Any other harvest widows out there?!

[Lala1980]

Hello. Lonely and frustrated harvest widow would love to chat/vent with other farmers' WAGs...

DH has just appeared with an unexpected orphan lamb. His friend up the road (another farmer) had a ewe who died this morning giving birth unexpectedly and he thought I might like a "lamb for my collection". At least it's a girl, so we've called it Jessie J to go with Rhianna & Adelle the 2 other pet lambs. They sound just like them, hence the names.

Lamb is currently in a dog crate in the kitchen with DH fussing over it.

Lala - how long have you been with DP? Farming & managing the lifestyle is hard enough without having a DH/DP who is being grumpy/ignorant and having to deal with 4 DSC's. It might be worth having a chat, because even when DH is being a twat, he is still considerate.

Congratulations Cazboldy!

In with the children in a state of shock.

We were all in the big shed sheltering from the storm, dh joking how no farmer that he knew was ever hit by lightning when the shed took a direct hit. Power went off so we are down the road.
It made a hole in the shed roof.

GentleOtter - how scary for you all. Hope there is not too much damage. At least none of you were injured.

Oh and when i said baby - i meant a baby calf

I wish i could have another (human) baby, but we really do not have any more room....... plus dh only ever wanted 2, so have done quite well to have 5!

freerangelady we only started showing a couple of years ago. this year has been a bit hit and miss - 2nd day of the suffolk show was cancelled, wayland show was cancelled, we did get a first, two fifths and a 6th at the Royal Norfolk (and we only took 2 calves), and we are taking one in milk heifer and 4 calves out to a local show on bank holiday Monday.

Have got a really promising March born heifer that we are trying to pluck the courage up to take to the National all breeds calf show in October. Trouble is practically all of the prep, halter training, washing, clipping, is down to me, and it is a LOT of hard work, but I love doing it - and if you do well it makes it all worthwhile

Sorry calmer now. storm passed and the sun is out. Children are fine.

Really lovely having a little lamb although sad that the mother died. Which breed of sheep is it?
Good luck with the Show too!

Am trying to persuade dh to take me to an auction in Yorkshire - we need a new Wensleydale tup and they are hard to come by in Scotland.

GentleOtter DH analysed the lambs breed. It is his professional opinion that it's "a ginger Welsh mountainy thing"!! Very technical!

Well they managed to cut the milling wheat (think I got that right) yesterday but forecast here is awful today...cue even grumpier dp and fil...
I made a real effort to instigate a little conversation and affection yesterday. seemed to work. I even got a tour of the drier for my efforts...
DPs 4 kids stay with us eo weekend. they are not inherantly bad kids but are being dragged up raised by a pikey chav someone with different standards to ours 12 days out of 14...
How is the lamb? x

Tour of the drier LaLad your DH sure knows how to live it up!

We're just waiting for the heavy rain here. After days of saying "oh the wheat won't be ready" guess what, now it's due to rain, it's ready!

Caz Showing can take up masses of time and commitment can't it. I don't know what my PIL would do without it in their lives now tbh.

Thanks all for the support.

Got busy there after posting as there were some issues with one of the other wine makers at the winery and emotional support and a sympathetic ear were needed for my DP. All back to 'normal' now.

Between reading your comments and met with the wife of the head winemaker I am feeling better about the whole thing. I gather 7 days/nights a week is very unusual and is just because of the freakish weather we have had (hail in August! and it was at least 28 degrees on the ground. Decimated some of the vineyards.) He should be back to 6 nights a week shortly and then after the main harvest (sometime in September) he will go down to 5 nights a week (though still 12 hour shifts). In comparison, the future is looking positively brilliant for time together during a harvest.

Hi GentleOtter and freerangelady - Neither of us know anyone here, so we are very reliant on each other. The town we have moved to is very friendly, but my Spanish is only really good enough to basically chat, not have a conversation, so I am afraid making friends is going to have to wait really until my Spanish improves (which is daily). The harvest lasts until mid-November as it is such a large winery, so a 12 hour shift is the norm until the wine making ends. Because he is a wine maker, it is only partly about the grapes coming in (that is what generates the 7 nights a week), but after it is about making the wine and seeing it through the whole process until all is bottled and being sent out for distribution. The offside of this, is he is done by mid-November. And then we move on to another vintage harvest...

