Plenty to be done before Christmas
Our ‘’to do’’ list before Christmas is almost as long as Santas.
As I write this column almost two weeks before the man in the red suit arrives, there’s a lot of jobs to do on the farm before December 25th.
There are winter crops to finish sowing, calves to tag and castrate, baleage to be made and lambs to drench and draft for the works.
Christmas comes at the wrong time of the year for many farmers.
This is the busiest time of the year for us and the thought of stopping for a decent break at Christmas almost seems impossible.
But, somehow we always manage to shut up shop for a week or so before we get stuck into weaning in early January.
A wet November meant tractor work was put on the back burner and we are still very much in catch up mode.
Warren has been out on the tractor until all hours of the night and up early spraying the next day before the wind picks up, which it inevitably seems to do.
All this wind meant the builders had a hard time getting the new roof on our house and had to call in reinforcements.
But the good rainfall we’ve had means there is plenty of grass around and the lambs are doing particularly well.
We are anticipating getting a good draft of lambs away next week and capturing some of those early premiums.
We also have a full tank of water for the house and the underground tank is full too.
Last year we ran out of house water as we rely on the rain to fill it and we had a particularly dry summer.
The summer drought forced us to buy in water and it wasn’t cheap, so it’s nice to not have any water woes at this time of the year.
When not helping on the farm, running after a toddler or reporting I’ve being doing the Christmas shopping and I’ve managed to complete most it.
Usually its left until the last minute so it’s good to have it pretty much done and dusted ahead of time.
In the past I’ve been wrapping presents on Christmas Eve, but this year I just want to relax and enjoy a movie with the kids.
Our two-year-old is pretty excited about the big day and keeps looking out the window for Santa.
Now that she’s more interested in presents than wrapping paper, Christmas morning is going to be a lot of fun.
I’d like to wish all readers a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.