MORROWS WORLD
MORROWS WORLD
CALVES, calves, calves everywhere and all are taught to drink!
Thank goodness that is not my particular task as it is so frustrating at times. Tims wife Hilary and her band of young helpers are the front line in this area, at least in the afternoons. The kids are all working very hard, I know its not easy to head out into the cold, never mind be faced with a calf who seems determined not to drink a drop but is perfectly happy to chew your fingers into pulp! Patience is a big help as is the fact that there are four of them to spread the burden and add a bit of fun to the chore. Tim and Johnston are not fussy how long it takes the youngsters to feed the calves – as long as they dont have to do it. Actually, they are very good at it and take their responsibilities seriously, always noticing if one is a bit slow or another too greedy and their help does make a difference. Last week we had 21 calves born on one day and are averaging out about 6-8/day normally. Its long hours and heavy work and not helped by the imminent opening of our visitor farm for when the whole yard has to be hosed, sheds cleared out and rebedded, signs replaced, fences repaired – the list is genuinely endless! Unfortunately so is the work on the dairy farm and so it is so hard to prioritise our tasks.
While we do feel rather swamped at the minute, life does go on outside the farm. As I write, Amy is walking past, wearing an enormous pair of cordless headphones and looking rather like an extra from The Fly. She is singing along to One More Angel in Heaven from the musical Joseph to prepare for her rehearsal later this afternoon. Our church is putting on a charity show at the end of the month the earphones are a great way to learn her words, as she can get on with other things while listening to the music. Amy loves performing, and is currently studying drama for her GCSEs this summer. All being well, she will start an AVC in Performing Arts in September, (vocational A-level for those of you without teenagers), so the earphones should be used plenty.
Johnston actually bought them for himself. For years he has been trying to get a good system of listening to music in the milking parlour. The noise of the machines makes an ordinary radio or CD player nearly impossible to hear and a portable one isnt great either as all the bending and reaching mean it often falls out of your pocket, or the earphones fall out of your ears and of course trying to put it all back together again with hands covered in – well you know what – is not good for the mechanism! So this cordless set of earphones seemed to the perfect solution. Our CD player in the house is literally next door to the dairy, so distance isnt an issue, but what he didnt reckon with was the density of the 300-year-old mud and stone wall! But not to be daunted with a minor set back in his quest for music to milk by, Johnston decided to put an old CD player in the engine room which has a relatively new adjoining wall with the dairy (30 years). But that required new wiring and setting up and in the priority job list, Johnstons music system comes pretty far down the line. It means Amy has unlimited access to the headphones – at least until the calving is over.