Saturday 16 November 2013

How life sweeps on regardless (autumn 2013) 163



This is now my fifty third winter farming and have had a fair spread of all that the weather can do at you, be it summer or winter. We have been through four or five foot and mouth out breaks with all the restrictions and rules of confinement, unable to sell stock for months on end. The over stocking that that brings, the shortage of fodder and unable to turn out stock to out lying fields when spring eventually came.

Time and tide waits for no man, as the old saying goes, and life goes on, it’s only as you get older that you realize how quickly it is passing you by.

No sooner one harvest finishes and we’re into autumn with the ploughing and sowing of next years crops. The suckler cows that calved in spring have big strong calves following them, and back in calf for the following year’s crop.

The mornings are starting to be foggy and damp, the mushrooms in the meadows are starting to grow, the leaves on the trees just starting to loose their colour, and crab apples dropping into the grass.
 
The village church of St. Chads in the distance
dry winter fodder stored in the Hay Barn

Looking from the church gate across the village green
School on the left our farm house on right and the barn roof between

Only part of the main stack of winter forage in wrapped bales



Grazing in the orchard village school behind the hedge 

Aftermath grazing on the meadows  in October 

Big bales of hay all neatly stacked under the barn ready for winter and the silage bales in the yard beyond all in black shiny plastic.  The cattle are spread out onto the mow meadows grazing the aftermaths while the drier wintering fields are rested ready for the heavy trampling they will inevitably get later in the winter.


You can stop a clock but you cannot stop time, here are a few quotes on time,---

Tradition is what you resort to when you don’t have the time or money to do it right
Kurt Herbert Alder.

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
Paul Valery  (1871 – 1945)

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.
Charles Wadsworth

We learn something every day, and lots of times it’s that what we learned the day before was wrong.
Bill Vaughn

About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
Herbert Hoover  (1874 – 1964)

If we had no winter, spring would not be so pleasant: If we did not sometimes taste adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
Anne Bradstreet  (1612 – 1672)