A very, very testing two weeks here at Low Arvie.  The weather has been arctic and below freezing continuously for all that time now.  We are very lucky not to have had much snow – still only about 3 centimetres but the low temperature means that it has stayed on the ground.  The days have been beautiful, though, with clear blue skies and bright sunshine.  We would have been enjoying the winter except for the freeze-up meaning that R has to carry buckets of water to the cattle as all the outside systems are frozen.  Each morning and evening he takes about 30 trips with two buckets at a time to the young stock and Zinnia.  Happily he has been able to keep the burn open for the cows and calves to drink, by driving the Matbro (6 tons)into it to break the ice and several times getting quite a way across before the Matbro broke through.

We had a sad, sad blow last week when the Governement announced the closure of the Forensic Science Service which has been Catherine’s passion since joining ten or more years ago.  She has just been through two hellish years of re-organisation and transformation and was just settling down to start her new job with Violent Crime and Homicide (she has ‘done’ drugs, burglaries and serious crime!) when this news hit like a bolt from the blue.  If anyone out there can use an experienced and passionate Forensic Scientist, please let me know.  What her future will be, we just don’t know.

On a happier note, we have been waiting anxiously for our last calf to arrive.  Lady Olga didn’t get in calf to the bull and was AI’d in the Spring to a coffee coloured Dun Galloway bull called Globex Xplosive.  We have been quite worried about the best thing to do – calve her in the warmer shed where there are germs or outside where it is clean but, at times, minus 16.5 degrees C.  However, we needn’t have worried our heads.  She produced a beautiful silver heifer all by herself last evening and little Silver Bell is running around in minus 6 degrees of cold as if it were high summer.  Mother Nature triumphs again!!

Well, I am off tomorrow to spend Christmas and New Year with Catherine.  Morgan is working and we are going to have Christmas dinner in a Chinese restaurant in Northampton – well, that will be different.  Richard and I celebrated our Christmas yesterday and I feel the C is in need of a mother’s hugs at the moment.  R doesn’t mind at all and will be fine!

So, here’s wishing you all a very  Merry Christmas and the best of everything in 2011,

See you soon, take care,

Lxx

Although we have little snow, the temperature is very low – mostly below freezing all the time and all the water systems are frozen, so poor Richard is ferrying bukcket after bucket out to the cattle several times a day as well as their feed of cattle cake, silage and straw.

We have had the TB testing done and all the animals are surviving the weather well under their thick double layer coats.  Zinnia is ok and feeding both her calf and little orphan Bella for us, so that is one job less (making up Bella’s milk twice a day.)

Our roads are clear and well gritted so we can at least get out and are going down to Pringles for lunch today.  I managed to do all my visits this last week, too, and enjoyed my Latin class.  I was teacher for the day as Cate was snowed in (she lives a bit further north than us.)  We translated the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ from the Latin book of Fairy Tales which made a pleasant change from Ovid and Cicero!  I also got to my Dorothies in Kirkcudbright but we sat and chatted rather than doing Spanish.  Dorothy 3 has fallen and broken her femur and so we were just 2 Dorothies and me.  I was glad I could get there as, being well over 80 now, they are unable to get out in this weather and appreciated a cup of tea and a natter to relieve the boredom.

Well, must get back to ministering to Richard – I supply hot drinks at intervals between the water carrying to help keep him going!

Take care,

Lxx

Once again I am enjoying my week down here in Warwick, spending time with Catherine and Morgan and the dogs.

At last I have some time to myself.  Life at the farm is quite hectic at the moment as we have 65 animals of various sizes and the early winter brings with it long working hours of never ending jobs.  The cattle all have to be rehoused in their winter quarters and given various treatments to ensure they stay healthy.  These all have to be meticulously recorded.  It is also our year for TB testing which means two extra vet visits.  This comes round every four years and involves the vet taking blood samples and then returning three days later to check for reactions.  I can’t believe how quickly the years pass and that it is four years since the last test, although so much has happened in the meantime.  It’s more of a worry this time because reactor cows have to be destroyed immediately. Although TB has never been found in our herd, the fact that we have had to buy some animals from other farms in these last years because of the calamity of Richard’s broken leg in 2008 when we had to sell almost all our stock (Life with the Ladies of Low Arvie), there is a small chance that we have imported the disease along with these ‘alien’ animals.

