There is a welcome arrival at the farm on the M62 as the new storm hits but the winter weather thwarts intruders

She is an absolute clone of her mother in looks and personality, although as it turned out, slightly less dangerous and unpredictable whilst calving and so far hasn’t sent any of us leaping the nearest gate to safety.

I expect when she fully processes what has just happened and her mothering instincts kick in she will do her mother proud and send us scattering in all directions!

After a somewhat stressful few weeks all the tups are now out with their girls, leaving Paul just slightly less uptight.

The snow that came a couple of weeks ago left us housebound, leaving Paul tearing his hair out and John-William disappearing off down the slopes on his sledge.

Our steep drive becomes lethal during the winter, a sheet of black ice with a couple of inches of snow on top make it an absolute non-starter for moving sheep in the trailer.

The morning following a good covering of snow revealed fresh tracks on our drive. The temporary gates at the bottom near the road were laying flat in the snow and it was clear that somebody had attempted to get up our drive and into the yard.

The last part which we refer to as the ramp had thankfully thwarted their efforts as great ruts could be seen in the verge where they clearly lost control on the ice. Nothing appeared to be amiss and my trusty little terrierists had not alerted us to intruders, so we can only presume they gave up.

The poor chaps working on our power supply and new gates have had a taste of the joys of winter at Stott Hall Farm. They’ve been soaked to the skin, slithered around in oozing peat bogs and no doubt been frozen to the core.

I expect they’ll be glad to see the back of this job and get back to working in civilisation! We did warn them that December was not a good month to be starting the work but they insisted they’d cope!

Whilst Paul was battling his way through the mud and depressingly grey skies, I headed to the beautiful market town of Malton.

I’d been invited to talk to a group of lovely ladies (and a few gentlemen) who were holding a lunch to raise money for Yorkshire Cancer Research.

The weather had steadily deteriorated as I headed north and was only set to get worse. Despite the lunch being held in a rather draughty marquee, I received an incredibly warm welcome.

Most of us kept our ‘big coats’ on but it certainly didn’t stop us all having a lovely few hours chatting, laughing and more importantly raising money for an incredibly worthwhile charity.

Reluctant to head home in the teeth of a storm, I headed to Driffield and spent the evening at my sister and brother-in-law’s beautiful Wold farm.

With both of us tied to our farms and busy work schedules it was lovely to have a much-needed catch up.