gradually emptying as the young generation go back to Uni and prepare for work on Monday.

The deep overnight frost has led to Jethro carting water out again to the pigs’ frozen water troughs. Tomorrow, he will move some huge storage tanks down there from another farm as it is already looking like a long fierce winter and this will save both time and effort.

The pigs are happy enough in their warm arks but the pig keepers’ are finding it a huge struggle to cope with a very wet and very cold winter so plans are already being made for bringing all the pigs into the sheds, and stables for the worst 4  months of winter from next year.  Another pig farm brings their pigs  in every winter and it seems to work well. Of course this action plan will almost guarantee a mild winter.

The pigs don’t mind the deep mud at all but it is extremely treacherous for the man with the bucket to wade through deep mud twice per day while a batch of pigs are pushing at him to get at the food and the dangers of ending face down either in cold thick mud, or on hard frozen ground [as per today] are all too real.

Funny how talk of global warming has ceased ever since the powers that be met in Copenhagen for their talks. You’d have thought they’d have mentioned something about their obvious and immediate success, wouldn’t you?

beauty and the beast

This morning is bitterly cold and absolutely beautiful – the ultimate wintry scene and I hope someone will have time to take the camera out again to record it all later.

Unfortunately it remains an awful beast for those with farm animals and there seems to be no let up in this cold snap. No one has time to enjoy it. Contingency plans over the Christmas period now mean that all the staff will work some of every day as there is too much to do for one man. The normal plan at this time of year is that between Christmas Eve and the first Monday of the New Year only the essential jobs are done ie: the livestock and everyone takes turns on duty so everyone has time off. This year because of the weather conditions two men will work every morning and one working every afternoon.

The hens have stopped laying presumably in protest from the cold so we may have to run out to buy eggs. Or more likely do without as the roads in this locality are still too bad for a normal car and Jethro is much too busy to do any more of my tasks.

Swift is eating loads of hay and is warm in his gucci style rug. These rugs are very expensive but well worth it. I prefer to keep horses out in their natural environment and as it turned out it is just as well owing to my injury. The snow and the cold is much better for animals than relentless cold rain. Ruby has come inside and is in with the cows and young calves and more importantly in with the bull so we hope she will calve again next September.

We wish every one a safe and happy Christmas season, and wonder what this year’s unexpected challenge will be. Last year we had no electricity to work the water pump at the bore hole. Every year is different and this year will be no exception.

an interesting Christmas

The landscape may look like a Christmas card, but inside the house at Prosperous Farm, apart from having plenty of delicious food in store, it is nothing at all like Christmas.

A trip to the supermarket in Granpa’s old wheelchair last night saw the last of the seasonal provisions bought. It is a life lesson perhaps we should all take. The view from a wheelchair, as many people already know, is different, but it is something that should  be experienced at first hand to really understand. Free choice is not easily attained when one has to ask to be pushed up to every shelf, or to keep asking for this, that and the other to be fetched. As several members of the family rumbled round the packed supermarket in convoy with the shopping trolley we met up with several people we knew, all doing their last food shopping.  On leaving the shop we found we were in a very heavy snowstorm and today we have several more inches and a lot more ice.

There is no real tree this year, just a mini artificial one, and very few presents as shopping on crutches in heavy snow and ice is simply not going to happen. We will however still be able to concentrate on the food, with a few cheats such as ready-made cranberry sauce in mulled wine, and a few bought puddings, and of course the good company. We have home cured ham to cook tomorrow, home reared rib of beef to roast on Christmas Eve and no doubt a good turkey will arrive in due course for the big day. The breadcrumbs for the bread sauce are already in the freezer. Nature has buried the carefully grown veggies in snow and frozen ground, and some replacements were hastily bought from the supermarket,  however Jethro remains confident he can produce a swede and some sprouts for the big day.

We will be warm by the fire and together as a family, and be able to have lots of good things to eat. Thankfully we are not trying to cross the channel or are stuck far from home. Jethro will be very busy and we hope  for a thaw [but not too rapid a one, as that causes other problems] as the extra workload from all the livestock in this freezing and snowy weather grinds on. We even have made a contingency plan for other members of the family originally due to have Christmas elsewhere, if they can’t get to their planned destination on Thursday, we will have plenty of room and food.

