…….better late than never!
We are now firmly into the month of May and only now am I compiling our March Farm Diary entry – shocking! Needless to say that over the last two months my writing has taken a back seat, but thankfully I keep thorough diaries of what has been taking place so writing this blog entry has been quite straightforward in terms of factual events.
My goal is to share each months farm diary entry before the middle to end of the following month, and needless to say I’m a bit behind! Oh well, better late than never, so here goes!
The end of Summer
March, it was a diverse and fun time. The last month of consistent summer sunshine and heat. We started the month with one of my favourite tasks – working with sheep in the yards. The task in hand was drenching all the lambs. From weighing the lambs, it was evident that their diet of grazing clover and pasja over the summer had certainly benefited their growth.
Our group R2 (rising two years old) of steers and heifers had also grown well over the summer and I decided that before the end of May, they would need to be sold to another farmer for finishing. We haven’t planned our farm systems to accomodate growing winter feed for finishing our beer cattle , as much as it breaks my heart I have to let them go. In the future I would like to have more cattle, maybe, even a suckler herd, but for now we must focus on the enterprises we have committed to.
From weighing our lambs and feeling their body condition by hand we identified another large group ready to leave the farm to enter the food chain, and at this time of year the finished lamb price can be at a lower value that at other times of the year, but that’s farming, it’s full of highs and lows.
Food for thought
On the topic of highs and lows, In my short time on this earth I have observed through my childhood, teenage and twenty something eyes that you have to get good at protecting your business during the lows so that it can be sustainable, and you have to be smart about the decisions you make during the highs too. Murray and I are only two years into our farming journey together. However, separately, and in different countries at opposite ends of the world we have both grown up on farms and have witnessed the sacrifices our families made for us and for the good of their farms to make sure that we could have generous roofs over our heads, food in our bellies, shoes on our feet and opportunities open to us more than most could ever dream of. We have worked too hard to get to this point to mess everything up, and we are the next generation of “curators” of the land. We had better make sure we make the right decisions and be the best we can be ( ideally better!) so that our children can have the same upbringing and opportunities we did and we can leave behind land which will keep sustaining future generations.
Come September, we will be parents, and already (as you may tell) this has started putting aspects of our life and future together into a much bigger perspective….
The last days of harvest
At the start of the month, all we had left to harvest were two paddocks of white oats and some strips of wheat in barley in other paddocks that had been growing under tree lines and had not been fit to harvest in February. I had forgotten how itchy harvested oats are. Their awns (little spike like hairs) seem to stick to everything in the heat of the day, especially my sweaty face! It pays to have a cotton hanketchief to hand, because it’s no use trying to wipe your face on your awn covered shirt!
The thumb injury
We finished the oat harvest on the 3rd and proceeded to harvest the last strips of wheat and barley that were now fit to harvest. The end was in sight and after harvesting some barley, Murray decided that before starting on another strip he needed to check a few belts on the combine so we came back to the yard and proceeded to work on the combine. After taking the lifters off the combine and helping Murray, when there wasn’t much need for me in the workshop I decided to have a little tidy up of the small planks of wood I lay on the ground and use to guide my truck when reversing to to unload grain into the auger. These little piles go into one medium pile and were currently dotted at the base of grain silos. I like a tidy yard so I busied myself gathering up the wood. Time was of the essence, and to save time ( which is sometimes never a good idea) I wasn’t walking to my big pile to deposit the pieces of wood, I was throwing them. After throwing one piece back onto the pile with my left hand, I felt a sudden uncomfortable feeling in my left thumb. It became evident very quickly that the force of my throw had allowed a splint of wood to bury itself into my thumb…
Some injuries cannot be resolved in the en suite!
I knew this piece of wood had to come out, and in a panic I shouted to Murray in the workshop to tell him I had wood in my hand and I was going into the house to pull it out. I’ve pulled wood out of my hand before and had success, so I didn’t doubt my ability to remove this piece. Oh how wrong I was. Upon closer inspection, I could see the wood had entered down the side of my thumbnail and exited at the joint, making it difficult to bend my thumb. After 15 minutes in our en suite, trying to pull the wood out with tweezers, and attempting to cut it out, I Called the medical centre in Methven and drove my down there.
The medical centre staff were very friendly and helpful, and after some anaesthetic, lots of inspection and consultation with specialists in Christchurch, the decision was made for me to go to Christchurch hospital the next day to see a hand specialist and have the wood removed. It was in too deep and close to too many important hand components I know nothing about! All I could think was what about harvest? Who would drive my truck I thought?! As it happened my brother in law was available to help Murray that night, and the next morning the combine needed some maintenance anyway. So reluctantly I had to go to Christchurch, and thankfully my good friend Mel took me to the hospital the next day where a lovely doctor gave me lots more anaesthetic and flayed open my thumb to remove the wood, it was in surprisingly deep. How lucky we are to have access to such highly skilled people. He stitched my thumb up, bandaged it all up and I was ready to work again! By the time Mel dropped me off back home, my truck was parked up ready to go, and Murray was ready to combine the last of our wheat and barley strips. I put a milking glove on my bandaged hand ( which lasted all of 2 hours) and by the end of the day harvest was finished!
