It’s a quiet time around the yard. All the lambs are long gone and the ewes are slowly meandering their way through the last of the grass. They’ll be housed in mid-January ahead of lambing in March.

So, with a little headspace available for a change, it’s nice to prove that the poet WH Davies was not 100% correct when he wrote:

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?—

No time to stand beneath the boughs,

And stare as long as sheep and cows.

If we can’t stand and stare like sheep and cows when things are quiet, then we’re doing something wrong.

Silver lining

With contemplation in mind and knowing 2018 has now all but passed, it’s safe to admit that it was a horrible and stressful year.

The only saving grace was a decent autumn which just about stopped many farmers going to the wall.

However, instead of remembering rain, snow and drought, our minds will, if given time and space, recall that we came though 2018 and made it out the other side.

Lessons were learned in terms of stocking rates, fodder supply, drainage and the water capacity of the soil (or lack thereof), housing, animal health and plenty other on-farm issues.

Pain forces us to change

Plenty have made changes to their systems after 2018.

Having survived, we should all be the better for it. The weather might have fooled us once, but as George W Bush infamously said when mangling his words: “You won’t fool me a second time.”

What we can also take from 2018 is that at times of stress, neighbours are usually there to help.

Whether it was clearing snow off the road or sharing a few scarce bales of silage that were in their yard since 2015 during the drought, the men and women on the other side of the ditch will rarely leave you swinging in the wind.

When the time comes, you can quietly and without fuss return the favour.

Pontifications about Brexit also rumbled on throughout 2018.

While politicians and others tried to out-sensationalise each other, the farmer quietly got on with the more pressing matter of producing food and tending the land.

Paper never refused ink and many are making a living from proposing every and any type of doomsday Brexit scenario.

You can worry about the dozen different possible outcomes, but you can be guaranteed there will be just one in the end – whatever that might be.

If you must worry about something in 2019, then let it be about what you can change. In parallel, have the serenity to accept that which you cannot.

Here’s to the coming of the light in the New Year and making more time to stand and stare.