Ramblings

Not another resolution

2012-01-04T14:10:00.005Z

When the ground has turned into Willy Wonka's chocolate river but I continue to refuse my Oompaloompa stripes and add to the poaching, rather more time is spent indoors than desirable. But it feels like a fitting beginning to a new year, taking it a bit easier for a change. The bringing in of the new cows to winter accommodation means the morning chores take a couple of hours, a significant increase, mostly spent dealing with muck of one variety or another. So I still get that morning blast of fresh air and exercise, but I'm currently hibernating from then til 4.30pm when it's time to do all the evening livestock stuff. Most of my arts clients aren't back in the swing yet either, so I actually have some time on my hands.
It's a wonderful feeling, after what has been the most extraordinarily busy year. And what's particularly pleasing is that it's quite clear that the plans for the past few years have been mostly achieved and that 2012 needs to be a year of polishing what's already there rather than creating new baubles. I don't say it will be a year of consolidation (I truly hate that word; to me it means stasis, can't be botheredness, a lack of imagination and joy), but I hope it will be a year of pulling together all the things set up in recent times and making them work just that bit better.
So there is no overly exuberant wish list for 2012, no ridiculously ambitious plans to shove three years' work into one. If I'm part of creating any new baubles they'll fundamentally be someone else's - supporting a smallholding dream here, a sustainable arts organisation there.
But then again...

Cows, cows, cows, cows, cows, cows, cows, cows...

2011-09-04T20:40:00.006+01:00

You get the idea? We have COWS! The glorious, wondrous, huge, beautiful, desirable, brilliant, scarily large, extraordinary tasting Devon Red Rubies. A small pedigree suckler herd, which we hope to add to before the winter kicks in.
There's matriarch Willow with her new bull calf; Bollie, a year younger also with her calf; and Peaceful, a heifer with some growing to do before she has a calf of her own.
For now, Bollie and Willow leave Peaceful in charge of their calves when they want to drink, graze, hang out. And then the old gals nudge her OFF the calves and tell her where to go. It's pretty much in line with bullying the au pair and still knowing she'll not pack her bags and leave you in the lurch.
We bought them at auction at a very local farm, from an acquaintance who needed to get rid of her herd, so they came here with their auction stickers slapped high on their rumps. Bollie still has hers and looks like she's wearing a new summer outfit with the labels still attached.
The auction was not that nailbiting; after having been to several sales recently and either not bid because of the quality of the stock or bid and been trampled over by gobsmackingly high prices, this was a pretty calm affair. We liked what we saw, a more knowledgeable pal gave a helpful opinion, we set a price and that was it. Out of more than a hundred people present I think only half a dozen were bidding, and none were prepared to get carried away. Lucky auction number 99 took me through to winning the 3 lots we wanted. And then the nailbiting started.
Everybody has said to me that after sheep, cows would be a walk in the park, but blimey, I can turn over a sheep and take physical control. Those cows must weigh nearly a tonne. And they are naturally protective of their young. And we've never done this before. And and and.
But we have great big pigs, and that's fine. And we'll take it slowly, and today Peaceful came up to me to be patted, and Willow looked thoughtful about the prospect. Bollie, with her first calf, is entirely suspicious, looking strict and superior, keeping her distance. Winning her over will take time.
This afternoon I watched her calf lick at an itch, but Bollie couldn't resist and rasped her tongue all over her calf, showing him how it was done. I also watched the cows engage in synchronised grazing, shitting, calf suckling, pissing and drinking. It was a well directed opera of activity with all basics covered.
This is the start of a big adventure. It reminds me how the people on our smallholding courses feel when they take their first tentative livestock steps. It reminds me how much we've learned over decades of keeping sheep, pigs, poultry and more. It reminds me how little I know about cattle, no matter what I've read, no matter what I've heard. Ultimately you have to do something to know something. And now, I'm doing it.

Child size cellos

2011-07-29T21:27:00.004+01:00

It's been a long while since I blogged, but tonight I had the urge to tell you about my Pilgrim geese.
They are a rather rare breed of sex-linked geese, with the ganders white and the females grey. When they hatch the fluff on the females is olive greeny grey, the males yellow with some paler grey on their backs. You can look for hours at a collection of baby ganders wondering if perhaps there is one, please just one, female in the group.
Although nearly all the eggs my trio produced were fertile, the successful hatching rate of the Pilgrim is low - no wonder they're a rare breed - and I managed to hatch just ten through artificial incubation, although the batch I left under the goose came to naught.
There are still four fluffy goslings in a cage run, keeping them safe from predators - cats, dogs, foxes, buzzards and the like, but after a week of letting the adults roam round the run with the older goslings, they are now happily integrated as a flock.
They belong in the orchard really, but I can't bear to put them up there as they are a quiet breed and may not make enough noise to alert me to a possible fox presence. To be honest, an inevitable fox presence - we are overrun with them on the farm and at least one new litter of cubs was born this year. So they are living in the farmyard, with a spacious stable to house them at night, and during the day I can stand and stare as they stretch out a leg, a wing, and do their flamingo impersonations. Or dabble in puddles, or tease the dogs, or carry bits of stray wood around, or nibble at the mudguards of my car, or the headlamps of visitor's cars, or sift the corn, or sit and stand and sit again.
The six goslings in the flock are like child sized cellos - identical in every way to their parents, just slightly miniaturised. They are long past the gawky fluffy stage, the strangely ugly time that every goose goes through, a sort of adolescent, pubescent gangly phase when only a mother could love them.

Most precious objects 2

2011-01-22T20:19:00.004Z

Who knows how long this will go on for or when I run out of ideas, but let's take a punt and do a few posts on the things I have that are for whatever daft reason, rather precious.
Remember Michael Landy, the artist who put all his possessions into a crusher? I'm not into things for things' sake but some stuff is so useful, or adorable, or part of one that I'd find it pretty impossible to let everything go like that. I'm not a hoarder, I do chuck stuff, but there are certain things I keep for far longer than would appear to be average.
I wear shoes that are ten, twenty, thirty years old (or more), and won't buy new ones very often as they don't speak to me. And shoes should, shouldn't they?
The photo is of my Mary Poppins boots. I don't know how old they are, but they were my Mother's, and recollection would suggest they are at least as old as I am. So that's more than 47 years old then. I've been wearing them since I was a student, so they've been in my wardrobe for nearly thirty years.
They are beyond shabby but I wear them every autumn. They make me feel good. They make me feel elegant, which is bizarre considering how wrecked and utilitarian they are and how inelegant I feel 99% of the time. A farm is not the place for elegance. I love the chunky kitten heel, the strange shape of the cuff, the astrakhan trim, the arrow shaped strap with its poppable popper, the round toes, the wool lining. If I knew a shoemaker who could make me a duplicate pair I'd get some made.
But who's to say what it is that weaves magic into our mood, our temperament? I'd feel a complete pillock in towering Louboutin's and dainty French fancies of the shoe variety would be as appropriate to my life as Kirsty Allsopp's massive ring. I admire these from a distance, chortling at the prospect of me mucking out a pig pen in four inch heels with scarlet soles and a sapphire so large that the full host of angels could simultaneously dance the tango on it with room to spare.

Most precious objects

2011-01-09T21:04:00.010Z

I was at a conference this week, in the role of report writer, listening to some of the most extraordinary people working in performing arts training in the world today. Everywhere my ears settled there was wisdom, passion, and talent beyond measure. It is to these people that we owe our most loved theatre, films, television programmes, radio plays, ballet, contemporary dance, human circus skills and more. These are the people who train the most outstanding talent, who bring the skill, technique and understanding that shapes our cultural world. I won't even start to share what they have to say about The X Factor and similar instant fame nonsense.
There was some reflection on the brilliant A History of the World in 100 objects and that made me think about my personal precious things. No doubt because I was so heavily immersed in things theatrical that day, the first thing that came to mind was my copy of Antony Sher's Year of the King.
As an Eng Lit graduate I was familiar with and in awe of Shakespeare (of course), but not particularly enamoured. I craved new writing, contemporary work, novelty. What did I know? And then I went to see Antony Sher in Richard III and stumbled out of the theatre exhausted and mesmerised. Although I had seen a lot of theatre, there were only a very few performances that stunned me (Warren Mitchell at the National in Death of a Salesman was one of these). I didn't know that Shakespeare could be like that. I didn't know that ACTING could be like that. The performance swung round and round in my mind for months. Then Sher wrote a book about the experience and I devoured every word, reliving that night again and again.
Shortly after, I started working at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford upon Avon, feeding the actors, the stage crew, the wardrobe department, the musicians, the staff, and there was Antony Sher, now playing Shylock in the Merchant of Venice. His dresser, the terrifying Black Mac, saw me with my copy of the book and asked me if I'd like Antony to sign it. Oh yes please!
A few days later Black Mac, also known as Black Mac the Bastard, and vividly sketched in the book complete with Mike TV glasses, handed it back, sort of nonchalantly. The frontispiece was signed "To Debbie, with thanks and fondest wishes, Antony Sher, Stratford 25/6/87". Precious indeed, but that wasn't all. Black Mac had gone to every member of staff and cast who had been recorded in the book either by name or by sketch (often both) and who were in Stratford for the current season. As I flicked through I realised I held in my hand a theatrical gem: Brian Cox, Bill Alexander, John Carlisle, Black Mac the Bastard himself, and more.
Sometimes you feel entirely in the moment, of the moment. Seeing the play, reading the book and then having my book returned to me so joyfully enhanced were three of those times.
As light hearted contrast, I offer my micro anecdote of cooking for Vanessa Redgrave. My hopelessly inadequate "Vanessa, your cauliflower cheese is ready", haunts me still.

A month on

2010-11-06T04:42:00.003Z

It's been a month since we buried Mopsa in the orchard and I can't believe how much I miss her.
I'm a pretty hard-hearted character, unsentimental on the whole, dealing plainly with life and death as you do, on a farm.
But oh, she's left such a huge hole in my heart.
Not being nose-nudged by her as I slump in the armchair, hand dangling pointlessly for her wet touch leaves my palm wanting. The threshing barn, her "big kennel" has a yawning doorway unfilled by her hearthrug body, no head propped up on the stone step to watch me move across the yard as I carry out my chores.
Everything reminds me of her, because she did everything with me, or so it feels now. She walked with me, sat with me, snoozed with me, ate with me, loved, I'm sure, with me.
Last night in the pub, steak fat trimmings on the plate, I no longer needed to wrap them into a napkin to bring home her favourite treat. In a moment my mood shifted as I realised, again.
And where are those wonderful wriggling chestnut eyebrows, communicating this and that? And the determined pat of the paw on my leg to say that, no, I hadn't yet hugged her enough and more was required? And there's just too much space on the carpet; there should be two large dogs to step round, not one. I miss the particular quality of her fur, softer and silkier than Fenn's rough coat. I miss the shape of her head, the feel of her ears, even the cheesiness of her breath and the uneven crook of her teeth that meant she was not to be bred from.
Yesterday I collected windfall apples from the orchard, just a few of the thousand still left after mammoth juicing and cider making sessions. And there is the place where she is buried, unmarked as yet, but Fenn lying down directly on top, as she unfailingly has these past weeks - two acres of orchard to choose from and somehow she knows. I talked to the pair of them, Mopsa so very much there and not there. I see her moving through the grass, led by the scent of fox and sheep, making her own trail through the trees, always independent, whilst Fenn walks in my tracks. I take them up to Mopsa's Meadow, named for her five years past and we sniff the breeze, the three of us.

Deaths in the family

2010-10-01T05:02:00.008+01:00

September will never be the same again. Just as my oldest friend's birthday has been forever besmirched by 9/11, September is now also the month that my Mother died, and that I lost my beautiful companion, Mopsa. There in the photo are the two of them together, ten years ago; Mopsa a young and pint sized puppy, and my Mother, the most youthful of 82 year olds.
Seven years after a stroke, and for at least three of those having had enough of life, my Mother finally got her wish on the 2nd of this month. At 92, her life had been long and in many ways troubled. Naturally vivacious and social, she had a bitterness and anger that soured a number of long term relationships, but she also inspired great admiration; she was never boring, always lively, impeccably elegant, the best company.
The bitterness is easily and devastatingly accounted for. A Polish Jew, she and her elder brother were sent by their father from Poland to England to stay with his brother, just before the outbreak of WW2. Her parents and much loved younger brother, for whom I'm named, were to join them later. They never made it. Murdered by the Nazis, memories and a very few photographs were all that remained. And an anger and hate that weaved through her life for more than seventy years. Holocaust was never an historical or distant word in our family; it was the reality, an evil that had robbed us directly, palpably. Just one step removed, I can still hardly imagine what it was really like for my Mother, although the anger that was so deep in her, has now, via the blood of the womb, transmuted into another, less understandable, innate fury in me.
My Mother had requested the sparest of funerals, wanting no fuss at all, and certainly no partying. She asked that my sister, her neighbour of more than 30 years, my husband and myself were the only mourners. Accompanied by Rabbi Melinda, Elgar and Bach, we said our goodbyes. The overwhelming emotion was of guiltless relief; she had had enough.