Preparing for the winter months ahead
Now that harvest was completed, Murray was able to focus on getting the land prepared and drilled with crops for the winter. Murray loves testing soil too, which is a crucial component to farming, especially when growing crops. From doing this, Murray is able to identify which pastures need which fertiliser depending on a number of factors including what would be growing in them over the coming months and what those crops would be used for. So March was a busy month for spreading fertiliser, preparing the soil and drilling crops.
Murray got a lot of crops in the ground in March including oats for green feed for livestock to graze; Nui ryegrass which we will grow for sheep feed and harvested for seed; forage rape for the lambs to graze in winter
We also made the decision to remove another two pastures from being permanent pastures and introduce them into the arable crop rotation. Murray would not be drilling them with wheat until April, but preparations had to be made in March.
Keeping the house and garden functioning
There’s no hiding the fact that during lambing time and harvest, my priorities and attitude towards housework changes. I am one of those people who will not do the dishes for three days if it means that the work outside is compromised. I know some of you will be saying “It’s not that hard, I can have a tidy house and a well run farm” and I commend you for that, however I just haven’t figured out a system that works for me yet. One of the major problems I’ve identified is that since moving into the farmhouse almost two years ago, we have been so focused on the farm, that we haven’t really made the house into a home. A symptom of this is that I haven’t organised everything into their most suitable places yet and in April this is something I will work to resolve, especially now we have a baby on the way! I think the morning sickness also had something to do with the mess too, but I’m fully over that now and can well and truly stomach the smell of cooking meat again.
The garden had became overgrown with weeds during my period of morning sickness and during harvest, but underneath the jungle there was a bounty of food. Carrots, potatoes, beetroot, onions and tomatoes were the main crops which had survived. I decided to make a massive batch of borscht using homemade beef stock (made with our beef bones from one of our own animals last year) I had stashed in the freezer. I love cooking and preserving, and borscht is such a beautiful soup to make. It’s very nourishing too.
I made a start on weeding the garden, but it’s a bit too early for pruning roses and laying down pea straw, but at least I made a plan of action for April.
After harvest I realised that our food supplies (all except meat) were severely depleted. After all we had been living on mainly cheese sandwiches, fruit and cereal for the best part of a month! I drove to town one day and did a huge food shopping trip. Murray was very happy.
Methven Show
One of my favourite local events of the year is Methven Show. It’s a great day for catching up with everyone, including people we haven’t seen for ages, and there’s always lots happening during the day. Murray is on the organising committee now too.
In the past I have entered photographs into the home industries classes, however in recent years I have been inclined to enter baking. My preference for this is that once I have committed to entering, I have to do the baking, and as only three pieces for each class need entering, I have lots left over which I can freeze and have on hand ready for shearing and morning afternoon tea goodies! This year, there was a class titled “Morning tea at the office” which I entered. Seeing as we don’t have an office structured working environment, I entered a selection of baking and sandwiches I normally make for our shearer’s, and it received second place! I was very pleased to say the least.
A jaunt up the mountain
Mt Hutt was open to the public at the start of the month so Mel and I decided we would get off our farms for the day and go walking. We drove up to the ski field, took the chair lift to the top and welcomed in the sight. It was beautiful, especially as the snowfall from February was still present in places, enough for people to go skiing and thawed enough on the tracks for the rest of us to walk down. A long walk was something I needed badly after being in a truck cab during the previous weeks!
Preparing for the onset of mating
We have not kept replacement ewe lambs for the last two years due to buying the large flock previously owned by Murray’s parents. It was always our intention to reduce the number of ewes and then decide after a couple of years which number works best for us. We are still calculating that number but the flock is smaller. In the first year we sold 110 ewes with lambs at foot, mainly to maintain cashflow as we didn’t have an overdraft facility at the start with. Since then we have been managing ewe numbers down from 830 to 550. This year, with the purchase of two new Border Leicester rams, we will select between 70 and 100 border Romney ewes (Half Border Leicester, and half Romney) from our flock in April to be tupped (mated) by them, and from their progeny we will select suitable daughters to join the breeding flock when they are of appropriate age and most importantly size. Breeding our own replacements is a topic of discussion regularly had with our farm adviser. I don’t doubt that it is less costly to buy in replacement ewes when they are two tooth’s (no longer a hogget and closer to 2 years old), but where’s the excitementin that? We have sheep farming in our blood (which is impossible to remove!!) and like many others with our heritage, we would much rather take time to select and breed from animals we have chosen and watch their progeny grow up and live long and happy life’s on our farm.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, and in case you didn’t realise, I really do love sheep. Nothing you could do would change my mind to stop me from farming them, even on the Canterbury Plains of the South Island of New Zealand.
The April Farm Diary entry is not far from being finished and I hope you have enjoyed the entry for March.