They sit in my office on a shelf stacked in a couple of big piles in year order.
In those early years when I was farming with little idea what I was doing I used to read back what I had done the previous year or two to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. The days were filled up with every farming duty performed.
When the three boys turned up in the 1990s I entered a lot of family doings as well so they have ended up as an amalgam of farming and family life, much, I imagine, like so many other farm diaries all around the country.
When I’m long gone I doubt the family diaries will be anything they will fight over but it would be nice to think they might be tucked away somewhere for posterity and not burnt along with the rest of my own little treasures that I can see them biffing. But I’ll be dead so it won’t trouble me what they do.
However, in recent years my assiduous daily diary entry has become a weekly or so catch-up.
Previous years’ diaries are added to the pile and now rarely consulted. They feel unloved and without purpose.
I find it difficult to remember what I did the previous day or so let alone a week earlier.
Usually, our remarkably busy planner is a guide but given every upcoming activity in it was cancelled two months ago and it remains a barren procession of days marching into the months ahead it is of little help.
So, I pricked up my ears when I read an app to help people record where they have been on any given day would be released on Wednesday.
It is exactly what I need.
No longer do I have to invent what part of the farm I was working on and making up jobs I did there just to fill my diary pages. I do this because I worry that future potential readers will come to the reasonable conclusion that in my declining years I did bugger all, which is not the case.
I’m still working as hard and nearly as long as ever. I just cannot remember what I’ve been doing.
What will be even better is that my new digital diary will allow me to compare digital diaries with anyone I bump into out there and if one of us finds out we have contracted covid-19 and the diaries remind us we were in the same spot at the same time we can tell them the bad news.
I was so enthused at the prospect of my new app I downloaded it as soon as it was available. And it was free.
However, my enthusiasm has turned to disappointment.
It seems that to get it to record my movements it needs to scan those funny little squiggly pictures that look like a crossword gone wrong, called QR codes.
But I have a plan. I’ve ordered 150 of these QR things and propose to have one for every paddock, thus establishing exactly where I was and when on-farm the previous week or so.
Brilliant.