And then, there's Mopsa. Mopsa has been part of my life for more than ten years, an almost constant companion, and my love for her is simple and real. It will always be so. As soon as I started working from home, I was planning to have my first dog, and I learned all things canine from her. She taught me the wonder of holding her head in my lap as we sat on the floor together, sharing secret looks like naughty twins; the terror of kennel cough caught at puppy classes as her brown eyes looked at me fearfully and trustingly; the excitement of walking through woods and fields as new scents drew us on; the feeling of never being alone when she was with me. Oh, and so, so much more. So big, so beautiful, so warm, so individual, so loving and gentle mouthed. I can never thank her enough for the wonderful pleasures she has given me; everything has been so much more fun with Mopsa there to share it. A walk on the beach, sitting in heaps of drying hay, evenings at home (so very many evenings) when I could drop my hand and stroke her lovely head. I'd tell her she was a beautiful dog every day, because she was, and to have that much beauty in your home and your life is a privilege.
Mopsa did not have a troubled life; she had a perfect doggy existence with people to love, her half sister for company and a farm to play in. She had cats to box and cox with, all kinds of livestock to stalk and eye up, people to lean on and pat with her paw, hands to thrust her nose into and lots to interest her.
But a Bernese does not have a long life, and Mopsa was nearly ten and a half, a veteran. The last few months have been quiet ones for her; no long walks, but days sitting in the farmyard watching all our comings and goings, a few strolls through the orchard, one last trip to the river, and another to the beach. And suddenly a more fastidious appetite, deciding that only steak or roast chicken would do, where absolutely anything was fine before. I was happy to indulge her. And then, two weeks ago, she could no longer walk and I knew that we wouldn't have her with us much longer. We carried her about, came running if she called, spent hours sitting with her. I had to work in London for a few days and phone calls home were decreed as Mopsa-free conversations; I knew I wouldn't be able to work if there was bad news. I drove back from the station late in the evening and there in the doorway, lit up and tail wagging, was Mopsa, welcoming me home. I finally let out the breath I'd been holding in for hours, days.
I wanted, so much, for her to go quietly and in her own time, but yesterday I knew that she had finally had enough, so the vet came, and in my office, where we'd spent so much of our time together, I held her head and crooned to her, telling her how wonderful she was, as she gave her last breath, puffed into my hands for safekeeping.

Rampant Roger and pal Romeo

2010-09-25T20:52:00.008+01:00

Today has been one of those days. Lots of things going right, lots of things going wrong.
Last night, Roger, he of the escapee tendencies, decided even earlier than before that it was high time he be let at the girls. He was thrumming with testosterone, even if the ewes weren't yet in heat. The musty pong at the gate of his field was overpowering and I could smell potent ram on my hands even though I hadn't touched him.
So I wasn't entirely surprised when I opened the front door for some long forgotten reason or other and blinked as Roger tippytoed in excitement across the yard. How the hell had he got out of his field? The gate is practically deer-proof height. He headed for his old ram's paddock, now inhabited by Dahlia and her piglets and stamped in confusion as the sow grunted deeply and then ignored him.
We got him back into his field and he appeared to settle, but by morning he'd gone and joined the mule ewes a couple of fields away, having grown wings or something overnight. Pegasus should have been his name by rights. Four of us herded the flock together, he was caught and stuffed into a trailer and taken up to the barn. There we shoved him into a pen and using hurdles vertically, created a holding area more like a lion's circus cage than anything else. With the pig's weigh crate acting as ballast he was imprisoned for sure.
Behind the barn in the small paddock used to quarantine incoming livestock, is Romeo, the dashing new black Torwen ram, bought from the National Ram Sales in Builth Wells on Monday. Quarantined, and also kept separate from Roger to make sure they don't injure or kill each other just before they become essential to our livelihood. Sorted, I thought.
A couple of hours later I can hear banging from the barn; one or other of the rams is belting seven bells out of the metal gate, so I go up to check. There in the paddock is Roger, where once was Romeo. And safe inside the barn in the lion's cage is Romeo, where once was Roger. Either they have swapped skins or magic has been at work.
I'm stunned. It takes me five minutes to work out what has happened. Roger had pushed the weigh crate and hurdles til he could get at the gate, buggered the tin and skipped through what is a pretty small gap for a rather large ram. And then the new black chap had done the reverse. I go and get the OH to discuss what to do next, and when we get back up there, both rams are now outside munching grass. Next thing, Roger sees us, bounds towards us through the hole in the gate and goes back into the lion’s cage. We strengthen the pen, fix the gate, and they are, for the moment, back in the right places.
In the morning we'll pen them in tightly together whilst we bring in all the ewes and decide who's staying for breeding and what's off to market, but I really don't want to put the rams with the ewes for another three weeks or we'll be lambing in bloody February! No spring grass, freezing nights, snow more than likely and all together a crappy idea. If Roger's still in his lion's cage in the morning I'll try and take a snap, but for now here's a not very good image of what is a rather handsome Romeo.

The dream bread oven

2010-08-29T16:32:00.006+01:00

SO exciting. After years of wishing and thinking and reading, it was determined that this week would be the week to build a clay bread oven. No fancy schmancy purchased stuff, but all built from stone and clay from the farm. It's not finished quite yet - the door needs to be carved, the sand former scooped out and the lime render clarted on, but the majority of the work has been done. It's a huge clay tit. It's monstrous. It's wonderful. And I must be patient and let it dry out before we fire it up and stick in some pizza and bread and cake and lamb and.....
I had absolutely nothing to do with this, by the way, other than offering my gleeful mud-pie lovin' husband many positive comments and cups of tea. I've been busy preserving stuff from the veg patch to take us through the winter, not that you'd notice any diminution of the produce in the garden.
I will try to get rid of that irritating advert across the slideshow - bear with me - bear, not bare...

Harvest

2010-08-22T17:33:00.004+01:00

It's started. That madness that eventually follows the scouring of seed catalogues and the planning of the hedging rotation. The fruits and veg, both wild and domestic are indefatigably, exhaustingly, here.
Today I have pulled and laid out to dry all the onions and shallots - enough for a great wodge of the year if drying advances more quickly than rotting. I have beheaded the globe artichokes and produced jars of artichoke bums in olive oil. I've picked cultivated raspberries and tripwire hazard blackberries and the first crumble of the season is in the oven right now. The runner bean chutney glints at me, the colour of tawny cat's eyes. Yellow courgette soup is in the fridge. Field mushrooms sit fatly in a pudding basin in the scullery for tomorrow's breakfast.
It's the start of the wild-eyed frenzy of grey rabbit activity. The hording and stockpiling, the harvesting and salting, the preserving and sweetening. Puddings are back on the menu. Vinegars are to be made. The orchard has to be checked regularly to make sure the damsons, gages and plums are caught before wasps, squirrels and birds ravage the lot. The apple crop is going to be huge, but the bottles and the crushing and pressing gear are all waiting.
We turn from bemoaning the empty shelves to wondering how we can find room for just one more jar. I don't wander anywhere without trug, colander or plastic bag. And the ducks I've been rearing for meat have started to reach the age of freezerhood.

Aga paranoia

2010-08-16T14:07:00.004+01:00

I have delved the depths of irrelevant middle class angst. I rant against The Big Society (doublespeak for amateurs doing the work of professionals, mostly badly, in the spare minute between the job, the volunteering, the living, the sleeping and the kid's ballet classes), but in my more selfish moments I am in a rant with self.
It's to do with comfort zones, laziness, habits dying hard, practicalities and complete disinterest in shiny and pristine if it means work that I find unnecessary. I've talked about my sluttish ways before. But now, there is a new daily challenge. We have had the top and lids of the Aga re-enamelled.
It looks shiny and new and virtuous and strokeable. But before it was hammered and friendly and easy to live with. Now I can't drop a splotch of tomato sauce or dribble of chicken juices without heading for a j-cloth. Now, I can't balance casseroles, pots or pans on the lids without fishing out a tea towel (is it clean?) to soften the blow. Before I was quick and efficient, sliding heavy pans full of roasted summat out of the oven and onto the top. No jiggery pokery required to lift the joint onto a plate keeping nice and hot before shoving the pan straight onto the hot plate to conjure up gravy. Now I am in a ferment of confusion and fear. I MUST NOT SCRATCH THE NEW TOP. I must keep cork mats and tea towels close at hand. I must learn how to hold heavy pans full of hot things in one hand whilst the other fannies about finding the equivalent of a coaster for big things. And I know I'm going to fail this test of competence.
My mind is on the cooking, not the cleaning, on the ingredients and the process, not the niceties of housekeeping. I HATE housekeeping. I will never fret on my deathbed, no sudden conversion to cleanliness and godliness, wishing I'd been a religious scrubber rather than an atheist slut.
But that altar of the kitchen that was so welcoming and full of promise has turned on me. It has expectations. It has needs. It has had money spent on it. And now I'm not as in love as once I was.
It took seventy years to get to the state where we thought it deserved a facelift. And now the bloody thing will see me out and will shinily reflect my ageing face as it beams back, younger than ever.

Tumble weed, bindweed

2010-08-03T21:53:00.003+01:00

I can't keep up with myself. My desk has 8 heaps all requiring attention, which they are getting, it's true, but other things are falling by the wayside.
I know this, but I'm not sure I like having it rubbed in my face. So when I went into the polytunnel this evening to pick shallots, courgettes, french beans and corn cobs to go with the supper of salmon fishcakes, I did a comedy doubletake when the rakes and hoes caught my eye.
Spiralling round them in a romp of green is a bindweed that should be nicknamed Prefect or Jobsworth, perhaps Tattletale or Longbacon. So I've been told, proper. Nature is turning against me; I've had a yellow card wagged under my nose.
I stuffed my colander with the vegetable goodies and ran into the house. If the triffids invade, I'll only have myself to blame.

A golden thing

2010-07-17T17:53:00.004+01:00

Those holy hand grenades of Antioch, as our golden globe courgettes are known, have attracted something extraordinary. It might be bog standard to those who know, but I don't know so it seems all the more mystical and otherworldly. This gilded thing, this glowing preciously metalled, wrapped in gold leaf insectish creature was sucking goodness from its host veg. What happens now? Is it a butterfly in the making?
What is it? Click on the photo to enlarge.

BBC Radio 4 Farming Today

2010-07-01T18:50:00.008+01:00

Yesterday, Anna Varle, producer for Farming Today came to the farm to talk about smallholding for a colour piece (huh! There I am using Beeb lingo as if I knew what it was the day before yesterday!).
Farmers have concerns about small scale backyard keepers slipping under the net of legislation and regulation and causing health and welfare problems so Anna came to find out about the kind of things we cover on our smallholder training courses.
I have now uploaded the MP3 sound file to Blogger but the quality is very poor and boomy, so the BBC link is here even though it only lasts 7 days. Our section is 3 mins 20 seconds in and runs til 8 minutes. The ducks are the stars. And all our sheep have a leg at each corner.

Gardener's bog

2010-06-27T21:58:00.003+01:00

It's more than a year ago since the outdoor cupboardy thing in the garden with a hole in the ground became a bona fide gardener's bog. Not for the gardener (don't have a butler or housekeeper either) but for us when we are in wellies and really shouldn't traipse through the house even though the floors are hard, and even more importantly for participants joining us on our smallholding courses.
But since the weather has turned phenomenal I have been misbehaving. If I need a pee (ok, TMI) whilst tending to the ducks, which is a regular thing on hot days what with all that refilling of water buckets, I'll head straight for the GB. And the misbehaviour? I leave the door wide, wide open so I can enjoy the - it has to be said - rather wonderful Devon view. I know that nine times out of ten no-one will be able to see me, but I also know that local farmers have beady peepers and that there is a gap in the hedge so that anyone trundling their tractor up the road might, if they glance to the right and up a bit, see me with my shorts caressing my ankles, gazing out on the perfect blue skies and wrapped away fields. The act doesn't give me a frisson of naughtiness or pleasure, I've just gone beyond caring what anyone thinks and hope if they catch me at it that it'll cause a grin and a wink as they go on their merry way.

A thing of beauty

2010-06-16T19:07:00.003+01:00

Remember what we found in the derelict shed? Well, I hope Snakey Sid stays away and sticks to the compost heap from now on.
Here is the finished shedy article, with some of the widest oak boards imaginable - so I don't want any of you city types nipping down here to wrench them off for your luxury loft flooring. They are for my turkeys, and the rest of the time for me to contemplate and enjoy.
That just leaves one derelict cow shed to sort and some sad ruined piggeries. Cow shed thinking starts this winter, action next summer.

Piglet update

2010-06-13T15:49:00.005+01:00

Here, to make you smile, are some of the piglets born a couple of weeks ago, on the day they were taken from the farrowing pen into the great outdoors. The grass is so long I have to hunt for all of them; it's a porcine jungle out there.
Utterly gorgeous, utterly toasty to the touch, the most beautiful of the livestock on the farm, to my eyes, anyway.
Today the shearing has been done and the sheep are so relieved to be rid of their sweaty coats.
It's the usual pain-in-the-bum rigmarole for the rams, now penned in tightly for the next few days whilst they get reacquainted, not that they ever left each other's side, but without their fleece they are apparently strangers. I'm sure I'd know a pal if they grew a beard or went bald but that isn't so for sheep.
Off to freshen all the water buckets - on a hot day it's interminable.

