Pinch and a Punch

On the first of the Month.

Wonder if this saying is still used?

Today has just been terrible, apart from the sunshine.

Started OK. At 9.00 drove over on the tractor to collect the round bale lifter from Farmer Franz and had the mandatory chat. Then back home brought in our first haylage bale of the season. It's been too warm until now - if the bales are on the wet side they can reheat if warm. If it's perfect then not a problem.

Always a tense moment opening it up to see what has happened over the last 5 months. Sadly the sight was not good. Quite a lot of mould and can't work out why. The bits that are OK, look and smell good. Just hope this was a one off and the remaining 12 bales are OK. So nwe are faced with picking out all the bad bits - tedious.

So I was now a good 3 hours behind schedule and then the call came that my wood was ready. I wasn't prepared and there followed a good hour of dashing about to get the trailer out of a shed, find the lighting system and worst of all the tension belts which had disappeared in to thin air. Eventually set off for the 6km cabriolet trip with the sun already setting.

Max loaded the wood - one load of sawn planks and posts and another with all the offcuts. What I didn't know is that most farmers come with their front loader buckets or have side walls to also take home all the "rubbish", a cobination of sawdust and all the small bark bits. Will return on Monday with the car trailer and load it.

Everything on board, red flag attached as the longest planks were 7 meters long and secured down with the tension belts. Quickly rechecked the lights to find they weren't working! No choice but make a run for it. Within two minutes had the first car flash me to turn on my lights. I then at least turned on the tractor lights. Luckily most of the journey is via barely used roads and back in our village there is street lighting and for the last 700m, I just put on the indicator which was working on the trailer - not an uncommon sight for farmers forgetting to turn the indicator off.

I was hugel relieved when I got home. Took the photo, the camera incredibly finding some light and then I reworked it to  get it to this stage.

Then covering the load as it may be a few days before I can off-load.

Everything I had planned to do, didn't get done but I was rescued by Angie who has done a magnificent job in tidying up as best as possible.

Son J and girlfriend Laura arriving early tomorrow and we have 48 hours of precious time together. They will just have to put up with the chaos here but if all goes well, we won't spend too much time at home.

Angie has again come to the rescue and volunteered to do all the animal tasks for the next two days so as to allow us to go on tour. She also managed to cook this evening and then do some more Christmas decoration - Thank you, Angie.I couldn't have managed it all today, not even at a pinch.