This will be the hardest harvest we have to get through, as there are a number of factors, language at the top, but also his working nights. I thought about trying to match his hours, but the shops are only open in the morning, so not really possible. Also with the heat of the day, that would truly be a waste of what little comfortable time there is to be outdoors. I truly understand why they siesta here now! At least after this one, it should get easier. And having he knowledge that it will ease off after a fashion, has really helped make things a bit easier to deal with. It was thinking that this was how it was going to be until November that was killing me.

Lamb is putting Jessie J, Rhianna, Madonna, Adelle and Paul McCartney to shame with its wailing. It should have sung the closing ceremony at the Olympics it would have done a better job

DH dashed off at 8am this morning to the local agricultural merchants to get some Lamlac and it seems to be thriving. He's covered it in citronella oil & vetrazine to try and prevent maggots, and it's now ensconced in a massive dog crate in the outside the bloody thing it was making too much noise in the kitchen, the cats were appalled and kept joining in the din!

Lala - Glad DP is "settling" a bit. Might be worth just mentioning his rudeness and how it made you feel, though. Farming is hard enough at the best of times without added friction. Sounds like his ExW is a bit of nightmare. Maybe he could pay her maintenence in scrap metal?

*Lamb is in the outside shed, not outside!

VintageHarvest - you sound a bit happier in your post and I hope that things get much easier for you. Would some of the other wives be willing to come to you for a cup of tea and help you with your Spanish conversation?
Harvest widows are isolated enough without the added problem of a language barrier and I feel for you.

Lala - Tour of the grain shed! . Still, I think he sounds like he was trying to make amends. Do you ever get any time together?

QuietTiger - at the singing lamb! I'm glad that it is getting better but know how noisy and demanding they can become. The Welsh sheep are feisty wee devils!

Am planning putting a "Have you seen this man?" poster on the fridge so we can all have a vague reminder of dh. Some nights I am not aware that he has even come to bed as he is away early and asleep late.

He was busy trying to restore power/ sort out the fried routers/ mend things run about like a blue arse fly

I am knitting Faraday cages...

Crikey GentleOtter that sounds scary having the shed hit by lightening, glad to hear that you are all okay and everything is being fixed - with baler twine and a welding iron if your DH is anything like my DP!

Nothing is beyond fixing for a farmer even when it's clearly beyond redemption and just needs scrapping!

Lala that's a very difficult thing to try to come to terms with - not being able to have children. Do you think your DP really really means that or is just saying it because he feels under pressure from everything at the moment?

I don't think I would be able to do that, not having children because one of you can't have them is one matter, but not having them because one of you already has them and taking that choice away from the other is very cruel IMO. I could maybe understand a bit more if his children lived with you full-time but if it's once once a fortnight then that is different.

I apologise if I'm speaking out of turn and you've already done it, but if I were you I would be having a very serious conversation wait for a rainy day and lock him up in the kitchen so he can't go farming about your (plural) future together and what it means to you to have children, and if he could take away that choice from you with a clear conscience knowing it had the potential to make you very unhappy in the future.

I actually saw my DP for the first time in ages last night as they got rained off. He came in, ate his supper, had a shower and promptly fell asleep on the sofa all evening - so much for spending a nice evening together! He mentioned going out for a meal to celebrate my new job but I imagine by the time we do that I'll have been working there for a month already, and I don't start til the second week in September!

dh can't have tomorrow off now, as apparently they need to get the straw cleared........

we are supposed to be going to a wedding - looks like it will be just me and the dc now.

