The seat belts were fraying after catching in the door latches
One thing is certain about crofting, and indeed farming.
Every time you find yourself inching ahead, you know you’re about to get booted back to your starting point—or beyond.
Today provided ample proof of that maxim.
I’ve been working on the Land Rover to get it ready for its MoT inspection, but as I’m not a mechanic we get the blokes at our local garage to give it the once over and let me know if I’ve missed anything.
On her way to work, the Other Half took the Land Rover in this morning and expected to get a list, hopefully short, of work that remained to be done before the inspection.
But when she returned to the garage this afternoon, the mechanic grinned and handed her a new MoT certificate.
All the Land Rover had needed was a new nearside headlamp bulb (yes, another bulb failure since I checked them and replaced a few las tweek), so the garage had put the car through the MoT and it had passed.
It even breezed through the smoke test.
So when the Other Half arrived home, we were both feeling quite good.
We’d saved £500 over the past year to go towards work for the MoT, the MoT itself and the car tax.
We’d spent:
- £78.94 on new seat belts (the front ones were frayed after being caught in the door latches)
- £20.28 on new mud flaps (one was hanging off and the other was about to go
- £7.50 on new bulbs (excluding the headlamp)
- £100.23 with the mechanics (two hours work is not cheap)
- £40 on the MoT
- £185 on car tax
All up, £431.95.
We’d come in £68.05 under budget, but our pleasure at being “flush” with cash lasted about 30 minutes.
...lose a little
The Wee
The Other Half had arrived home just as I was starting the evening chores so she told me the good news about the car while I fed and watered the chickens, moved the older chicks to their night quarters, checked the latest batch of newly hatched chicks, and fed Dolores, one of our Berkshire sows, in the byre.
I then measured our the feed for Doris and her litter before the OH and I went out to the field to feed them.
As I was banging the bucket on the gate to their pen, I noticed one of the piglets had not joined the others in racing over to see what was happening.
It seem to be alert as its head was poking up out of Doris’s wallow, but I grew concerned when it remained utterly still despite all the mayhem—there wasn’t even a twitch from its ears.
I gave the feed bucket to the Other Half so I could go in and have a good look without Doris pestering me for her dinner.
As I walked closer, I could now see that the piglet’s body had been pushed deep into the mud, with only its head sticking up.
It was clearly dead and it was equally clear it had been rolled on.
While I have no problems losing piglets in the first three days after farrowing—most live, a few die and that’s the way it is—it’s hard losing a big, healthy and thriving piglet to crushing at 19 days.
It’s even worse for the Other Half. She finds it difficult enough when piglets die early, so it’s extremely difficult when they die after their characters have started to come through.
I retrieved the piglet, fed Doris and the other pigs, and then brought the carcass down to the steading to tell the boys.
Like me, the boys are quite pragmatic about slaughtering pigs to be eaten, about losing piglets just after they’ve been farrowed, and even when they have to be put down due to illness.
But, they too find it difficult when a piglet they know is alive one minute and dead the next.
The Big Lad had to go off and have some space to himself, while the Wee ‘Un sat and chatted with the dead piglet for a while.
Half an hour later and they were both off playing again, although a little more subdued than earlier.
Meanwhile, I’d had to ring a buyer who’d phoned me two hours earlier to say he’d be taking all three gilts from this litter to tell him that it would now be two.
And that’s the other hit for us.
While we need 10 piglets per litter to break even, that assumes few losses as disposing of the carcasses is very expensive at £11.75 per piglet.
We’ve now lost four piglets from this litter and while the first two were within expectations/costs, the other two were not.
It means we’ve not only lost £120 (two piglets at £60) but we’ve incurred an extra £23.50 in disposal costs (over what we’d budgeted for expected losses).
It might not sound much, but it’s a big hit for us. I’ve just spent £150 on straw and the two piglets we lost late should have covered most of that cost.
I’ll have to divert £23.50 from the money we saved on the car to pay the additional knacker’s costs, put the remaining £44.55 towards the straw, and find £105.45 to pay for the rest of the straw.
And we still have the gap left by Stripe’s death. Each litter develops its own collective personality and this one was a particularly “happily boingy” group that will be lessened with the death of one its more lively piglets.
As I always tell would-be crofters, smallholders and hobby farmers, only do it if you’re absolutely certain your dreams can survive the onslaught of reality. It bites—hard.
Farming is tough at times isn’t it. It’s sad when they die like that, hope things go smoothly for the rest of the litter. I like how you allow the boys to deal with things in their own way and they can say goodbye if they wish.
My landrover does not have as healthy appetite for bulbs as your does and it has a much rougher time being an offroad toy.
What volts is your alternator putting out as the regulator pack might be on its way out and it may fry other things if it fails completely
That’s sad and bad news for what is obviously a very tightly costed operation.
My landy doesnt eat bulbs either, so it could be worth resolving, although sometimes the investigation can cost more than the repair!!! - maybe only worth it if you can investigate it without the aid of £££ mechanics.
And Im very sorry about Stripey :-((
Bulbs tend to last about two years with most of the failures caused by corrosion of either the light fitting, the metal base of the bulb or both (it’s all that road salt). Removing the bulbs and cleaning everything up at the end of winter helps, but it doesn’t stop the corrosion.
I replace the old fittings as and when money permits, and I do the same with sections of the wiring harness, which is 18 years old in parts, as needed. The alternator is less than two years old and functioning well— a steady 14.2 volts with engine running and electrical accessories off, the same with everything on and the engine running slightly faster.
Livestock loss can be crippling. I have a neighbour who breeds traditional Freisians. He keeps forty head plus his own bull, so normally gets about 38 or 39 (sometimes 40) live births per season.
Now, being traditional, the bull calves have some value for finishing for veal, which he does under the mothers with access to forage (higher price for the meat for the more humane rearing). But the real money comes from on-selling the female calves: his breed line is considered excellent.
Milking for him is very much secondary to breeding.
Problem is that this year, for no appearant resaon he has lost six from forty, and all were female. Coupled with the rise in feed costs there is a chance that this year he will make practically nothing from his herd. OK, he’s had a couple of good year’s so he’s not going under, but if he has a reapet in 2009 he will be in trouble.
So much hard work for so little return.
Sorry to hear of the loss of the piglet Stoney; but glad to hear the L R is okay for a while. I am glad I do not have your corrosion problems from salt, or in our case, sand if you live in the coastal areas of Australia.
The air is rather dry out our way most of the time and that helps a lot. When it does rain, which is not very often here, there is little effect on a well maintained vehicle.
Preventive maintenance is the way to go and doing as much of it as you can yourself. After a couple of very minor “breakage” matters I have just taken my 16 year old Nissan ute through some thousands of miles of the outback of NSW/Qld and it handled it like a charm. The 260,000 km mark turned over on the trip and now I will check it all out again to make sure everything is OK.
Good luck with the LR for the next 12 months.