There are now five different groups of animals at the farm, all on different feeding regimes and all with their own shed facilities which they are using more now the weather has become rainy and colder.  The sheds become very messy with poo and the floors have to be cleaned regularly and fresh bedding laid down.  Twenty-three cows, fourteen small calves and the bull are all in Eastside and the big cattle court, five ‘finishers’ and twelve yearlings are living in different parts of the old cattle shed, seven ‘aliens’ are in the big end of the new shed and Zinnia with Zola and Bella are happily living together in the small end of the new shed.  All except the finishers have access to the remaining outside grass. The cows and bull are fed once a day on cattle cake and have new straw to much on in the shed and fresh silage in the field each day. The yearlings, aliens and Zinnia are fed twice a day and get fresh straw and silage as necessary and the ‘finishers’ get cake three times a day and their straw and silage replenished when needed.  Along with this, their water tubs have to be refilled each day.  Busy, busy, busy, cold, cold, cold and wet, wet, wet.

The yearlings have been vaccinated twice against Blackleg, and every now and again, Richard puts all the animals through the crush to cut the hair around their ear tags, so that we can read their numbers more easily, and keep tails and udders clean.

So I am pleased that at last I can have this ‘island’ of time to myself and do some much needed blogging and attend to my books.  I am in the process of publishing them on the Author’s Den website and sat here until 2 a.m. this morning uploading ‘Life with’ onto their listing to go with ‘The Ladies’ which I managed to do last week.  There are just the covers to complete now and the books will be available to a larger market.

More soon,

Take care,

Lxx

He also checked out Zinnia after her ordeal in the peat bog and found that she has a problem with the stifle joint of her right back leg.  There was no treatment for this, but he said just to let her do her own thing and walk as she wanted to.  We have put her into the little end of the new shed with Zola, her calf and Bella the orphan and they are living together quite happily.  Zinnia is lame but is eating well and has a warm shed to sleep in out of the wind.  They also have the Upper Inbye field to wander in when they want to and all is well there for the moment.

Baron has now gone back to the other Ladies after his few days recuperation from the abcess and life has settled back down to its normal winter pattern of feeding and watering.

We have to have the herd tested for TB this month – you have to do this every four years – so there will be a further two vet visits for this before we can finally ‘batten down the hatches’ and really settle into winter.

Baron will stay for a few more weeks and a month after he leaves we will have the Ladies PDed (Pregnancy Diagnosed) and that will tell us how many new calves there will be next year and allow us to plan what to do with the 5 yearling heifers. If all the cows are in calf we may sell 2 or 3 of the young ones.

The year goes by so quickly and each season brings its own particular routine and planning problems, but it keeps us on our (now quite elderly) toes.

Take care,

Lxx

PS 37 years ago today I was involved in an altogether different activity – giving birth myself!!

Well, calving is finally over for this year!  It has been a long road, starting with the two calves from AI in June and the drama of Lady Zoe almost killing her new calf when it was born and the drama of getting her to accept him, which took two days.

The main batch of cows began to calve in September and all was going well until the eighth calf, when poor Lady Bonnie died giving birth to Bella and left us with an orphan calf to hand rear.  She is doing well and is growing fast, but is a very demanding little soul and needs a lot of attention to make up for having no mother.

The next two calves were born without incident and then Jeannie totally rejected her calf and it took three weeks of her being restrained in the crush each feeding time until she finally bonded with Jimmy and all is well now.

We thought the dramas were over when Lady Sarah, the last heifer to calve, produced Sammy and took on her motherly duties immediately.  With only Elizabeth and Zinnia left, two old hands having their 6th and 11th calf respectively, we began to relax.  But then came the biggest trauma of all, with Zinnia getting stuck in the peat bog and having to be rescued by the firemen!

Poor Zinnia (14 years old) is recovering only slowly and is now living in the shed with little Lady Zola and it looks as though she will be the last calf from Zinnia.  However, they are doing OK now and Zinnia is eating well, but her ordeal has exacerbated the arthritis that she had developed in her hips and she is not walking very well.  The upside is that Bella is living with them and now has a playmate of her own age to be with.  Zinnia is not at all aggressive to Bella and they are all quite happy together.  I think Zinnia will improve enough to rear Zola through to weaning in the summer.

Our ninth calving season has most definitely been our most traumatic!!  Am I headed for Book 3???

Take care,

Lxx

Sorry for the long delay between blogs this week! Life has been a bit hectic. First of all and most importantly, there are now five new calves at Low Arvie. Ermintrude had a boy (number three of the batch), Betty the Beltie cross had a girl – not a Lady because she isn’t full pedigree, but she is very cute and we have called her Princess to make up for not being a Lady. Then Lady Evelyn had her first calf called Lady Anna-Marie. Evelyn is called after Richard’s mother (Mary Evelyn) and after she died we found a card saying that if Richard had been a girl, he would have been called Anna-Marie.