Hi everyone, Happy Friday!!!
I don't think I made it very clear last time and may have done DP a disservice.
He has not said I CAN'T have a child, basically we do not have a spare dime at the end of each week after everything goes out, so we could never afford a child, plus we live in a three bedroom house (our room, his 3 boys have one room, and his daughter has the tiny box room). They stay with us every other weekend but those rooms are kept sacresanct for them. There would not be space for a child once it was out of a moses basket in our room, plus he and I clearly have very different ideas on parenting if the behaviours he allows his children are anything to go by - on the stepmums thread on here they call it Disney Dad - a father who spoils his children when they come in the hope they like him better than mum and won't stop coming to see him...
I just don't know where we would put a baby, how we would afford it and if I could bear to see his children undermining how I want my child brought up...
Incidentally, I am COVERED in cornflour from baking today!
It's raining in Wiltshire and only about half the harvest is in...
Have great weekends everyone.
x

Hello - coming out of lurking and going to be the first crude posteron this thread but need to ask a personal question... are any of you getting it at the moment? The most sexual activity I have experienced in the last month is my smear test ... If you are born again virgins too, how do you cope?!

Caz So sorry for you. I get really fed up of turning up to events as a single mum. I'm sure some of my friends think DH left years ago as they haven't seen him for a long time Plus the embarassment of having to ring the people hosting whatever do you are backing out of this time and explaining that it's harvest/something's calving/the tractor has just blown up!

Lala the DSCs sound like a pain. Do you even want your own DCs? If you do, then you just need to get DH onside; the arrangements will probably sort themselves out eventually...maybe? Where in Wilts are you?

Helpme I have the opposite problem. No matter how tired he is, he can always find enough energy. I thought all farmers were at it with great regularity!

DH and his Dad have had a row but I can't be bothered to get to the bottom of it. Not sure they are talking at the mo which is slightly awkward as PIL are providing childcare for DS while I'm at work. Ho Hum.

Me Me Me!!! Just seen this thread - My first year experiencing the "harvest widow" syndrome. Been with DP 9 months! All of a sudden my social life is arranged around the weather.

helpme i am getting it - when it's raining but he falls asleep very quickly afterwards lol! I feel like a mistress getting late night booty calls when he comes over at midnight having just finished!

Welcome chocolatecakey and Helpme - there's so many of us.
Chocolate - it's my second harvest and I am finding it worse this time than last year but but I think DP's grumpier as it's a bad harvest...
HelpMe - I wait up for him, we go up to bed, I go to brush my teeth, and he's asleep by the time I get into bed... I think if I hadn't made the effort to snuggle up to him in bed or on the sofa, we would have had zilch bodily contact in weeks... me too on the smear test...

p.s. I'd love a late night booty call!

Lala I'm in Wilts too. I'll send my DH round cos frankly I could do with the sleep

Chocolate welcome! First year isn't so bad as you're learning and quite excited by it all. I used to watch DH milking in the parlour I was so in luuurve I was pretty sad but the excitement has well and truly worn off now!

Hats off to him though, he remembered that yesterday was the 10th anniversary of our first date and bought me a bouquet of flowers.

Oh Ladyflip that's lovely - congratulations!
I'm near Trowbridge - where are you? x

Have PMd you Lala

Hello everyone, hello to Chocolate and Helpme...

Helpme - we're managing about twice/3x a week, which is pretty normal for us. DH has days where he is knackered, but with my wiley ways we steal an hour here and there and I'm also prone to "ambushing" him.

DH is ranting - he wanted to plough for the OSR today, but we had a deluge of rain this morning and we're back to square one, so we'll be worming the cattle and de-bollocking calves instead. I've just managed to force persuade him to book a weekend away at the beginning of November. 3 days in Edinburgh. We can fly up and I know the city well, so fingers crossed, we'll actually get there.

First words out of DH's mouth when I suggested it, were, "what if the maize needs to come off?" twat, so I replied, "THAT'S why we have contractors, dear - we're going, unless you want a divorce..." He's caved in agreed we need the break...

DH now gone off to play with his GPS tractor widget. He bought some GPS thingy (technical term) which apparently helps him drive in straight lines helps map the field for spraying, ploughing, drilling etc, and some farmer friend has come to "see it". They are now like a pair of kids with a new box of lego...

Lala - you're not that far from me, either - we're in Cardiff. :)