Snake alert

2010-06-03T19:58:00.006+01:00

There's a derelict chicken shed that borders two fields, close to the house. I suspect it was perfectly placed to allow poultry to wander and peck first here and then there. The corrugated tin has seen better days and the uprights are completely rotted through at ground level, but some of the old elm boards are as iron.
I need somewhere to stick the part-time turkeys, and it was a really good excuse to refurbish another of the sorry huts on the farm. Whilst I write it on the to do list the farm worker rolls his eyes and then sets to with digger, saws and angle grinder.
I go and inspect progress and bring the dogs. Fenn immediately rushes in and sits alert. She knows something's there. Of course, it's full of rat runs, so I keep well back and ignore the possibility of furry critters emerging from the earth floor. But then we all see it at the same time and there is a shared squeak/roar/shout. At waist height, along one of the timbers, a snake slides into view and then slips down to the floor (how does it do that, precisely, and how did it get up there in the first place?) and across to a corner of the shed. It's seriously fat and about four feet long.
It's a grass snake, so not poisonous but as it flickers its tongue and hisses, we squeak/roar/shout again and fail to take a better photo, just in case it's an adder (which I'm sure it's not, but still...). It's all of three metres from our copious compost heap so at some point this month or next it'll lay 40 or so eggs there.
This happened at 5pm this afternoon and every since my scalp keeps wrinkling and my skin shivering - I'm so pleased we have snakes, but must it really live quite so close to the house?

Aunt Agatha does it again

2010-05-28T08:36:00.004+01:00

My girl is SO clever. And here as a reminder is last year's lot.

Invasion of the bloggy snatchers

2010-05-28T06:05:00.004+01:00

Apologies to my lovely regular readers and the occasional visitors, but I have been invaded by racist tossers charading as commercial tossers.
First I get splattergun spammed by dweebs littering the blog with their nonsensical comments containing multiple links purporting to sell stuff (I think - I didn't follow any of the links to check). I then delete a few of the comments (there were MASSES of them) and set up comment moderation (sorry, sorry to all you visitors who shouldn't have to go through more hoops to post a much enjoyed and appreciated comment) to find my email box full of comments awaiting moderation from the tossers who were now impregnating their comments with racist innuendo. Vile, idiotic, selfish, outrageous gits. Get a life.
So, comment moderation remains until such time as these comments stop, and at the first sign of a return it goes on permanently. And I have tried to remove every one of the comments originally posted by the vile, idiotic, selfish, outrageous gits.
Gits.

Is it Ok to be Closer?

2010-05-24T09:31:00.004+01:00

What's wrong with us? Where have our brains and our discernment gone? Is it too much work to create a life of our own instead of dwelling on the foibles of others? Isn't your own life more interesting, more satisfying, more challenging than that of some TV this or magazine that? And if life is a serious challenge (it is, of course), then mental and physical health allowing, isn't it preferable to deal with our stuff, try and make things better in our own way than wishing we were a wag or a bag or a lag?
I picked up a discarded copy of Closer & OK! on the train and flicked through. I hadn't realised (how naive) the extent to which it's all material that soils the soul, the heart and the mind. Utter detritus, utterly boring, utterly malignant, utterly dismal, depressing. A vile slur on the positivity of human nature and self realisation (and now I sound like some psycho-pseud).
I want to shout - "Girls! Women! Get a life! Pull those nifty socks up! Create your own future. It's hard, but it can be fun and it's all YOURS. Don't watch it happening from the outside. Think of yourself at seventy - how do you want to feel about yourself then? What do you want out of life? Dying with a flash bag and some designer label shoes by your bedside and a head full of others' dreams will not be adequate reward".
Did feminism die whilst I looked the other way?

Quality Hotel?

2010-05-20T14:06:00.005+01:00

Could one sue for misuse of the word "quality"? Having just spent a night in the Quality Hotel in Birmingham I'm beginning to wonder.
I'm often having to spend the odd night in a hotel. I don't do posh, but I do do clean, efficient, comfy bed. Holiday Inn Express is the benchmark; it'll do nicely, and is the least I expect when away. If I'm lucky it might be somewhere with room service - a steak and a salad munched in my nightie, surrounded by papers and prep for the next day. If I'm really lucky it'll be somewhere like this with free wifi, a snug bathrobe and sleek lines from the headboard to the iMac. And a double bed is a pre-requisite - otherwise all the paperwork falls to the floor, and anyway, why should I revert to ten years old just because I'm away from home?
So, when some bloomin' conference was on in Brum and there was practically no room to be had, I shrugged and went with what was left: Quality.
First up: entrance like building site...not a good feeling of what's to come
Second: great queue of blokes in grey suits all looking forward to a night away. Lots of male bonding, loudness and flash gold jewellery, bickering over the Executive Suite. Gawd.
Third: shouting out of my name and room number, not just once but thrice. Give over, guys - for years hotels have been quietly sliding a scrap of folded cardboard across the counter with your room number discreetly written inside and simply tell you which floor you need to go to and how. Haven't you heard about the need for looking after single women? OK, I'm hardly in the most vulnerable category, but really.
Fourth: when was this place last decorated? My room is gloomy, drab, not dirty exactly but not clean either. The doors are bashed and look like something retrieved from a school that's about to be demolished.
Five: stains on the "clean" towels.
Six: It does room service but there is bugger all information about anything in the room. I have to trog back to reception for them to tell me that they haven't had the menus printed yet. After telling them that no, I won't be heading for the bar to place my order as I have work to do, they get me a faded photocopy which I can take back to my room.
Seven: it's a twin room - urghh - and one of the beds is broken. I nick its duvet and pile two on the ok bed. It has VINYL HEADBOARDS. It's sticky. I'm about to be sick.
Eight: the TV is so low down I can't see it from the bed. I have to move the bed til it's at a diagonal so I can watch the box whilst I eat my prawn curry. 5/10 for supper.
Nine: in the morning I head for the shower to find it's a plastic shower from Boots kinda thing and held to the wall by a rubber band. Grohe's what you need boys.
Ten: I'm so relieved to be leaving that I hardly credit them for having organised a taxi for me that arrives on the dot of 9am.
Eleven: back home my own bed is paradisical.

Blogging from my bed

2010-05-14T07:53:00.002+01:00

Pure laziness you understand - not poorly or anything, unless you can count a leg that needs scratching and hands so rough they catch on the sheets like sandpaper on silk.
I'm trying out my very first notebook, all wireless, light in the lap, and intended to keep me working whilst travelling on the train to see clients. It is not only my first notebook, it's my first ever new laptop, For years I've put up with other people's cast-off junk - slow, imperfect, broken bits of dross. But as I hate to drive long distance and take the train whenever possible, it was time to put up the moolah and stop my own meanness from keeping me a second rate iCitizen.
I'd have adored an iPad, but what I need is summat that allows me to work on large word docs and powerpoint so that was that dream gone.
And here I am, in bed, listening to the rain fall as OH does the morning livestock duties. I can hear feedbin lids clang, pigs grunt, flapping of undeveloped duckling wings waiting to be let out of their hut, cocks crowing, and all the usual post-dawn chorus.
This weekend we're running one of our intro to smallholding courses, so although much is in readiness, the last delights have to be put in place: soup and scones to make, gammon joint and apple juice out the freezer, all kinds of kit to be put on display, removal of trip hazards, and most importantly, looking about with a strangers eye. I am used to living surrounded by cheerful mayhem and I'm never sure if innate sluttishness is something positive to pass on to others alongside the more practical smallholding skills.
So, enough, outa bed, into shower, get rolling. Time to move from the cozy virtual to the raw real.

Mums and babes

2010-05-06T21:27:00.003+01:00

Presenting some of the flock, mums and ever-growing lambs, in Higher Down, safely contained by the hedge laid this past winter.
A month passes and the lambs go from fragile babes to delinquent, robust adolescents. Gang games erupt, grass is already supplementing their mothers' milk. They are now too large to roll unwittingly underneath a gate, standing up to find themselves jailed from the rest. I'm no longer met by franting bleating to be let back in because the grass is definitely not greener on the other side.
Bank holiday Monday was spent MOTing the whole flock, weighing and worming lambs, running the ewes through the footbath and removing any shitty-arse bits that might attract the multiplying flies.
For the first time we've not castrated the ram lambs so they will reach meat weight earlier and not suffer the indignity and discomfort of eunuch-hood. As a result, their testosterone-induced horns are starting to develop, and there are no furry scrotums littering the field. By the time they are four months old they will have to be separated from the ewe lambs and their mothers to avoid carefree incest and teenage pregnancy. It's like running a mixed sex school.

Boxes and baggages

2010-04-20T18:26:00.005+01:00

I never have enough cardboard boxes - they are key fodder for starting bonfires and we have rather a lot of those. So, when people are coming to the farm to pick up the ducklings they ordered, weeks or possibly months previously, I remind them to please bring a box to take their young home.
This has created something of an ongoing joke. I wait, all anticipation, to see what unlikely and unsuitable container is hoiked out of the car boot. Twelve month-old ducklings - oh, a shoe box will do (no, not even for one, even if you asked it to lie down). Just four ducklings at a week old - one of those biscuit tins left over from Christmas will be perfect (no, it's far too tiny and even if it was big enough they'd suffocate). A neat little carboard box from the supermarket will be made to measure for two full grown geese (no, no, no).
And on it goes.
Ducklings grow like stink. Every day, every moment, they chomp and drink and shit and grow. They may have come out of an egg, but they'll never fit back in one, no matter how hard you try. So, for the lovely first-time duck owners, do as your more experienced pals do and bring a cat carrier; it's perfect, and hoseable. If you don't have one, bring a BIG cardboard box with good solid sides, bottom and top, perforated with ventilation holes and some string or tape to keep the box closed and the ducks secure during transit (cruising the motorway with loose ducklings in the car is so NOT advisable, and I don't think the insurance would pay to get the seats cleaned).
But if you are VERY classy, you'll do what the couple who came today did. Vintage wicker pigeon carrier basket. Gorgeous. Filled with straw, neat looky-outy holes for pink bills to peep through without any danger of getting out.
And rest assured, no matter what you arrive with, and you and I gasp in amusement at the underestimated capacity of the birds to box ratio, I'll do my best to set you on your way with something suitable, no matter how Heath Robinson.

Running on empty

2010-04-03T10:02:00.004+01:00

No, not another post on the knackering nature of lambing. In fact my head is desperate for thoughts that are entirely unrelated to sheep. Having done the 5am shift, I finally got back to the house for a ten o'clock shower and contemplated the shampoo and shower gel bottles, as you do.
They were getting close to being empty. They frequently are. How I manage to get through so much of the stuff, I don't know.
As a child I remember wondering about the never empty shampoo bottle (no shower gel in those days, we were a strictly Camay family). The bottle was enormous (but then, I was a lot smaller) and full of thick amber liquid. I'd sit by the bath and play with the bottle, tilting it this way and that, as the soapy treacly stuff inside slid up and down. It had vertical ridges and I could run my fingernails round it to make a grating sound, using the bottle as a Guiro. But like the amazing porridge pot that gave and gave, the same bottle, with the same shampoo, just kept on giving. I never dealt with the dregs of the shampoo or found an unfamiliar bottle sitting on the corner of the bath.
Knowing my Mother's war-time habits I now realise that she must have bought many great tubs of the stuff and simply refilled the bottle when I wasn't around. The label was curled in the same place, even when the level of shampoo had gone up. It took me decades though, to get used to the fact that shampoo bottles were not bottomless, that shower gel did get used up, that toiletries had to be bought, not just once, but again and again.
Sometimes I'd rather not have the gauzy veil of childhood lifted - the reality of having to put such stuff on the shopping list has no charm whatsoever. And being greedy, I always did love the tale of the little porridge pot.

I'm tired and I wanna go to bed...

2010-03-28T11:06:00.003+01:00

It's true, I did have a little drink several hours ago (a glass of cherry brandy to keep out the cold, medicinal you know) but I don't think that's the reason I'm crying out for sleep. Yes, lambing is very tiring and it's been more than two weeks of 5a.m. starts and doing all the animal feeds so that OH can do the late shift, and the usual workload has been unremitting. So that puts a distinct edge on things. But waking up at 2.45a.m. to find there is no electricity has just about done me in.
No turning over and snoring, oh no. There are ducklings to keep warm, incubators to sort, ewes to peer at with poxy torches, setting up the generator, turning everything off, playing tag with the fuse box which just won't cooperate and then, finally convinced it ain't at our end, ringing the leccy board who rush someone out for 6am who pokes about and says yes, their wires are shorting on the electricity pole outside the house and he'll have to call in back-up from Barnstaple as they are not allowed to deal with live wires solo. As he waits I attend to a ewe who has twins, but is anxious NOT to be put in a lambing pen. It tries the patience and in the gloom I get it sorted eventually and leave them to bond.
An hour later, having shinned up the pole like a ferret up a drainpipe, the chap has it all pinging with life. So, generator off, everything turned on, ducklings taken from warm box on top of the Aga and put back under their heatlamp, everything shuffled about.
Then time to feed the pigs, the sheep, the ducks and geese, the dogs and cats, to walk across the fields to check on the outdoor lambs. Then to trim sheep toes, mark and sort the new mothers with lambs ready to go outside, put in the stock box and bounce with them over the fields and release them to their first sniff of grass.
Somewhere along the way was a bowl of something hot that was meant to create a nuclear glow round my body but just made me burp as I sat in the tractor cab doinging over ridge and furrow. But now I'm sitting here, eyes glazed, getting ready to go and check the ewes, again, and again and again. What joy.