The weather has turned very autumnal now, with misty mornings and some rain, but the temperature has remained fairly high and all the calves and mothers are doing well. We are still waiting for eleven more, but so far all have been born during the night and with no problems at all, so I hope that continues.

I have not been so lucky, and have had a lot of tooth problems. I had a root canal filling but it did not cure the pain and in fact made it much worse. Last Friday I went back to the dentist and had to have the tooth extracted. The root had begun to reabsorb and there was only half left with the root filling poking through it straight onto my gum, so no wonder I was in pain. I had already paid for the filling and now had to pay for the extraction, which made it doubly worse!! The hole has taken all week to heal and I have been feeling pretty miserable. However, all seems well again now, BUT I have to go back again to the dentist seven more times between now and Christmas for other repairs. It seems I have reached the stage where my teeth are beginning to crumble!!

On Saturday, I am going back to England for my ‘me’ week, so am looking forward to that. I don’t think I will get much ‘me’ time though as my cousin’s husband is now very ill and in hospital and I have promised to go and stay with her a couple of nights. Also, Morgan’s father and family fly in from Arizona on Tuesday, so I will spend some time getting to know them. I am looking forward to that – if he is of the same ilk as Morgan, it should be fun!!

Hope you are all well and happy,

Take care,
Lxx

This week has been hard work.  Things are getting back to normal after the summer and it takes time to get back into the swing.  I have not had much time to get used to this new blog, after my marathon session to upload the pictures in the last one!  No pictures this time as no real news on the farm.  We still just have the two calves.  The weather has been so good, I could have wished for more.  It’s set to change back to wind and rain tomorrow.  anyway the two new ones have had a good start.

Tomorrow Richard is going to fetch the bull.  We don’t know yet who he will be – R has to interview the candidates and he may choose one of German extraction.  We have to be careful to get one with different genes to our cows and heifers, otherwise problems can ensue.

On Tuesday we have B&Bers arriving for three nights, so I have to prepare the rooms tomorrow for them.

I put out a request for suggestions to improve the new website and received some ideas, so I will be asking Tegan who operates the website for me (until I have time to learn how to do it myself) to be changing a few things, next time I am down in Warwick.  I will be taking some more photographs to upload, especially of the B&B rooms.  That seems to be one of the important things I need to do.

Back to the dusting now,

Take care,

Lxx

Low Arvie farm in its Galloway setting

Hi

Life has been quite busy here for the last couple of days.  Richard has had another migraine and has been quite ill with it, so I have been in charge of checking the cows twice a day.

Yesterday we found that Lady Pete had given birth to a fine bull calf during the night, all is well with them.  Last night the weather was blowing a gale and pouring with rain which was clettering on the windows all night.  I lay in bed worrying about the new calf, but this morning all was well and he was running about with his mother.  They have gone off on their own and are enjoying their solitude away from the herd.

Lady Pete guarding her new calf who is hiding in the rushes

Then this morning we found that Lady Gabrielle had given birth to a lovely heifer calf.  We have called her Lady Geraldine  for my cousin, who is cousin Gabrielle’s sister and whose husband is ill at the moment.  Lady Gabrielle is a first time mother and she has been very protective of her calf.  Richard hasn’t been able to tag her yet and this might be a problem as she is running around already.  They have remained with the herd.

Lady Gabrielle with her new calf

All of a sudden the rain clouds disappeared last week and high pressure provided us with the time we needed to cut our new growth – just as I predicted. Today this is being baled and stored along with the other 90 bales and hey presto, there you go!

Visitors to Scotland, now is the time to visit (or wait until next May). The autumn colours are just beginning to show and the weather at the moment is glorious. Granted the nights are getting darker appreciably earlier – around 9pm at the moment, and the early morning frosts have started already, but for the next six weeks the countryside will be studded with gold, red and yellow as the leaves turn.

September today and I am so pleased! The children have returned to school and normal service is resuming, so its back to my Spanish class next week and bliss, oh bliss Latin group starts again!

Have been in Warwick since last Thursday and yesterday I attended a Webinar given by two chaps somewhere in the US all about using Facebook and other Internet sites to reach out to the global market – not that my two books and our B&B are going to make us millionaires but it sure is fun trying. Tomorrow I am going to start on our new website which should be up and running soon to give us at least a fighting chance, although, for me, marketing is very much secondary to ‘meeting’ new people.
I love this new world where I can do these things – its given me a whole new interest and I have some good friends now met through these sites, mostly in the States but also in India, Australia and other faraway places.

The first of the new batch of calves should be appearing soon – another autumnal joy!

Take care,
Lxx