By Angela Dorie

Since marrying a farmer almost 30 years ago and making a living milking cows plus keeping a flock of chickens and a few (or more) of freeloading horses, my whole "city" Christmas has been turned topsy turvy as priorities have changed, plus my husband and I have merged the traditions of two cultures into one.

First of all, there is no tearing down the stairs to rip open gifts -- never! While stockings, left at the foot of the bed, are opened as soon as the eyes are, the masses of gifts under the tree always await the finish of the morning chores -- the milking and feeding of those that provide for us takes precedence.

When the children were young, the gifts always magically appeared under the tree Christmas morning -- no chance of peeking, prodding or shaking before the big day. The eyes grew huge as they circled the pile, plus there was always a length of baler twine snaking across the floor, a card on one end and an impossible to wrap gift on the other, hidden in the cellar, a closet or under the sofa. The machinery always provided super pre-Christmas hiding places: the shaker on the combine, the twine box on the baler or the floor of a tractor.

After the gifts are opened and a huge breakfast of fresh eggs, ham, bacon, hash browns and toast washed down with tea, coffee and OJ, the second round of chores commences: hens to feed, eggs to pick, horses to feed, turn out and muck and, of course, cows and heifers to clean, bed and feed again.

While the home-grown chicken, weighing in at just over twelve pounds and filled with my Grandmother’s sausage and sage stuffing, cooks, the afternoon turns to a relaxing time, talking, watching new DVD’s or listening to CD’s, sometimes with visiting non-farming family members.

We appreciate this quiet time together, a welcome break in the normal routine of the farm. It is also a change from the Christmas afternoons of years past when the kids were young, spent putting tab A in slot B then loosing bolt C but having too many of nut D! 

About 4pm the table is laden, the chicken golden brown and surrounded by all manner of home grown vegetables and preserves such as pickles, chutneys and relishes -- a sense of pride as well as satisfaction. For dessert the lights are turned off and the traditional Christmas pudding is carried in, blue flames licking at its base. It was made over a year ago from my Great Grandmother’s recipe, all ingredients by weight, not volume and now very well aged. Before it was steamed everyone present had had their lucky stir -- did the wishes come true?

The only variation from her pudding has been the ommission of the "lucky" sixpence (changed to a dime when the family moved from England) after my father inadvertently bit down on it one Christmas and broke a tooth -- an excruciating experience for him!  

It takes centre place on the table, surrounded by the other sweets which include my Grandmother’s dark fruit cake, made from her handwritten directions a year ago, a white fruitcake, pies, bars and squares as well as a trifle, my Mother’s recipe. Too much maybe, but who is counting? I wonder which of my recipes my daughter will use when she eventually prepares her own Christmas table.

Afterwards we sit for awhile but then chores call again -- milking, feeding, eggs to gather again, horses to be brought in, fed and bedded down, but not without their Christmas treats. One year we had a newborn Jersey heifer calf for us and our guests to marvel at and consider an appropriate Christmasy name for. Her dam being Nancy, Noel was the obvious choice.

A full and satisfying day has been had by all, but the best is yet to come -- the eleven o’clock barn check. Before flicking off the lights, we stop for a few minutes, smell the sweet perfume of the hay and listen to the soft contented munching of the livestock, the muffled thud of a hoof on straw, all sounds that 2008 years ago soothed a newborn baby in a manger -- sounds as comforting then as they are today.

From our house to yours, our wishes for a very Merry Christmas.