Live and learn

2010-03-20T20:53:00.004Z

First timer ewes can be a major pain in the bum. They have good muscle tone and squirt out their lambs without noticing. They think they've had an almighty painful poo and just walk off.
Half an hour ago I went out to check the ewes and found one first-timer had just that second lambed. She was nervous but licking her newborn as all good mums should, but she went for the arse end, not the head and I had to clear a lot of mucus out of its mouth - a particularly slimy lamb, this. I let the mum lick and bit by bit I picked up the lamb and brought it closer to the barn and out of the cold, mum following agitatedly behind. Older ewes just trot obediently behind (unless they are box of frogs). With the pair safely bonded in the pen, I ushered all the other ewes into the barn for the night.
As I shut the door I hear the most earsplitting bellow. Lying on the floor, legs all outstretched in a weird approximation of ewe-giving-birth, was another first-timer, with a lamb head poking out of her back end. So, I need to kneel on her and help out the lamb, as it'll get stuck with a head only presentation. The ewe has other ideas. She leaps to her feet, mid-bellow and chases around the barn. She then throws herself back on the floor, squeezes out the lamb which shoots out like a cork from a bottle, the ewe gets back up and starts a stampede with the rest of the flock, leaving the lamb vulnerable to trampling. I dive in, pick up the lamb, clear its mouth and nose, check it's fine - and it is, bleating for England - and put it in a pen.
Now, can I tell which ewe has just produced her first offspring? Not without help. We pen them all, and I check under every tail of all the first-timers. The very last one I check has afterbirth emerging, so she is reunited with the lamb, and after a short panicky trample, gets sniffing and licking and bonding.
Me, I'm knackered. I only offered to do the 8pm check as a favour before going to bed to be ready for the 5am shift, and I get more excitement than is good for me or the flock. With all that stirring around I wouldn't be surprised if all the lambing pens are full by morning. Good night.

Lambing Live

2010-03-14T15:33:00.002Z

Firstborns arrived on Saturday, another pair today, and another ewe just gone into labour. It's started, it's happening, I'm up and down the farm track every hour, at least, and up at 5am doing the day shift.
Dahlia the Berkshire gilt is due to farrow any time now, although her milk hasn't come in yet, and the first duck eggs in the incubator are also due to hatch this week. One big earth mother then.

All anticipation

2010-03-10T16:23:00.006Z

What with Lambing Live and my own calendar countdown, I'm more than anticipatory on the lambing front. Just 3 days til the first possible due date. Will it happen in a mad flurry of activity? Will it drag out in ridiculously luxurious and casual fashion whilst I twitch with impatience? Will it be smooth and simple, or laden with eventful happenings? Will we manage to divide early and late shifts sensibly or will they crossover with incident and cause days of snatching at sleep as two pairs of hands struggle to keep up? Who knows. And then there's a farrowing due any time soon. And eggs are in the incubator. Let's get started.

Bingo Little

2010-03-02T19:53:00.003Z

Welcome home, Bingo Little. After years of putting it off, several hilarious but useless attempts at A.I, and too many visits across the lovely but circuitous South West, I present, for your delectation and delight, the new boar.
He is a young chap, and this was his first (and hopefully last) journey by trailer. He had Aunt Agatha for company, but even so, he was fretful and suspicious. Neither did he like being transferred into the stock box to be tractored to his new home. He made a raft of new noises that weren't encouraging. But two days later he is trotting up to me to be fed, ignores the excited wooflings of the dogs (they love pigs, those two), and snoozes deep in his straw-filled ark, with the mere tip of snout protruding. He will have a few months yet before his services are required - both sows are up the duff, Aunt Dahlia due in just a few weeks - and he has a lot of growing to do. But now we have a family group, are no longer reliant on bottles of spunk ( I know, I know, the pros call it semen), and I don't have to get intimate with the sows every six months.
And why Bingo Little (aka Bingo)? He's the Wodehouse character who falls for every woman he meets. Bodes well.

Spawn

2010-02-21T16:48:00.004Z

A day planting trees in the orchard, pruning older ones and cutting down overdeveloped willow - that is crowding out the orchids and purple moor grass in Moor Wood - as we steadily work on increasing the culm patch. The latter was incredibly hard work, the mud sucking at my wellies so that I needed all my strength to lift my feet as I dragged willow branches to the edges of the area we're clearing. At one point I sank up to the top of my wellies and had nothing to cling to to pull myself free. With a lot of toe wiggling, swearing and extraordinary wet sucking noises (made by the mud, not me) I freed myself.
In every ditch and puddle there are heaps of frog spawn. Do frogs get stuck in the mud?

I'm fine folks - just very, very busy!

2010-02-18T13:58:00.003Z

I've had a few people ask if everything is OK, down here on the farm in Devon.
Yes, yes, thank you so much for checking (aren't you nice), but I'm just amazingly busy and have a lot of work to do at the moment, which is grand and most lovely but means blogging has had to take a bit of a back seat. But soon lambing will start and I'll be around for that and will certainly be posting on sheep type progress. A new boar arrives soon too, so no doubt there'll be fun and laughter about all that, and piglets are also growing inside Agatha and Dahlia.
And then there's the fab smallholding courses we've been running and there's lots to tell you about on that front. So please bear with me, I will be back, I haven't given up the blog, and now you can find me on twitter too.

Willow buds

2010-02-02T10:19:00.005Z

So it's bleak out there. No leaves, no colour, a washed-out time of year. I mostly leave the camera behind when walking the dog. But yesterday I took it with me to take a snap or two of the new fencing that will keep the sheep off the newly laid hedges and reformed Devon banks.
And as I looked mournfully at the greys and shadows, a small splash of orangey red beamed back at me.
There are also huge bonfires to be lit to get rid of the scrawny cuttings leftover from the hedgelaying that are no good for the woodburners. The world is a cheerier place.

In defence of writers

2010-01-22T06:57:00.005Z

This is not the first piece I've read from Susan Hill setting out her stall as a proper writer and firmly pushing others out of her self-determined charmed circle of the real thing. The real thing being limited to William Trevor, Helen Simpson, Alice Munro and, umm, herself.
Why does she waste her breath and her callused writers finger on telling us to step aside and get out of her way, that she and a few others are the Queen Bees of writing and that drones are beneath contempt?
What, exactly, is she so worried about? She is a published writer with, let me just check, yes, she tells us, 43 books to her name. Why can't she be gracious and enjoy the fact that people are writing, they are playing with words, creating stories, shaping ideas, articulating thoughts, having fun with words, working hard with words, and most importantly getting better at using words? Surely she can't be worried that without her name attached to a piece of writing that Jo and Joanna Public might not realise (they haven't received the training) it is of worth?
Her language is so full-on, so angry, and the article is self-labelled as a rant, but I can't see what's being threatened that should cause such an outpouring of venom. It seems so contrary to sense. Does she also want to restrict reading to those who are professional readers? It seems on a par, in terms of bonkersness and pomposity. Do we have a saturation point for reading and is Hill concerned that if we fill up on Big Macs (tweets, blogs, amateur stuff) we won't have room for Chateaubriand (Susan Hill)?
Hill comes out of this like a devilish anti-children's laureate, wanting to curtail self-expression, and deny a platform to any who have not trained or worked hard at writing for fifty years (at least), and her flip attitude to disadvantage does her no favours either. For anyone who's worked in the arts as I have for over twenty years (those are MY credentials) and has seen the amazingly positive impact art can have on individuals and communities when they are encouraged to participate and use their imaginations, Hill's opinions are unpalateable nonsense.
Got that off my chest then. Get writing everyone.

The fear

2010-01-14T09:32:00.003Z

Before I forget the nuances I'm forcing myself to share the fear. It's an old lady fear, a gut wrenching, bowel liquifying terror. It's new, this year, not felt before and I am hatefully feeble in its grasp.
This morning I was rigid with it, shoulders stiff and unlovely, neck hunched strangely, legs jellied and cowardly. I stood tentatively perched on the ground, not firmly rooted as I love to be, and felt the anger at my fear flooding through from head to heart and back.
It's the ice. The slick, polished, sheen of sheet ice that stretches from door to barn, to barn, to barn. Yesterday's thaw sent chill melt water running across all hard surfaces and overnight the slow streams have bonded into a continuous terror run; my very own glacier.
As I pulled on the layers, with two pairs of trousers to coddle grazed knees, I was brave and fearless. As I opened the door and took my first step, I was old and feeble, sad and scared, unable, thankfully, to curl into helplessness, as I set about feeding the livestock. But every step was tortuous, no following the crow's flight, rather plotting the least nerve-racking route, buckets in hand.
I felt like this at Christmas when the ice was almost as bad as today, and had a small fall on the road, grazing knees, but more importantly, grazing my confidence in my own infallibility to tend to the practical things around the farm, whatever the circumstances. I'm a handful of years off fifty but today I feel ancient and bruised and sad, and want, with all my heart, for the ice to melt and join the river waters and stay away.

Snow hund

2010-01-12T20:11:00.003Z

The web is chockful of images of animals in the snow, but there's no harm in adding more to the heap. Here's Fenn, in her element. It's what Bernese Mountain dogs are made for. Snow, sharp cold air and someone or something to play with. Watching her zoom through the powder, creating her own mini mayhem, is a delight. She's happy as a Bernese Mountain dog in the snow.
The only peculiarity about the weather is that it makes the dogs more protective; I've heard more nuanced growling than usual when visitors and deliveries make their precarious way down the track.

Frozen duck

2010-01-08T10:55:00.003Z

Two brace of duck have been hanging in the workshop for nearly a week and they are tonight's supper. But they can't be plucked. They have frozen solid. So now they hang from the shotgun hooks in the kitchen in a desperate attempt to defrost them in time for plucking, dressing and cooking for mates. If they get here.
Either way, Donald and his friends are as stiff as soldiers. The next question is whether plucking them in the usual outhouse is an option or if it can be done in the kitchen without causing a feathery and downy mayhem, the consequences of which I have to live with for months.

Making a scene...a snow scene

2010-01-06T14:27:00.003Z

Because I am in the middle of writing a report, I should NOT be blogging, but here are some photos of the farm this morning, snowed in and rather wonderful. Keep toasty.

And a happy new year

2009-12-31T15:53:00.003Z

Is it possible, please, for 2010 to be a little more relaxing and less stressful than 2009? Please? Pretty please?
To start as I mean to go on, here are some of today's stress-free images, intended to calm all those who survey the loveliness: the gorgeous peacock butterfly; the ewes with Humphrey the llama; and the grass trying desperately to breathe through the ice.
I don't know if the latter is a metaphor for life, or just a handy one for the dying year, but either way, here's wishing everyone a blossoming 2010 with soft fluffy moments, sharp insights and 50% smile factor.

Happy Christmas

2009-12-24T10:12:00.001Z

Duck in bucket

2009-12-23T15:02:00.005Z

Brass in pocket, chicken in a basket, now duck in bucket. I look out of my office window to see stuck duck. A stuck duck surrounded by a sea of ice and gloom. A waterlogged duck that cannot extract itself. No danger of becoming a dead duck - far too large and vigorous to drown - but in need of a good samaritan who is prepared to tip up the bucket and get a whoosh of shitty, muddy water in the face for services rendered.
Happy Christmas.

Staying with the turkey theme...

2009-12-20T14:09:00.004Z

...it being Christmas and all that, I've just had a laugh, a splutter and an irritated from Tunbridge Wells moment reading this.
In my professional life I deal with strategies - it's kind of important to know where you want to be in order to have some vague chance of possibly getting there. But the idea of store managers having conference calls to agree strategies for selling turkeys at Christmas seems to me as barking as outlining a strategy for taking a bath when you're grubby, having a snooze when you're tired, or making a sandwich when the old tum is rumbling.
It's like this, store managers, turkey buyers and the rest... It's Christmas. The majority of meat eaters eat turkey for Christmas. Make sure you stock up on them, so that there are enough fresh, freerange, organic and frozen to meet the demand. Stick 'em in your shops with a price label on them. Wait for customers to have that light bulb "ooh, it's Christmas, I must get some mince pies, a plum pudding, some chipolatas and a turkey" moment. Bob's your uncle.
Perhaps I should charge for this little bit of insight? Nope. The idea of becoming Head Turkey Consultant would just make me a laughing stock.

Disenfranchised turkeys

2009-11-29T13:45:00.002Z

My turkeys have lost their way to the polling booth. They have been done to death, plucked, gutted, trussed, packed and frozen. Forty minutes or there abouts to pluck a turkey, compared to two hours for a goose. The four of them weigh a smidgen under 11lbs to nearly 12.5 lbs, fully dressed, or as seems to make more sense, without their clothes, feet, head and unwanted innards but with their giblets.
So what with my summer peas blanched and bagged and nestling in the deep freeze and the meat element sorted, I should be able to put my feet up until the 25th December...only there's no time left in the diary for buying presents, writing cards or restocking the meagre booze cupboard.

Pet philosophy

2009-11-27T15:44:00.005Z

As Claude the cat bounced from floor to bin lid to windowsill and sat stolidly over Fenn the dog's head, Fenn ducked a little nervously but refused to move.
The three cats are boys, the dogs both girls. What I want to know is, do the boy cats know the dogs ARE girls and vice versa? Do they care? Does it make any difference? Would an all male or all female pet household for mayhem make?
Do they show each other little hidden courtesies? Do they have different sets of rivalries? Is this the most steaming heap of anthropomorphism?
Just curious. Perhaps the answer is at the end of the rainbow.

