Friday 1 August 2014

No.45. The farm still beckons.

Yesterday was a busy day with family down, sorting out farm stuff. We have had to dramatically rethink how we farm now that Chris has MND. It is in transition at the moment and one of the things that has to be done is to auction off a lot of the farm machinery which is now no longer needed. It will be held at the end of August and apparently these days they are advertised on line and that can create a lot of interest. My sister-in-law suggested that we have a table set up to raise MND awareness with one of their collecting buckets. We thought that was a brilliant idea. There should be a lot of farmers there with cash in their pockets and hopefully we will be able to persuade them to part with some of it in for a good cause. I also made up some flyers saying why we were having the sale and explaining what MND was and I thought we could hand them out as they come in. We have already put that the sale was due to ill health and I am sure some people will be there out of curiosity anyway. We might as well make the most of a captive audience. 

It is good to see a harvest coming in too. It will probably be the last one we do here at Gwarth-an-drea, which is quite sad really, though we have had a couple of disastrous harvests in the last few years due to bad weather and there were times when we wondered what was the point. At least the weather is on our side for once.

Chris is doing what he can to help, he is still able to drive the farm handlers so he is pushing the corn up after it has been tipped up from the trailers. Thankfully we have some casual staff who come and help to drive tractors when we need it.

This damn disease has had such reprocussions for us. It hasn't just affected Chris, myself and the kids, it has had a knock on affect on the business and Chris's extended family too and it has also changed their lives in ways they probably would rather it hadn't. I have to say we are so grateful though for the support from all of them. It has made coping with this nightmare a little easier.

Today is another trip to the hospital in Truro. Chris has a check up with his neurologist. There is progression with the MND, but thankfully at the moment it is not tearing along at break neck speed and for that we are very grateful.