Carols and the Christmas tradition will be courtesy of Kings College on Christmas Eve on the radio. We missed the village carol service on Sunday owing to the snow and ice and taking further unnecessary risks, and it is unlikely we will make it on the day itself  owing to the weather, workload and my plastered leg. In these winter conditions all the animals must be fed and watered daily.

Jethro said at breakfast that the meeting of world leaders in Copenhagen clearly achieved its aim as the weather has been dire and very cold ever since. Why has no-one else thought of this?

iced up once again

The joy of the young over waking to a covering of snow does not last long in livestock farming. The reality of keeping animals adequately fed and watered in difficult conditions sadly removes the initial glow of pleasure of a white landscape at an early age.

Already we are struggling to water all the livestock out doors and indoors as the pipes freeze and the water troughs ice up. Jethro takes the water bowser out with him to some of the animals twice a day but even the pipes on this ice up and have to be thawed. The cattle are better off  as in February this year we bought very large troughs which do not have to be filled daily as they have such a large capacity for water. Sheep actually drink less in these conditions as they eat some of the snow while grazing, it is the pigs who are always the thirstiest However they do not mind the cold and are happy living in their family groups sleeping and keeping warm in the straw filled arks. They lie in a heap together, often side by side, just like sausages in a pan.

The cold snap is early and combined with the dry summer and the fact that we have less grass than normal it is looking like it could be a long and tiring winter for both animals and men. You can imagine that we are all serious sceptics of global warming in this house.

An accident 2 weeks ago has put me on crutches so I am not able to help at all, and indeed all my jobs: Swift, the dogs and the chickens have been added to Jethro’s heavy workload. As the snow and ice reach right to the house I am banned from going outdoors in case of another fall.

Christmas will therefore be a rather funny affair too, a trip with a borrowed wheelchair to a local supermarket soon should see us get the last few things we need. I have not sent cards this year and luckily gave all the extended family home cured ham and bacon in October to freeze for the big day ahead. There will  have to be a lot of IOU’s written for the members of this household as I cannot get to a shop and the sudden snow and ice have made things far worse, in that respect. The day the accident happened I had planned to go shopping in the afternoon… instead I was in the hospital. The road is now only passable in the 4WD and apart from booking Jethro to take us food shopping, after a return trip to the hospital, there  is no spare time to take us to do anything else on account of the  conditions.  Annoyingly, I wont be able to drive for at least 6 weeks.

Still I can enjoy  a quieter life too. I will be making sausage rolls later, something I can do sitting down, even if someone else has to put the trays in and out of the oven. This afternoon I shall be in front of a snug fire with  my feet up watching Mamma Mia again, a present from last Christmas. And I get the chance to read books, lots of them, wicked! And when I have run out of good books there is some knitting started long ago to be finished, it was originally planned for a baby who is now 3, so if  I can actually finish it I will have something for the next baby in the family whenever that may be.

land or sea

More snow fell last night, followed by rain and sleet however our troubles here are nothing compared with those who live in Australia, especially in the State of Victoria and are coping with these terrible bush fires. How they would welcome a dose of the cold wet stuff, and that puts everything in perspective for us.

We are in now uncharted territory as the combination of rain and melting snow on previously saturated ground is a new one. We watch almost hour by hour as the pond levels rise and the fields start to flood.

The problem with the overflowing pond is that it can overflow through the Victorian buildings to fill the yard and we have no where else to move the housed cattle to.

warm and dry for now

All the melt water from the village runs down the road and into the pond, on top of all our own ‘run off’ from the surrounding fields and yards.

Frost is forecast later tonight, perhaps it will slow the rapid thaw but the problem is that the roads are running with water so they will probably be like glass tomorow and we know the County Council is short of grit and no longer bothers to salt the rural byways.

It took an hour to get to the local railway station 5 miles away this morning.

Spring seems a long way away but would be very welcome right now.