TPLO

2009-11-18T21:38:00.004Z

My love, my darling, my wondrous hairy beast. There you lie on your cushion, like Cleopatra or Caligula on a good day, receiving nibbles of banana and general worship. Your leg is shaved, soft and bare, vulnerable and naked, a neat stitched wound on either side. I smear on iodine gel, treacly and thick. As soon as my back is turned you lick it off with toddler glee, no sign of the geriatric years. Even the vet said he couldn't believe your age; like my mother you've been fiddling with the date on your passport.
I carried you home early, knowing you couldn't abide a night away, and there you lay, stiff, sore, drunk on anaesthetic, sleeping unnaturally, doped up, suffering. Your whole back end was unstable, the good leg twisted askew and I lurched inside; had they done something irreparable to you? In the middle of the night I crept down to check on you and your tail wagged, my fears of paralysis daft, unfounded. By morning you were willing to have a go at standing, by the afternoon you were hopping about gamely on three legs, brain clear, eyes bright.
A month lies ahead of taking you outside on the lead just to go to the toilet, absolutely no exercise allowed. For two further months it's light exercise on the lead only. It'll be mid-February before you can hurtle round the farm, roll in snow, leap with Fenn. By then your hair will have grown back, and you will be my shaggy haired monster, not my delicate girl.

More on TPLO here and here.

Chicken feet or paws

2009-11-10T11:53:00.005Z

Do your chickens have paws? Do you know even one that does? If so, perhaps you might be able to help this company out? I'm afraid I can't respond to their polite request:

"Good morning. We are an importer of frozen meat in China and be very interested in buying chicken feet or paws (as the picture shows) from your company. As the final wholesaler buying all year round, we can buy 2-10 containers per month. We buy both processed and unprocessed feet or paws. Would you give us more details about the following information:

your best price (CIF HONGKONG or Vietnam port)
your monthly quantity
the quality of chicken feet and paws (are they processed or unprocessed? are they with yellow skin or not,with black spots or not, etc.

We will appreciate very much if you could send us some pictures of your chicken feet and paws".

My great sadness is that there was, in fact, no picture attached, but you might like this.

Where the wild things are

2009-11-08T12:55:00.004Z

Down in Lower Quarry Heads is where the wild things are. My beautiful black Torwen ewe lambs, safely tucked away from the ram for another year until they have grown big and mature.
But these are big pre-pubescent gals; I don't think we've ever had such good ewe lambs and every time we weigh all the lambs to determine which are ready to go to the butcher and which need to stay back for a while, these beauties top the scale a couple of kilos beyond all the others, even though they are definitely NOT going for meat. They should make great mums in time.

And another thing....

2009-11-06T14:27:00.006Z

Some days it's hard to be a sanguine soul. Some days I want to reach into my desk drawer, remove something sharp and poke people with it. These days are rare, it's true, but when I have to deal with banks or insurance companies my poking finger starts to itch something awful.
The Mopsa dog has been the cause of one or two insurance claims recently. To say the insurance company were as willing to part with their money as a dog with a bone, would be understating the case. The reasons they give for why my claim is, in fact, not a claim would amaze the most truth bending ten year old caught red-handed with their tongue stuck in the jampot ("I was just trying to save the little fly at the bottom, mum").
Even the claim that they say they ARE going to pay comes with a caveat: "the amount of £143.52 will be issued direct to you in due course. Unfortunately we are unable to advise any exact time scale at the moment due to a slight delay we have in our payment system. Please be advised we are aware of the situation and doing our upmost to improve it". Do I feel the rumble of cashflow problems? I wonder if I was to write similarly (well, perhaps without the malapropism) about a necessary delay in parting with my monthly premiums, whether they would take it as an acceptable approach?
Their reasoning is spurious, every comment nonsense, and I can feel the poking finger spark alarmingly into life, full of energy for the battle ahead. Don't they know they're dealing with the tiger?

Preparation

2009-11-01T16:21:00.002Z

As a third of the farm's hedges are being trimmed before winter sets in and heavy tractors won't be able to move across the farm, there is also lots of preparation going on in readiness for delivering smallholder training. I've delivered training of various sorts all over the place but only rarely on the farm. So it's time to install an outdoor bog, to make up a big table for ten of us to sit around, put together the flatpack stools, finesse the training content, plan the menus, tidy the farm and.... TIDY THE FARM?
Oh yes. Having done my risk assessment everything I see is either a hazard or a learning opportunity. I try to look at things through fresh eyes, both stuff of interest and stuff of risk. That hurdle, so usefully leant up against the barn wall as an impromptu gate for guiding Aunt Agatha into the stock box - a stumble and fall waiting to happen. The shearing equipment hanging from the ceiling of the barn? Ready to brain someone if they step back without looking. Beautiful mossy, licheny concrete? Treacherously slippery.
My list of to-dos is long and physical. Tonight I'll be painting some signs for the new bog.

Roger rogers

2009-10-17T20:34:00.007+01:00

The grief an overexcited ram can cause a farmer cannot be exaggerated. New chap Roger created something of a stir yesterday morning when I came to give him some fresh hay first thing and found his paddock empty. I set off across the farm to check on the various flocks of ewes but couldn't see him anywhere, whilst OH cruised the lanes in the Landrover for him - lying dead in a ditch, humping someone elses prime pedigree ewes, or butting his way through hedges and freshly washed cars.
Could we find him? No. I flag down the postman and he promises to ask at each farm he passes. We drop in on all the local farmers and they say they'll keep a look out. We go home, me to wait for phone calls and OH to retrace my steps across the farm.
There is a spluttering of "Should've gone to Specsavers" as I clearly missed what was obviously there in my trails through the fields. I hang my head in shame, and then realise that Roger has got in with a large flock (two hundred or more) of mule ewes that have yet to go to the ram. My words are blue, and we waste no time in bringing every ewe in that flock into the barn, Roger wedged firmly among them. There is hardly room to move in there which means it's not difficult to catch randy Roger and hold him manfully whilst I usher out the disappointed ewes.
I'm mortified and hope he hasn't impregnated too many of them - their matings should be with pedigree Suffolk rams. We won't know how awful the consequences are for another five months.
Roger is penned tight, and we realise we're not going to be able to keep him like this for a fortnight, when he's due to join the other Badger Face Torddus, so decide that perhaps he can stay in the barn for a week and split the difference.
This morning he has leapt out of his pen, bending the hurdles in his wake, knocked aside a ten inch thick gatepost and is bounding about the paddock, still frustrated that his semi-freedom has taken him no closer to fresh totty. We relent, unable to bear the prospect of disappearing ram for another fortnight.
All the ewes are brought in for crutching and fluking and Heptavacing, and then the white 'uns are led off with Roger, and the black with Samson. Lambing will be two weeks early in 2010.

I'm still here...

2009-10-14T06:20:00.002+01:00

...just in case anyone was wondering. Along with many others at the moment, running to keep up with themselves, there is just too much stuff to be done and not enough time to do it in. Not sure what's happened at the close of summer, beginning of autumn, but bonkersly busy would just about cover it. I'm leaping up at 4am to deal with emails and other deskbound tasks that have emerged whilst I've had my head buried elsewhere. Next week looks more benign (famous last words), so perhaps I'll be able to walk the dogs, take a photo or two and post something farmish.

The Bush Inn, Morwenstow

2009-10-01T22:12:00.008+01:00

No, I really don't see myself as a restaurant critic. I don't wear enough rings, have a stern enough demeanour or describe my munching in terms of literary criticisms, but I feel I should put the record straight after my mauling of Pan-ache. There are, after all, some simple places that do outstanding food in the area.
After bouncing about with multiple dogs and friends at the usual beach haunt, we headed north along the coast to pick up some strap hinges for the barn doors from blacksmith David North-Lewis. The sea air and traversing of fat cobbles had built a perfect appetite, and the pub, just yards away from the forge, called to us. They were happy for us to bring in the dogs and we commandeered a big corner table so we could tuck the canines, large and small, under our legs and out of the way.
Our eyes slithered over the starters but when we saw the pudding list decided to go mains and puds. Beer battered fish with fresh tartare and homemade mushy peas; homemade beef burger with stilton and relish with fries; steak and kidney pie with roasted veg and mash. Nought complicated there, just straightforward pub food without a gastro complex in sight. But oh my. It was fantastic. Everyone oohed and aahed over their dishes. My burger was stunning - gorgeous beef, beautifully cooked and it smelled amazing - what you always hope for and rarely if ever get. I wanted to bury myself in it. I don't know who the chef is (although he took the pudding orders from me), but the chap sure knows how to cook.
I took Fenn out for a quick leg stretch across the village green and for another sniff of the sea before it was time for almond crème brûlée with shortbread for some and chocolate brownie for me. As the waitress got close to the table I could smell the deep dark scent of good chocolate. This was clearly going to be an adult experience. A bitter sweet crumbly brownie sat in a sea of thick dark, hot chocolate sauce with what can only be called several portions of clotted cream.
We talked at length about the disappointing food we've had in pubs over the years and grinned broadly at having just experienced exactly how it should be done.
There's lots about the local provenance of their ingredients and it shows - everything was super fresh and we've already planned a return visit.
For once there were absolutely no scraps left for the dogs. Shame.

Bidding in Builth

2009-09-23T12:51:00.003+01:00

Off to the National Ram Sale on Monday to buy a ram (obviously), but also some ewes.
The aptly named Toyboy is now too closely related to the breeding flock so has gone off to bonk his way across Exmoor leaving me to head to Wales on the hunt for his replacement.
Those auction palpitations never fail to get you. The females aren't so much of a problem as you can buy as many or as few as you have room for in the trailer, so an extra one here or there doesn't matter. But a ram? I only want one Torddu ram, and there are several possibilities in the various pens, so when do I bid, and when not? I can't afford NOT to come home with one as it'll mean yet more expensive traipsing around the country, what with the majority being in Wales and very few if any in Devon, but I can't come home with two. That really puts the pressure on. I mark my catalogue with those I don't want - too fat (loads of them are wobbly with fat rather than muscle and I want a working not a show ram), too young (I need a proven sire), too ugly (personal bias), problematic horns and so on. I bid for one that comes before my preferred choice but the auctioneer doesn't see me wave my catalogue even though I am sat right in front of him and by now have had several sheep knocked down to me, so I am a real bidder, parting with genuine dosh. Ah well. My fave then comes into the ring and I get all excited - he is a really big chap, sound, strong, muscular, great horns, with a fabulously endowed set of bollocks. Just what I need. No. Rewind. Just what my ewes need.
Just a couple of other bidders are interested as they are mostly showing folk at this Badger Face Society annual show and sale, and he has the attributes of a worker. He's knocked down to me at a decent price.
Wormed and vaccinated he is now in the ram's paddock, looking a little lost, stamping his feet, snorting through his nostrils, every ounce trembling with testosterone. If he breathed fire I wouldn't be surprised, so I'm not going to introduce him to Samson until tupping is finished. If the two rams get into a fight and something happens, that's zero lamb next year.

Sex and the single pig

2009-09-18T09:49:00.003+01:00

Oh my. I've been at the sharp end of pig sex. Not having a boar, and not wanting to go to the hassle of hiring in a pedigree beast and having to feed it and put up with its hugeness and unfamiliarity, Aunt Agatha has been artificially inseminated. Not just once, but three times. The vet came out to show us and then decided the sow wasn't quite ready, so came back the following morning when we all played our part, me doing the sexing up bit, pretending to be the boar (major massage, rub and general physical labour stuff) whilst the others were at the business end with a half metre long catheter and a bottle of semen.
That afternoon we were on our own, and there I was, puffing and blowing and getting my pig in the mood. First thing this morning, the third and final bottle is squished down a fresh catheter and I'm done in with the physicality of it all, whilst OH does the techie bit with a squirt of Boarmate and a-twiddling of tubes and a-squeezing of bottles. A picture of the complete sex kit is attached - Boarmate spray, semen and the corkscrew tipped catheter - without the knackered helper. If I smoked I'd be off for a fag.

Piglets

2009-09-16T04:18:00.003+01:00

What with there being nine growing and rambunctious piglets, it's practically impossible to get all of them in shot at the same time. As these three snored in the sun, the mud from their wallow caked on their backs, the other six were rushing about making their distinctive excitable woofing noises.
All of them will be in their new homes in the next week or so and I will miss their joyous, curious natures. Now weaned, they seem a self sufficient bunch, and certainly Aunt Agatha is not missing their insistent nuzzling; she is sleeping the sleep of a tired sow, catching up on me time as her milk starts to dry up.

Nick's plum sauce

2009-09-12T15:47:00.005+01:00

With the final batch of Victoria and round red plums I decide to make plum sauce. I want it for crispy duck pancakes and to smear on pork ribs. I want an authentic Chinese recipe, and find one. I stone and chop and stone and chop. The pot bubbles and I stir on and on for hours until I have a thick hoisiny mixture. I lean in to inhale and blast my sinuses adrift from their usual resting place. The acid of the vinegar is so overpowering my eyes water. So I taste. Bleurghhh. I recheck the recipe. The ratio of sugar to vinegar is very low, so I add some more, boil and bubble and retaste. And add more sugar. And reboil and retaste. And add yet more sugar and retaste. Hmm. That might be right.
I know, as an old chutney maker, that these things need to mellow over time, but there are limits. Acrid is never good.
So, just to check that there wasn't a typo in the recipe book I email the publisher who passes the message on toot sweet to the author.
Next morning there's an email in my inbox: "I'm sorry the recipe didn't work for you. I'm not sure why. I was picking plums last weekend in Buckinghamshire with Camilla, who passed me the original recipe. Her father opened the first Chinese restaurant in the UK and would make up this recipe seasonally as plum sauce wasn't available commercially then. Maybe the tartness of the plums has affected your recipe. In any case it's not nice when you invest time in a recipe and you don't like the end result. I am making some over the next couple of days and will send you some of mine."
And guess what dropped into the post box today? Isn't that lovely of him? I've sent a wee pot of my own back in exchange. Fair's fair.

