Tough times, I am told, bring out the best in people, well I'm all toughed out!

It has been one of those years, a benchmark I suppose. A year we will mark others by and one we will tell the kids of when things are getting too easy again.

We have never had so many livestock on our farm before, due to movement restrictions and other external forces. In the midst of all this extra pressure, the lovely people at the RPA decided it was time we had a full inspection. All cattle movements and ear tags are checked, back many years. We have been using computer records for 9 years so our records were easy to check so the whole process was not too painful. Due to the bad weather through the growing period, the winter feed we did get was of poor quality, although it looks fine the analysis tells a different picture. Cold summer days and lack of sunshine has left us with a winter of dietary, mineral and trace element deficiencies to try and balance. All these factors come to light when an animal is stressed, and to be fair, a female is never more stressed than in birth. Some may argue this point with me, but my wife will read this soon so I will leave it there.

On that point, it was Claire's birthday on the 13th, and as I live in a digital world I buy all gifts on-line in plenty of time. Then the postal strike descended. Living out in the sticks, with a 40 mile round trip to the nearest shop we are almost dependant on this service. As I write, it is the 20th and the present still is not here, life expectancy is shrinking and things around me suddenly look sharper.

TIme for a good meal then, we do like our food when we get an opportunity to duck parental responsibilities and indulge. We are booked into Gala Rosso on the outskirts of Carlisle, sounded great a few weeks ago until England got into the rugby finals and Lewis Hamilton became dependant on a good qualifying to secure his world champion dreams.

I just hope there is a telly!

As you will have read in previous entries, I am also a webmaster for the Pentalk Network at www.pentalk.org and we also run a blog. It works slightly different to this one, as we give people the sole use of the blog for  a week. Starting on Monday the 22nd we have a special guest, should be worth a look.