Winter has Arrived

I have a cold. I got wet moving electric fences last Saturday. I feel like I have the flu, but it's probably just a head cold not man-flu. I'm dosing myself with lemsip with extra honey added to the hot water 3 times a day, if there were oranges in the house I'd be dosing myself with them as well. Even though I am allergic to oranges. Sometimes I wonder am I just allergic to the chemicals they use to grow the oranges instead of being allergic to the actual oranges themselves?

Did you ever notice if you peeled an orange and threw the skin on the yard how long it lasts? Months later the feckin thing would still be there to annoy you like a plastic wrapper. I've never seen organic oranges for sale either.

Winter is officially here, we've had halloween, the remains of the pumpkin have been placed in front of the bulls but they are very slow to eat it. They prefer the GM maize, GM soya, beet pulp, maize distillers(GM) and rapeseed meal mixed with native barley, and wheat all camouflaged  with a bit of molasses and biscuit meal. Sometimes I think us farmers are dumb.

We grow top quality barley, and instead of keeping it ourselves to finish cattle, we haul it to the miller, get paid €200 a ton for it, then buy it back, mixed with a load of mostly US food/distiller by-products and pay over €300 a ton for it AND pay haulage both ways. Not only that but we have to sell the finished product to meat processors who have thousands of finishing cattle in feedlots mostly owned by Irish farmers who have gone broke trying to finish cattle. As I scratch my head I can feel my blood pressure rising.

I'm off now to put 75kg of by-products in front of my 15 finishing bulls, who let's face it when they're sold will just about pay the miller and the bank repayments for this year. Talk about hamsters on wheels......

Just to end on a good note I bought a second-hand Barbour wax coat on ebay for £13 + postage so at least when I'm feeding cattle for the rest of this winter I'll be dry, and hopefully won't get wet by rain again. Thanks doggywoof, fixed that zip with 5 minutes of filing and due to my cold I can't smell your dog off it either.
 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MENS-BARBOUR-KHAKI-ZIP-UP-WATERPROOF-WAX-OUTDOORS-JACKET-XL-XLARGE-BROKEN-ZIP/332858166448?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649