I was at a party on Sunday night in Ballymena and I was in the company of an Eve and Desmond. They were very nice, compared to the storms that were named after them. There was no sign of Frank there, but by all accounts he is not going to be very pleasant.

Hopefully storm Frank will pass quickly, and with not too much more destruction. I opened a marvellous bale of June 15 hay the other day and it reminded me that however bad things seem at the minute, weather-wise, it will get better.

Over Christmas we try to keep work to a bare minimum. We had a lot of family gatherings, four separate ones in three days, and a surprise 40th in Ballymena. The 40th turned into a very eventful night that included transporting a relic of St Padre Pio to Collon at 3am.

Mature ewes

We have all the mature ewes scanned and 1.75 would be the average scan percentage across the different groups; we had very few empties this year. All the ewes carrying more than one lamb are housed and on good hay. We started feeding a 16% nut yesterday to the group due to lamb from 27 January on. The rest of the housed ewes will get nuts from 2 January on.

The amazing thing about this current spell of weather is the great growth. Single-bearing ewes are divided up in small lots away in fields that don’t suit ewes with lambs at foot. Hopefully they will stay out until near their lambing date in early February. Although you should never complain about it, a lot of our ewes are in massive order, flesh-wise. You don’t want them overfit at lambing time.

For three different reasons – one being stonewall crazy, another one being too small and one too butty – they will not be let back to grass

The last 20 lambs were processed last week, they made from €70 to €112. It would be fair to say they were a mixed bag, but we weren’t keeping them over the holiday period. We were happy all the same as at various stages throughout the year we thought four or five of them would never make it to the sharp end of the butcher’s knife. There are only three beef heifers left to kill. They weren’t bought with the intention of finishing them now, but for three different reasons – one being stonewall crazy, another one being too small and one too butty – they will not be let back to grass. The butty one is actually going tomorrow as she would get overfat in a flash.

I hope everyone got over the Christmas period safely and spent as much time as possible with family and friends. There will be loads of time for farm work, but it is important to spend some quality off-farm downtime too to recharge the body and mind.

Wishing you all a very happy, safe and productive 2016.