Burklee Farm: Wishing you all the very best for the festive season and 2012

To all readers ... we hope that you have had an enjoyable Christmas with family and friends, and wishing you all the best for 2012.

It has been a busy time on the farm with very little rest, but we did manage to spend 2 days with family over Christmas and did no work!

Fridolin took the week off, cycling to Raglan in the pouring rain on Sunday, and spending 4 nights there experiencing different parts of Raglan (http://www.raglan.net.nz/). He returned at the end of shearing, and was bundled off to the local cafe for a social evening.

Our pre-Christmas run, saw us send squeezing in a days shearing, with all our dry hoggets completed. To do this, Mal was part-time on stand 3, and I was woolhandler/presser/cook, with two other shearers and 1 woolhandler. After lunch we were joined by 3 french and 1 german traveller, with two of them sharing stand 3. One had reasonable skills, with the other not shearing the Bowen technique and struggled a bit more.

Friday we sent off 287 lambs to Te Kuiti Meats. Their weights weren't as high as would have liked, averaging 16.5 kg CW.

Saturday, was spent frantically getting everything organised such as stock, food etc before heading away for Christmas. So it was nice to finally put our feet up Christmas eve. Below are a selection of photos from Christmas Day.