May I start the blethers this month by wishing you all a spiffing, prosperous and healthy 2023?
As the chocolate boxes empty, the festive delicacies disappear from the fridge, the tinsel and baubles get stowed away for another year, and the friends and family that we enjoyed a wee stroopach with depart back to their biding places, it’s important to value these moments with them and take a spell just to gaze on the year ahead and maybe make a bit ploy to make sure that we make time to see them a little more often.
During Christmas, I received the sad news that a brother of a dear friend tragically died.
He leaves a behind a beautiful family and throughout this Christmas and New Year, as I fed cattle and checked sheep, I found myself thinking upon this sad news.
In the blink of an eye, people’s worlds can change irrecoverably. So, as a community, let’s remember that while work is important and it is essential jobs get done timely and get done right, the work will aye be there, folk maybe not!
The bard wasn’t wrong: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.” Mine certainly do more often than not, but if you accept that and try to be flexible and strive to get the balance right, then at least we might stand a chance.
The cows were all folded onto green keep at the beginning of December. All the in-calf cows are put onto these crops, with the exception of the first calvers. The cows make a lovely job of poaching up the ground, and add loads of fertility. I hate picking stones, so this also saves ploughing when we put it back into grass in spring.
However, this year, it became such a trachle to get silage to them.
You point the bale on the end of the loader towards the ring and do your best with the use of a wee dab of the side brakes to meet the target – a bit like a sharny bonspiel!
The clart got the better of us though.
There is an awfully nice man who lives in the village who keeps his car absolutely spotless. He is a topper of a cratur, and every time I met him on the road over Christmas and New Year with the tractor weeching dubs everywhere, he kept mouthing something to me about ducks. I got better at lip reading and we directed the kye to the big wood.
Happy cattle, no so much clart on the highway and the chiel’s shammy gets a break!
We have started lifting tups off ewes. Everything is due a fluke before the ewes are turned away back to the hill. All stock, be it ovine, bovine, canine or the lad in the oilskins, would benefit a dry fortnight.
The fattening cattle up in Keith are growing well and “Able Will” tells me that there will be hoggs ready any minute. The trade is a bit erratic and calculators will be vigorously tapped to ensure there is still a wee penny at it.
I would think there will be few folk who will gamble fat stock this year and will market as soon as the stock meets spec as the price of feed will negate any gain.
Fortunately, the hoggs had the benefit of a very successful fodder crop – those men in Keith don’t play at farming – and that has kept costs bearable.
It is all too easy at this time of year to suffer the blues, and as I sit here looking out a window harled with sleet, the phone pings a notification from NFU Scotland promoting Farmstrong Scotland’s upcoming “live well, farm well, croft well” tour. These lectures will be well worth attending, and the organisers should be applauded. Doug Avery’s tour in 2018 was certainly a game-changer for myself and countless others.
As a community, let’s enter 2023 with our best foot forward.
There will be trials and tribulations, success and defeat, but we shall endure and hopefully thrive.
We should also mind the bard’s wisdom: “Oh wad some power the giftie gie us…”
Finlay McIntyre is farms manager at Dunalastair Estate.