Snowmail - Channel 4 news

2009-09-11T21:06:00.003+01:00

"And so to sheep. At Lydd Primary School, Romney Marsh, Kent to be precise, where the head has raised a school sheep to show children where mint sauce comes into play and how food really happens etc etc. Trouble is, it is now chops o'clock for Marcus the sheep and some parents are upset, complaining their precious things cannot sleep and all manner of weepiness.
Not that I am unsympathetic - this being Kent the poor darlings already have the trauma of the 11 plus to contend with. After which a little abattoir action ought to be a piece of cake, or slice of lamb..."

This wanged its way into my email box this pm from Alex Thomson of Channel 4 news. Oh gawd. More people who think meat comes in polystyrene trays wrapped in cling film. No more burgers for you, chums.

Yesterday Suffolks, today Mules

2009-09-03T20:54:00.004+01:00

No, not MULE, Mule.
Keeping on the sheep theme, this is another of the breeds grazing on the farm.
But thinking about it, I'd love a donkey. Not sure what I'd do with it, apart from stroke its ears in times of stress.
Perhaps some uses for donkeys suggestions might help persuade me? Keep 'em legal.
Oh, and the photo's much better large - do click on it.

Suffolks in Devon

2009-09-02T12:30:00.003+01:00

I'm having one of those infuriating days when the synapses in the brain are making far too many connections. First one idea, then another, pops into my head. I can't start to juggle half of them and my desk is strewn with stuff, stuff that needs attention, now interlayered with new things.
If there were a group of egomaniacs in the room, not one of them could get a word in edgeways, full of blabber, blather and babble as I am.
It's also slashing it down with rain, so I don't even feel able to go and stride out with the dogs until it calms down a bit.
So, when the dogs start to woof and I see a stream of chunky suffolks fill the yard, it's a welcome respite.

Sweet corn

2009-08-28T21:40:00.004+01:00

Two years ago I moaned and fretted about the bizarrely polkadot affair that was my homegrown corn on the cob. How nature has improved itself.
Can you spot a gap? Are they not perfect? Could you nourish yourself and armfuls of friends with this harvest? Oh yes.
So whilst the celery succumbs disgustingly to the slugs, I take comfort in my corn, my tomatoes and aubergines, my outrageously fecund cucumbers and the spherical yellow courgettes, known as the holy hand grenades of Antioch. The turkeys, much grown, are kept well fed on the surplus.

Owl pellet

2009-08-27T10:56:00.007+01:00

This morning there was a flyover. There I was, minding my own beeswax, letting the geese out for the day, when poof! A huge air balloon was travelling directly overhead. I waved, as you do, but although I could see sandbags and the like, and someone or something was clearly operating the dangerous looking firey thing, I couldn't see a soul. My theory is that the navigator was three feet tall and that the passengers were so travel sick that they were bent over honking into the basket and all invisible from the ground.
A couple of evenings ago I had a rather different flyover. Out of the threshing barn window, just a few feet above my head, whooshed a barn owl. So much excitement! Barn owl boxes have been made and sited hither and yon, but perhaps a bird was really nesting? Certainly there are large white splats typical of the barn owl, and the following day we found a huge pellet, complete with fur, bones and a yellow sharp-toothed skull.

Bletting my medlars

2009-08-23T12:44:00.005+01:00

Three years ago when we planted up the gaps in the orchard, two medlars were included in the list of "must have" trees. I'm still berating myself for having forgotten a black mulberry, but this winter I will buy one - there is a tree guard already up waiting to protect it.
The medlars are growing nicely in their contorted fashion, and in contrast with two medlar fruits last year, they are positively blooming having produced a couple of fistfuls.
The fruit is sitting in the scullery waiting to blet, or rot, just a little before I make some medlar cheese, not unlike a quince membrillo.
The place is full of bowls and trugs and baskets and trays of runner beans, blackberries, courgettes, tomatoes, aubergines and more. We start jamming and peeling and shredding with a vengeance but start to flag by 6pm. There will be more to bottle and preserve tomorrow.

Lacking Panache

2009-08-18T07:59:00.010+01:00

Yesterday was spent exploring parts of the local town of Okehampton that hadn't been peered at before: the castle (a pleasure), the station (a Miss Marple extravaganza of time stood stillness) and the museum (a curate's/curator's egg).
Gagging for a cool drink as the station buffet is sadly closed on a Monday, we headed back into town, and nosed into one of the more salubrious looking cafes in Red Lion Yard, mere strides from the restaurant shamed in front of millions by Gordon Ramsay.
After half an hour in the Panache Cafe (swiftly renamed Pan-ache by my disappointed companion), it became clear that the Gordon treatment should have extended here too.
Oh lordy, where to start?
Its position is great - a long frontage of big windows looking across the pedestrian alleyway; a busy busy thoroughfare but no cars, peaceful and perfect for peoplewatching. Decor slightly dull but clean and bright. In we hop. It's half full, but we sit for ten minutes or so before a waitress comes to the table and takes our order.
Meanwhile a chap with a Scandinavian accent comes in and asks if they do lunch. "No" is the response, "we only do quiches, pasties and cakes". He leaves with his family of four. I suggest that the next time someone asks that question in ooh, ten minutes time, it being lunchtime and all, that the response is "Yes, of course! We do a small range of great home made quiches and traditional pasties, which you can round off with a cream tea, or one of our fab cakes - do take a seat and I'll be over to take your order in two minutes." Better? More likely to end in tips? Yup.
As we wait, a chap comes in asking if he can have help to open the second of the double doors so his mate in a wheelchair can come in. Thereby follows a lot of flap and pathetic explanation that the door is really quite difficult to open and would man-in-wheelchair please put himself in the role of second-class-citizen and use the other door that no-one else has to use. That gets rid of two more potential customers.
Meanwhile, about six people have stopped to ask a passing waitress where the toilet is. It's quite clearly marked if you happen to have the one seat opposite, otherwise it's invisible. Suggestion number two - make up a two sided sign (write TOILET on it, obviously - both sides now, no skimping) and hang it at ninety degrees from the wall, so that everyone can see it without having to bother the staff or fret that they cannot see if that most essential room exists.
Next. Our cheese and onion pasties arrive with the comment that our drinks are not ready but she doesn't want our pasties to get cold. As I'd seen these plates sit on the counter for five minutes, not realising they were intended for us, I unhesitatingly hover my hand over the dishes. Steam? No. Heat? No. I pick them up and take them back to the counter and ask for them to be heated up. We hear panicky mutterings about how difficult it is to get a pastie to the right heat. They return, soggy from the microwave. Nil points. Served with a small handful of crisps. Zero points. Not a garnish of a lettuce leaf, a tomato or cucumber curl in sight. Somehow, I expected more in a cafe (even for my £2.45) than a soggy version of the pastie I could buy in Endacotts bakery next door for half that. Charge an extra quid, but plate it up with style and a handful of lightly dressed salad, heat it in a proper oven (crispy is what you're after mates), and if you don't know how to heat a pastie may I suggest that you are in the wrong profession?
Drinks. Pot of tea and an elderflower cordial with sparkling water. For my £1.85 I expected a long cool drink - this is cordial we are talking about after all, not champagne. No, the glass is downed in one brief slug and I'm left entirely unrefreshed, even though a chunk of orange has been pointlessly attached to the rim and bangs against my not small nose.
As we roll our eyes at each other about this desperate lost business opportunity, and how sad it is that local people and tourists can't have access to a cheery cafe serving a simple range of really great food and intelligent service, an expensively dressed couple come in. They ask the lunch question and get the same answer, but they are alert and have noticed the blackboard signs announcing broccoli and cheese or tomato and basil quiches. "No, no," the waitress says, waving her hand about dismissively, we only have Quiche Lorraine left". The couple acquiesce, and take a seat. But when no-one has come to take their brief order in five or more minutes, they too walk out.
If ever a place was run for the benefit of the staff and not the customer, this is it. "No" is their favourite word. Excuses and explanations their bread and butter. When I get up to pay, the waitress asks if everything was alright. I take possession of their favourite word. "No", I say "I can't believe you aren't making the most of the opportunity here. The position is great, but the food is a disaster and you keep turning people away". Her jaw hangs open. Well, it's about time someone said something or at least four people are shortly going to be out of work. Okehampton deserves better than this. And so do I on my day out.

Another slow worm

2009-08-16T17:32:00.004+01:00

It's a while since I saw my first slow worm, and today, whilst picking the first blackberries of the season for a crumble, I spotted my second, only a few yards from the previous sighting 16 months ago.
This time I pick it up. It is smooth, silky and cool. It sits calmly in my hand, curling itself gently through my fingers. I can feel its strength, its muscularity. It is not as bronzey coloured as No.1 SW, and has a distinct extended middle. A pregnant female perhaps. It also reminds me of Hard Hattie, although it is shinier and the scales are less pronounced and rough.
Suddenly it turns from a no-legged lizard to a snake; its forked tongue flickers, tasting the air. It can't be more than ten inches long, but it is feisty.

I carry No.2 SW back to where I found it, and it slides into the long grass as if greased with candle wax.

Mopsa, Elizabethan style

2009-08-12T13:27:00.006+01:00

Mopsa is not a vain dog, although she is undeniably the most beautiful dog on the planet... (pause for remonstrations), so she wasn't bothered by a couple of eye warts. But then they started to scratch the surface of her eyeball and they had to come off.
Whilst under the double whammy of miraculous but ghastly anaesthetic, her teeth were seen to and one was removed with its associated epulis.
Poor old girl, it seems as though warty growths find you irresistable. But then, so do I. Even in a plastic Elizabethan ruff.

Early one morning

2009-08-11T17:44:00.005+01:00

No, sadly, I still don't have cows, but there are cows on the farm which is nearly as good. And here is the first calf born on the farm in many a year.
I watched it steaming, moist and surprised at ten minutes, and the first giraffe-legged steps, the falling back on its haunches, the rest and the more successful attempt to stand. Freshly born, there wasn't that much difference in colour between mum and daughter, but now, fully dried, she is a pale cream.
I took this photo as the calf approached 24 hours on earth. Mum is a first timer, it's thought, and she was a little bemused by the whole business. But early this morning the heifer lowed gently to the calf, and it lowed softly back and trundled towards her on jelly legs.

Raspberry tartoise

2009-08-09T16:11:00.004+01:00

When you have more raspberries than you can eat, it's only fair to share.
Hattie adores red fruits: strawberries, tomatoes, raspberries. I took a bowlful into the garden and sat with her. From half asleep to fully gorged and raring to go in three minutes. Raspberries are super-charged fuel for prehistorics.
Can you imagine the size of a fruit that could satisfy a brontosaurus?
I will give her face a wipe later to keep the flies away, once she's licked up all the remnants.

The abattoir that helps with slaughter

2009-08-07T13:16:00.004+01:00

I rarely read The Times, but I was travelling by train yesterday and a copy was shoved into my hand. Flicking through, there was yet another article telling the urban world how they could have their own good life with the aid of a back garden (and tolerant neighbours).
I read it in the light hearted fashion in which it was offered to the reader. I love the thought of hen coops scattered across urban sprawls, providing eggs and entertainment for families, and an insight into animal welfare and food production, but then Tom Whipple moved on to the marvellously bonkers notion of keeping pigs, cows, sheep and goats in a city backyard.
It was the piggy bits that had me rolling my eyes and hoping none of Tom's readers would contact me for a weaner.
Pigs DON'T reach meat weight at 12-16 weeks. 26 weeks is the minimum, and I take the Berkshires to 32 weeks. This means large animal in small garden, not cutesy wee piglet that would fit on two plates. I can just see the happy couple picking up an eight week old weaner in the back of the car (illegal) and carrying it through the house to pop it into an old dog kennel in the garden, and then the scratching of heads 18 weeks later as they contemplate huge beastie having to be corralled through french windows, past the sofa, negotiating the hallway and front door to a trailer they don't have to an abattoir they can't find.
The best bit was the comment that "most local abattoirs will help with slaughter". I had visions of said couple girding their loins to stick pig with knife as the slaughterman helpfully holds pig still.
Ah well, knock the good life if you must, but in the right environment (so NOT the city garden), with the right information and skills, it's a great life. In the city, keep to bees, hens and ducks unless you have a city farm.

