Just like January, December and November, very cold and wet, snow and blow, the land is so wet now, even though a bit of sun and wind has been drying it out we can still hardly travel with the tractor without bogging.
We tried spreading some farmyard manure at the backend of last week.
The first load spread fine but with the next two, the tractor just sank straight down to the axle and we struggled to get back out of the field, leaving banana shaped ruts down the length of the field.
The intention was to get the field well mucked then ploughed in, then left to get some weather on the ploughing before breaking it down to reseed it with grass early next month.
At the moment, coming up to spring, we have a lot of cattle housed all in different age groups so not too much bullying takes place, but all these cattle need feeding and bedding up.
By the time we've finished milking and cleaning up, then moved on to feeding all the stock, there's no time to turn our hands to anything else before lunch.
Two or three hours after lunch, then back to feeding the cattle again, it seems never ending.
It goes without saying we do have the prayer mat out every day praying for an early spring, so the grass will grow in plentiful amounts to be able to turn the stock out early (wake up Col you daft nut, stop dreaming and just get out of bed and start feeding the stock again, spring won't come till May as usual).
The hens have laid well all winter even though for many days we were thawing the water through out due to the very cold freezing nights.
The hens are, in one sense, much the same as the dairy cows – if they don't have water they don't produce the goods.
The hens were quite funny the first time there was three or four inches of snow on the ground.
They tended to run and fly about at the start, probably feeling the cold snow on their feet, then after a couple of days they weren't that keen on coming out of the house at all until the snow started melting.
With the geese coming into lay now as well, they don't half make some racket, with ganders scrapping when they get too close to the other's ladyfriend, then half a dozen others pile in to stop the scrap, I don't know whether they take after humans or humans take after them.
The ducks are much more sedate this year as we haven't got a drake at all as they would have been too closely related for breeding from.
So we took the young drakes out at Christmas, otherwise they would be worse for noise but the drakes must be the only males that don't need or get the females consent so it's who can run the fastest.