Chapter 17 - A bleak day

9-1-07

Over coffee this morning, Roy and I were discussing our plans for the weekend. Our son Graham with his wife Valerie and grandchildren William (13) and Ellena (10) recently returned from three weeks in Mysore India, where they had been visiting Valerie’s parents. I am now desperate to see them all and to be relieved of Daisy May, their dog, who we have been looking after for seven weeks. As they live in the Cotswolds it becomes a bit of a major strategy to organise the farm for four days as we can’t just leave things, animals have got to be looked after!! We went through our usual list of farm-sitters. David is singing at Eden on Saturday and his son is away at the same time so he has that farm to look after. Son Philip may be working, perhaps Hannah could come up or James or Reggie? Anyway we need a bale of silage today or tomorrow to put in later to last for the weekend. That may be easier said than done as Roy informed me that the power steering seal on the tractor has become defunct, it only turns left so he really will be going around in small circles … but only to the left, anti-clockwise!!!!!! Off Roy went to Julian’s for our bale of silage which he brings home on the back of the Land-rover. I had asked Julian only that morning if the supply was okay for the rest of the winter and he had said he was sure it was. Roy had only been gone a few minutes when Julian’s workman phoned to say that we could only have one more bale because they were running short!!!!!! We have six in-calf cows and the yearling to feed and our silage supply stopped, now what? It means phoning around farming friends, begging a bale here and a bale there. I really hate doing that. It is only the beginning of January, we are only barely half way through the winter. How I wish now we had made some hay or silage in the summer.

Monica Olds