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.
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| The village church of St. Chads in the distance dry winter fodder stored in the Hay Barn |
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| Looking from the church gate across the village green School on the left our farm house on right and the barn roof between |
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| Only part of the main stack of winter forage in wrapped bales |
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| Grazing in the orchard village school behind the hedge |
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| 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)
