Sunshine Brings New Faces...
Its difficult to know how to start that crucial, first entry in a new blog. Should you formally introduce yourself, who you are and what you do, or should you just get on with waffling about your chosen subject, and hope that people catch the gist of the comings and goings in the process… So, I will launch straight into things, and desist from boring you all with a life story!
The sun has been shining for three days now here in Suffolk – Sunny Suffolk at the moment! But with the daytime sun has come early morning ice and fog – and when you are getting up at 5am to feed horses and muck out before work, that ice and fog is even more of a reason to stay in bed!!
The hunt is on to find a sponsor for the 2008 show season – we have a big show team this year, three mares, two foals, a yearling and a two year old for the county ag shows, as well as two affiliated dressage horses and a JA pony for the affiliated circuit! We had a fantastic little rider set up for the pony, but unfortunately she is having to have some time off with an injury (caused by an ill-fitting saddle, fitted by a supposed master saddler) and so an alternate rider will have to be found later into the calendar! I have just sold my hunter, a superb mare that I would have happily kept just for hunting, but the lure of a blank cheque proved too strong, and she has gone to a fantastic new home.
In terms of the farm, lambing is well underway, and so far (touches wood rather quickly) losses have been few and far between. The lambs seem to be growing and piling on weight, they will soon be into creep feed! The pressure is on to purchase a neighbouring field in which to erect polytunnels so that next year things will be ever easier to manage.
Rising grain prices has led to the "this will be the last year of sheep" talk – I am praying that the lamb price rises quickly as the place would seem empty without them. Something has to give sooner rather than later! We had two of the Red Polls killed for the freezer before Christmas – they were never going to be good enough for breeding, and with the market like it was, it made more sense to put them in the freezer at home. This involved the purchase of a new freezer, but it was well worth it.
So, the farm work completed for another weekend, it is back to the day job! The grain trade is brisk, with markets up and down several times a day, volatility is rife and the peaks hard to catch. Farming is on the up (or so they say) so perhaps its time to dust off the wallet and reinvest some of last years profit!