Making money

2009-08-04T13:52:00.012+01:00

Unlike Barclays bankers, no-one is paying me any bonuses, so earning money is nearly always on my mind. Will enough consultancy opportunities come in now that the economy spurns those of us on the outer edges of employment? Am I selling the farm produce effectively? Am I minimising inessential costs? And so on. I'm not the only one to be preoccupied in this way (although I'm not about to lay my balance sheet out for you).
So when I read this story, the end of the farming game for Rosie Boycott, I had cause, yet again, to stop and think - is it possible to farm on a small scale and not subsidise it from other earnings?
Possibly, possibly, but only with some major caveats:

Small scale will never cover the mortgage payments, so live in a caravan, a hovel, a cave, under the stars, or buy outright with the moolah from some previous existence.
It will never pay you a wage, but you may be lucky enough to live in a way and in a place that minimises expenditure (just don't go wearing any holes in your jeans, and don't forget you can't pay your Council Tax in beans or the water bill with eggs).
It will certainly never allow you to pay someone else a wage (I think that's where Rosie went wrong), and because of this...
...it's a full-time thing; even when you're doing something else to earn some cash, farm necessities must be dealt with - life and death and welfare issues can't wait until it's more convenient - the farm dictates, not the diary.
Some daft bugger desperate for short term cash will try to undercut you all the time - stick to your guns and prices or you really will be heading for doom and gloom, subsidising other people's lifestyles and choking on it.
It's a business, not a flaky hobby. That might mean registering for VAT, producing accounts, keeping records, analysing the finances, planning for the future, investing lots of time and appropriate amounts of money in the right places.
There is a lot of capital outlay, even if, like us, you make a huge amount of stuff yourself. You need equipment, tools (from a sledge hammer to a welder), almost certainly a tractor, animal handling facilities, animal shelter(s), the list goes on.
Work out how much stock you and your land can handle - all kinds of grief comes from overstocking (disease, exhausted fields, huge feed bills to make up for the lack of grass), and other grief comes from having more on your plate than you can cope with.
Don't fanny around being precious about farming subsidies - if you're eligible, get those papers in - you can't afford not to.
If you want a hobby rather than a business, smallholding is great, but if that's your limit, stick to producing enough for yourself and one or two friends...and leave it at that.

I am so far from getting this right; I'm learning all the time, and moving cautiously. But I do know, for example, after two years of keeping records, that selling fertile hatching eggs really does cover all the poultry feed bills, provides us with meat, eggs and entertainment, and produces the kind of surplus that matches the costs of their breeding, fencing and housing (just), but it's very time intensive. I know that it's not yet the moment to invest in a second breeding sow, and that the notion of cows has to be parked. Having increased the flock I don't know if I will be able to sell all my fabulous lamb boxes direct to discerning carnivores this autumn, but I do know how much the abattoir will pay for them as a second best resort. I know that I can't afford to pass my wool through the British Wool Marketing Board any longer and that I have to market my fleeces directly to spinners and weavers.
But the biggest caveat of all is that you have to see the point of it, because you will be spending 24 hours a day at it.

The early birds

2009-08-03T14:25:00.006+01:00

I have records for everything. Lambing dates, live and dead weights for lamb and pork going back years, breeding records and statistics, lists of ducklings on order, incubation setting and hatching dates, hedgetrimming and laying schedules, you name it.
I check the poultry and livestock spreadsheets and note that today is the day to turn on the hatcher and move the next batch of duck eggs across from the incubator as soon as it's up to heat. In two days time the hatching will begin.
I go into the old stable I use as the incubation and hatching room and I hear cheeping, and it's not from the swallows or housemartins in the roof. Seesawing gently as the automatic turning cradle tilts to and fro are two early birds. A pair of black indian runner ducklings have not waited to be moved into the non-swaying, non-tilting, flat as a pancake hatcher, but have emerged in the incubator leaving neatly excavated shells.
I hurtle into the boot room, turn on the heat lamp, chuck sawdust into the brooder, put in a drinker and some feed, and gallumph back to extract the ducklings and put them into their new home for the next two weeks.
With the world no longer turning under their feet they look a little dazed. I present the early birds - just a couple of hours old. More will be joining them shortly. Before they have time to catch a worm.

Piglet update

2009-07-30T20:51:00.002+01:00

Pigs love weeds. All gardeners should have one.

Moving the pigs

2009-07-26T19:18:00.006+01:00

The piglets are ten days old, and it's time to ear notch and turn the new pig family out into the big wide world. Well, into a large paddock with a spacious warm ark made tufty with straw.
Mum is encouraged into the stock box with a scoop of food, the door is shut and the piglets are gently contained in the barn. Each one is picked up and examined. Right number of evenly spaced teats (14)? Good shaped and sturdy body? Well marked for the breed? Properly formed mouth? All pass muster and there are a couple of exceptional ones. As each has their unique number notched into their ear I take them in my arms and cradle them. They sit in my embrace, snug, content, not struggling or squealing. I feel the most overwhelming sense of pride and pleasure. They have hot, strong little bodies and have quadrupled in size since birth. They are calm and happy. The sow is grunting softly, and one by one I put each piglet into the box with her, a separating hurdle between them so she doesn't trample on them as they are transported. In the paddock we pick up each piglet and put it into the back of the ark, deep in straw. The box is opened and Aunt Agatha sways out, looks about and then goes into the ark too. Text book.

One hairy bat

2009-07-19T17:44:00.004+01:00

A momentary respite from piglets. Can you believe the hairiness of this bat??
There it was, clinging to the bedroom curtain, upsidedown of course, one eye open, giving me the look. My, but you're hairy I said. I have no idea what it was thinking, but "you're one to talk" might have been in its mind.
There's enough of the fluffy matter there to create a decent portion of chest wig. I am now on the hunt for a small gold medallion to hang around its neck. Just to complete the outfit.

And finally....

2009-07-17T09:24:00.006+01:00

...Nine piglets, popped out like corks from a bottle of fizz.
On the 118th day, at 6pm she started to nest. I was expecting 115 days, but no, the Berkshire likes to take longer than other pigs, (something I'd never read about before). By 9.30pm there were contractions. By 11.30pm there were two piglets, by 12.30pm there were seven, and sometime between then and 4am whilst I wasn't looking, two more had appeared. So here they are, no more than nine hours old.
Mother and small ones are sleeping for England between bouts of frenzied feeding. Haven't had a chance to sex them yet.

Aunt Agatha

2009-07-07T21:20:00.005+01:00

In just a few days Aunt Agatha is due to farrow. After some military planning she was brought into the barn, and settled quickly to the deep straw, regular supplies of pea pods and frequent rubs. She shivers ecstatically under energetic fingers. When she lies down I can see the piglets move in her wonderfully large belly, and her rear teats are huge, the ones towards the front slowly filling with milk.
This evening I hung the heat lamp over the creep area and she came to investigate. She can't reach it, but she has sniffed and taken its scent into her memory bank. I turned it on to see how she would react, but after some minor curiosity she simply scratched her sides and arse against the creep bars and lay down once more. I've turned off the lamp, but I'm hoping that when the piglets come, she won't now be unnerved by the glowing red beacon.
The piglets probably don't need the heat lamp at this time of year but I want to make sure that they are attracted to the creep area and can retreat if they feel their mother flopping to the ground; inadvertent killing of small young piglets by huge ponderous mothers is not so much frequent as an expected part of every birth - no doubt that's why they can have so many in a litter.
I am all eager anticipation and nervousness, but for now we two commune, sharing oinks and snorts like a pair of biddies at bingo.

Cheerful creatures - for now

2009-07-06T20:57:00.005+01:00

Another first. I've been and gone and bought some young turkey poults. Funny critters. They chirp and chirrup continuously, companionably, cheerily. Unlike most other birds they don't seem to show any signs of nervousness. Perhaps they are planning to eat me at Christmas?
Putting them to bed is a two person job. They happily come and greet you, but show no interest or understanding that they need to go into the cosy straw-filled hut as it gets dark. Ducks, geese, hens all learn after a few usherings that this is the routine, but the turkey's natural boldness means they don't move away from you towards shelter, they come to meet you instead.
When I was shown round the lovely farm where these Norfolk Blacks came from I was in absolute awe of the size of the stags, and chortled at the leather saddles worn by the hens. But stags can enjoy a bit of the rough stuff, and the leather is to protect the females from over amorous attention.
I've put the turkeys in the garden on fresh ground and I can hear them chortle through the window. The gobbling noise made by the adult stags is hilarious, so let's hope mine get a chance to do that before the roast tatties shout for a meaty accompaniment.

Bat splat

2009-07-05T10:36:00.004+01:00

Remember this? I'm truly grateful the llama didn't make his mound on the windowsill. But the bats don't show the same reticence.
The front of the house and two of the windows are crusted and splatted with flying rodent (are bats rodents?) guano.
The photo shows the upstairs window sill, above which is the bat cave entrance. I hear hundreds of them squeaking and scuttling about in the loft, they then stick their arses out the hole, do a quick poo and then fly off into fly-munching land. Charming habits.
Most nights two or three whirl above my head in the bedroom, and each time you find a picture askew you can bet a bat is snoring behind it. I wonder if the bat splat is any good on the compost heap?

Casserole mole

2009-07-01T13:58:00.005+01:00

First it was polytunnel-toad, now it's casserole-mole. Where will it end? Bedroom-badger? Pantry-pig? Barn-owl?
"The cat brought in a mole" is muttered into my ear as I stuff my head more firmly under the pillow (not my turn to do the animals). Half an hour later I open the scullery door and a deep brown mole is scuttling about in the shadows. I shut the scullery door. I sit and think and eat my breakfast. I open the scullery door, grab a casserole and decide to carry said mole out in that. I have bare feet and vulnerable fingers. I shut the scullery door and go and get gloves and shoes. I open the scullery door and watch the mole choose between tins of baked beans and plum tomatoes before it decides to hide behind the shelving. It makes a hell of a noise rattling everything it bangs into. I shut the scullery door and finish the piece I was reading in the paper. Even louder rustling noises start. I open the scullery door (hopefully for the last time this morning) and watch Mr Mole wander across my path. Gotcha! I pick him up (gloves on), put him in the casserole and slam shut the lid. I carry the lot outside and put it in the shade while I decide what to do with him. The lid bounces off. I slam it back shut and stick a heavy weight on top. There is now a cursing and swearing mole inside my casserole.
What to do with him? We've trapped at least five moles in the veg patch this season and I don't want him anywhere near my swiftly growing foodstuffs. I could stew him without having to take him out of the pot. But because it's haymaking day and there is more than enough stress going round what with one tractor having to have new tyres RIGHT NOW, and the other waiting for me to pick up its box-fresh starter motor all before baling and carting can proceed, killing of the innocents is less than usually tempting. Casserole-mole is given a reprieve and is dumped in a field some way from the house and garden. No doubt he'll be back, and the traps are waiting.

Polytunnel toad

2009-06-29T09:04:00.008+01:00

I do like a toad. Even when they come hopping into the house to watch the ten o'clock news, as they do. These summer evenings the doors are left open and as the toads emerge from behind the damp greenness left lazily and deliberately unweeded from round the doorway, they hop into the boot room or venture more daringly across the kitchen, drawn by the BBC news headlines.
The polytunnel is home to another batch of toads. They hunt beneath the crush of courgettes, the thicket of tomatoes, the panoply of peas, relishing the damp soil, the flies, slugs and other edibles.
This is a photo of the polytunnel-toad; not as large as the news-at-ten-toad, but a charmer, all the same.

The polytunnel is looking very green, apart from the sweet peas, that produce a big bunch of pink, lilac, purple and red for the table every evening. But I want it to look even more colourful, full of flowers, and that's just starting to happen. The courgette blooms are there but you have to dig deep under the huge raspy leaves to see them; the tomato flowers are also shy, and their fruits are completely green for now. The spherical yellow courgettes are only just starting to fruit and bulge.
There is one baby aubergine, already purple, and the mass of peas are, to be fair, dotted with white flowers. The french beans are thinking about flowering. Another week and I'll be rewarded.

I was good!

2009-06-24T13:09:00.004+01:00

This morning I heard a furious rustling and thumping coming from the kitchen. When I went to investigate, Fenn was looking most excited but she hadn't, as I'd feared, stolen any of the hot rolls I'd recently taken out of the oven. But something had taken advantage of the open door, and there were sweet pea petals scattered all over the floor.
A juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker had found its way in and was fluttering, terrified, in the window. I easily picked it up, its gorgeous black and white stripes and scarlet cap, long pointy beak, still in my hand but so very much alive.
I hesitated. Should I take a fabulous close-up picture for my album and the blog, or should I be kind and let it go immediately?
I opened the window, opened my hand and off it flew.

Photo courtesy of natureinview.co.uk

Too bucolic for words

2009-06-21T19:26:00.003+01:00

First it was elderflower champagne, then it was strawberries, next tiny and delicious peas and baby courgettes. Then gooseberries for a crumble, wild strawberries as a snack and now more elderflowers, but this time for cordial.
I'm going to disappear up my own gingham pinny.
But to bring me back down to earth I removed a tapeworm segment from the cat's arse. And stuffed a worming tablet down its gob. Oh, and cleared up a regurgitated mouse (from the cat, the cat!). I did a heap of fairly stinky animal pooh related tasks too. Oh, and sat on some tar and made the seat of my pants sticky. It's an idyll.

When your world suddenly shrinks

2009-06-19T20:05:00.004+01:00

Sheep shorn, they are moved into the orchard to graze down the long grass. The llama isn't allowed in as he can kill a fruit tree at twenty paces; not by spitting but by mercilessly peeling off the bark with his buck teeth. So he gets left in the field that now needs topping to remove the sharp tall growth unfit for haymaking, and that can cut the soft part between the toes of the sheep as they walk through it.
The tractor goes round and round as Humphrey mews in distrust. He sits right in the centre, watching his patch of long, semi-camouflaging grasses get smaller and smaller. He decides that the tractor is boss and then swiftly stands and steps sideways into the topped area, peering over the gate to check all his ovine friends are close by. Satisfied, he starts to nibble the cut stems.

