The weather has been kind to us this back end, as was a needy case after the miserable summer.
We had a break from picking them (by hand, not a machine) to do some stock work, not that we have a great deal of time in the middle of the day to pick them as tending to the dairy cows, milking and feeding, takes up four hours at either end of the day.
Then there is the younger calves to feed and give fresh bedding, so a couple of hours, if we are lucky, is needed to do other jobs.
We bred a young Holstein Friesian bull – he is out of one of our best cow families, the Tamoras (for the Holstein breeders he is by Mezland Duplex) he is 15 or 16 months old now and, in cattle circles, in the prime of his life.
So we turned him into a field with 11 young Holstein Friesian heifers that we had sorted out, so hopefully next May or June his first brood will come along which is more than I can say about the dozen we put to George the blonde bull.
We calved two at the beginning of October and the rest of them don't look like calving till after Christmas.
We thought calving them in September and October would be just right for the seasonal rise in the milk price, but Mother Nature intervened and so we will calve these just in time for the price to drop again in spring.
It has been well publicised about the price of milk going up to us, and I see the butter and cheese price jumping up a colossal amount, and our price will hopefully continue to do so.
But let's not get carried away – my last milk cheque only paid 18.4p a litre – in 1986 we received 25p a litre.
So there is still room for a lot of improvement at our end to get back to the price of 20 years ago, and that's pretty poor as I see it.
What else is there that is 20% less than 20 years ago?
Thinking about it probably the price of lamb at the moment due to a number of different circumstances.
The ministry sorted the foot and mouth disease outbreak down south, which then closed off all the export markets of meat, where a certain amount of lamb was being taken.
With that market closed down a lot of lamb wasn't needed by the British housewife.
So the price is about half where it should be, that's to us farmers, but there is probably no change in the shop.
Also the 20-day standstill rule is making a real mess of the time of year where sheep and cattle sales should be coming in two or three a week.
Hill farmers with suckler cows and hill sheep sell off the calves and lambs hoping to reap a decent price to keep them going until next year's sales but some buyers will be staying out of the market if they have stock entered in a sale the following week, as buying will lock their premises up for 20 days and they could not then sell their own stock.
I had some Suffolk shearling tups to sell but seeing the first sale when the markets opened up I thought who was going to lock their farm up for 20 days, when all the other sales were coming up soon after?
As for the poultry, the ducks and geese are looking fine, some of the ducks must think it is spring as they are starting to lay again.
As for the chickens, when the environmental health man gave me a three-month provisional licence to get started, the egg authority then decided, even though we were up to scratch, they wouldn't let us have a packing station number until after the three-month environmental health temporary licence had been upgraded to full license.
I give up.