A day for shearing

2009-06-15T21:05:00.003+01:00

214 sheep sheared in the barn today, 41 of them mine.
Now the mums are shorn their lambs look nearly as big, and at just 10 weeks old.
The two rams have been penned into a small corral in the barn to get reacquainted, an annual post-shearing ritual, smelling different as they do without their hot oily fleece. I've just had fun disentangling one from the other, horns wrapped up like an executive puzzle.
The dams and lambs are chewing on the fresh succulent grass and herbs in the orchard, giving the geese a run for their money.
In this warm, wet weather it's a huge relief that none had maggots or any sign of them, and without their fleece they should now be fine until the autumn.
Shearing done, it's time to start thinking about haymaking. Again.

My little poppy

2009-06-14T18:38:00.004+01:00

Tissue thin and wildly coloured with sooty black nose, simple, evocative, in memoriam and seriously mind-altering...the poppy is a flower that sends thoughts darting in multiple directions from the profound to the commercially indulgent.
They emerge, singly, in the dry dust of the garden wall, flourish for a day or two and then seep back into the earth.
I was at a dinner with friends, the topic was massage, when a wonderfully erudite and knowledgeable woman in her ninth decade announced that she had once been massaged in a Chinese opium den....you could have heard a poppy drop.

My life as a brick

2009-06-11T21:35:00.004+01:00

There are many, many advantages to working in the arts sector. Mostly, it's the pleasure of working with artists. And sometimes, just occasionally, a special piece of work will find its way into your hand, and nestle happily in the house to be stroked (the three dimensional tapestry of Mopsa), hung from a hook (a framed sketch from a performance I supported), or gawped at in admiration over many years (a seven foot wooden sculpture of a head in profile).
Yesterday I had a strange delivery, a small but heavy parcel with a note attached warning me not to drop it on my toe. In my hand was a brick, but no ordinary brick. It had been covered in handmade unique textiles, printed and stitched with words I wrote for an old friend over a year ago.
After a (continuing) lively career in theatre, Julia turned her talents to textiles and asked people she knew to contribute to her degree show by asking for stories concerning objects from the family home that were precious in some way, however mundane or inexpensive. I shared this memory:
“It’s funny how so many precious family objects are related to the kitchen, to food, to the pleasure of eating together. I have several things from my mother’s kitchen that I could never bear to throw away, and that give me a warm feeling as I use or touch them. There’s the small, thick chopping board, barely large enough to cut a grapefruit, an off-cut from some post-war packing case, scarred and shaped by use. Then there’s the Nutbrown sandwich toaster, two rounds of hinged tin with long handles and chipped red wooden grips that lock, keeping the slices of bread and filling pressed together whilst they perch over the gas ring, bubbling butter and cheesy fat. I haven’t used it since childhood but it hangs by my cooker, just in case.
"Then there‘s the ancient Kenwood mixer that my mother nagged me for years to take and use, to give her more space in her tiny kitchen. I use it for cakes, whizzing up Thai green curry paste and best of all for making sausages. I loved using the mincer as a child, watching the trails of meaty worms emerge. Now I raise pigs and make my own sausages using the mincer and sausage attachment.
"Last of all are my Mother’s recipe books; not the ones by Marguerite Patten or Florence Greenberg, although I have several of those, but her own notebooks, covered in scrawl and bulked out by clippings from the Evening Standard. I still make her Dutch Apple Cake, covered in a Demarara, cinnamon and mixed spice crust”.
The brick is covered in dyed and digitally printed linen, with folds stitched as neatly as hospital corners. There is another piece of linen stitched on as a carrying handle. Printed onto the fabric are images of Kenwood attachments and the manufacturer's numbers for each component. A metal mincer cutter is held on tight with button thread and some of my words are printed on and stitched into the material.
So, after being exhibited alongside a host of other bricks, it's made its way to me - how lovely is that?
A brick was never as much my brick as this brick.

Talking of sheep...

2009-06-11T15:41:00.004+01:00

...who, exactly, voted for the BNP in the European elections? Sometimes it's really hard to believe in freedom of speech.

Sheep. Lots and lots of sheep.

2009-06-10T18:43:00.004+01:00

Off to the National Sheep South West show yesterday, just a heap of stones' throws away from here. Meet Big Boy (I have no idea if he has a name), a Blue Faced Leicester ram. He was the size of a donkey. I looked for a donkey to put alongside so you could see what I mean, but it was a sheep fair, not a donkey derby.
Although open to all, it was an event for sheep farmers, with serious conversation and debates about electronic identification, stalls of expensive sheep stuff to buy and for a lighthearted moment, shearing competitions and sheepdog demonstrations. I looked down microscopes at parasites and worms, fingered fleece, and took away a mouse mat in the shape of a sheep.

Mending wall

2009-06-04T05:41:00.005+01:00

There are patches of vertically stoned walls across the farm, no mortar, just laid dry, clamped together with earth and hope. Gradually they get repaired, even though they are just dots and dashes in the lines of the earth banks. Round the corner from the house is a flowerbed, lying up against an old boarded cowpen. Full of weeds and foxgloves it was also full of old ash tree stump. The digger put paid to that with chains and the flick of a finger, which sent yet more of the retaining stone wall tumbling down.
So in-house expertise set to work and produced a work of beauty. It's planted up now with herbs, surplus tomato, courgette and cucumber plants.
Walls seem to be on people's minds at the moment. Click on the pics for more detail.

Monochrome idyll

2009-06-01T23:15:00.005+01:00

There's Claude, posing in the gateway. Eustace was probably off catching shrews. A little earlier a squirrel was squawking at the cats. It was sitting on a branch of the oak on the left making angry squirrel noises and shaking its tail. I'm not sure I've knowingly heard a squirrel hiss and chatter before, but whatever he was saying it wasn't polite. Two dogs, two cats and two people didn't frighten him away. When he'd said his piece he swung off from tree to tree to do what squirrels do.
And it's amazing how monochrome can make a hot day cool.

From whinge to wonder

2009-05-28T22:26:00.003+01:00

It's hunt the orchid time again. Sadly, I can't yet boast of fields full of the beauties, but with that wonderful example just an inch away on the map, I hope that each year my patches will slowly start to increase. This is just the beginning of their growing season, and I will keep going back to check on progress and to count them up. No cows or sheep will go on these fields until the seed has set.

Standing up for the farmer

2009-05-27T10:42:00.006+01:00

The other day Arthur Clewley remarked on this here blog that single farm payment for farmers was pretty much the same as MP's expenses. My head spun a bit at that but I gave it due consideration, not wanting to stand up for farmers (an unhomogenous crew) just because we all have mud under our fingernails. After some head scratching I couldn't see that the one could be equated with the other, whatever one's position on public subsidy.
And then I read my copy of The Ark, and noted that Defra is considering new proposals for an independent animal health unit that might be better suited to making decisions about dealing with animal disease outbreaks, and that the cost should be borne not entirely but significantly by livestock farmers. The head spinning returned. After I'd gone through the scratching bit again, I continued bemused.
Firstly, if I recall correctly, the last foot and mouth outbreak was caused by government laboratories, not by farmers. I suppose that if the labs become independent then the government could start pointing their finger outwards for a change. But there is a bigger issue at stake here.
Farmers produce food for everyone, and they receive an ever reducing cut for this. The supermarkets then take a whopping profit, and the consumer gets to fill their trolley with goods. It's in everyone's interest that food is safe, and it's not a responsibility that just sits at the beginning of the food chain. Farmers are not the main beneficiaries of disease control in livestock - everyone who sells or buys meat (or milk, cheese, butter, yoghourt, eggs, wool, leather etc) is implicated. In fact, if you put farmers under any more financial strain the consumer will lose out; reduced availability of food of local providence, corners cut, welfare interests skirted round, more disease. And supermarkets will just buy their goods from overseas. A vicious and unvirtuous circle.
An equivalent approach in another sector would be expecting individuals with swine flu to pay for the production of Tamiflu for all.
I'm not against an independent body being in charge of animal disease outbreaks; the costs of foot and mouth in 2001 were huge and it's entirely possible that if an independent body had been in charge the costs may have been far smaller, the carnage far more limited, and the tourism industry less affected, based on simple affordability and less melodramatic scaremongering.
But Defra's proposals show a painfully blinkered view of the food sector. It isn't possible to survive as a food producer without making enough money to live on and to invest back into one's business; the farmer struggles whilst the supermarket booms. If the government is no longer interested in whether the UK can produce its own food and is happy with an increasing reliance on imports, it should say so. If it wants to break the back of British farming, its proposals if implemented will certainly provide further straws.

Not long for this world

2009-05-25T09:12:00.002+01:00

I don't know if it's just this pair or whether all jackdaws are stupid. But I suspect it is just the parents of this young bird.
Every year they build a nest in the metal rafters of the modern barn, thirty feet up. Every year the nest is either attacked by buzzards or falls from its precarious perch and the nestlings die.
This morning I find one dead bird lying on the dirt, but this one has come down with the nest and sits in the cup of straw, just as it did thirty feet up. It won't last long, and I'm not saving it...there are far too many jackdaws around as it is, mobbing my duck eggs, goslings and ducklings.
But the parents will build a fresh nest in exactly the same place, and hatch more eggs, with the same consequences.

The Women's Room

2009-05-19T20:22:00.005+01:00

Hearing that Marilyn French had died I picked up my furled and yellowed paperback of The Women's Room for a re-visitation.
I'd devoured it, age sixteen, as an angry emerging feminist. I can't remember how many times I reread the book, stunned and drowning in the future horrors that might lie in wait for me; drudgery, mopping, unwanted children, denied potential and extreme chauvinism. I looked about me, at the households I knew and saw some great female role models, but mostly I saw housewives, pretty happy it appeared to me on the surface, but, I asked myself, was Marilyn French revealing the murkier truths that would never be shared across the generations or across the garden fence, with a teenager?
Now, it somehow lacks the punch it did then. Once I was enthralled, engaged, furious. Now it has the feel of melodrama and soap. The pages don't turn as rapidly, the impact is cushioned. Is it because the tantrum teenager with fresh ideals is a matured cynical creature? Is it that I look back in almost disbelief at the tiny limiting box described and prescribed for women? I don't think so. I suspect instead that we all know more, have become worldly in what is probably an uncivilising manner, and are therefore increasingly unshockable by the smallness of most lives. And I don't like that. I preferred feeling the raw emotion that cascaded over the sixteen year old and the utter determination that I would never be that trapped in any mesh but that which I created for myself. Whether I avoided the sticky cobweb, who knows?

What animal am I?

2009-05-18T21:46:00.004+01:00

One fledgling spadger sits precariously on Hard Hattie. Considering the incredible monsoon weather, Hattie is about the only warm, dryish spot for miles. I'm sure she can feel the wee bird, but what can she do? Her arms aren't long enough to swipe at it. She can't run fast enough to dislodge it. It must be like having a hugely irritating boss to whom you just can't speak your mind, no matter how much your nerves are screaming "I've got to DO something about that squirt!".
But I suppose to be a tortoise is to be calm, accepting and philosophical. Taking life slow. Munching thoughtfully on greenery, nothing too rich to stir up the blood or humours.
I am nothing like a tortoise, notwithstanding my increasingly wrinkly hands, tortured by farm stuff and gardening. If I had to choose, a Bernese Mountain dog would, obviously, not be far from the top of the list, but in truth? My inner self is one of these. My outer self is one of these. And my aspirational self, definitely one of these.

Revenge is sweet

2009-05-14T15:37:00.004+01:00

You might be able to tell, but just in case not, this is a rat's head. Just the head. No body. No tail. No claws. Just the head. Result!
This may or may not be the bastard that ate all my ducklings (opinions have been expressed, and rat, mink and polecat have all been fingered for the crime); all I know is that there is most definitely one less rat on the farm, and that it suffered a wonderfully gruesome, hopefully extraordinarily painful, demise.
I skip, I dance, I rain blessings on the head of whatever cat, dog, fox, beast, had this toothy monster for breakfast.
Oh, and the day just gets better and better (yup, I know, pride comes before a fall). The Last Ewe finally lambed today, exactly one month after the rest, and one week beyond the possible due date (extended pregnancies notwithstanding). The day after tomorrow I will have the MOST HUMONGOUS LIE-IN!

I'm claiming it on expenses

2009-05-10T19:58:00.007+01:00

Like most people, I've been watching the unravelling of the MP's expenses scandal open-mouthed. I'm so jealous I can hardly splutter forth venom. As an M.P there'd be no need to pay for my Tampax anymore; I could have my poshest rugs repaired and paid for by other tax payers; I'd enjoy a variety of houses and flats pretending I'm living in whichever one took my accountant's fancy that week; I'd get my mole problems sorted at no cost to myself, and I wouldn't have to show receipts for slap up meals or treats that cost less than £250. Best of all, none of this would put a dent in my £65,000 salary. Show me the money!
There'd be one downside though, come to think of it.
No-one would trust me ever again. I would be despised at least as much as Fred the Shred. None of my good intentions or pleas for a refocussing on the important things would have any credence. My name, my judgement and my honour would be mud and filth. I'd have to spend all my time making feeble excuses rather than bellowing "Hear, hear" in the House, and have to satisfy myself instead with cries of "I didn't break any rules" in the comfort of one of my other houses.
But at least I'd have the satisfaction of knowing incontrovertibly that I'd been one of the gang responsible for ending parliament as we know it. My name will be forever secure in the history books.
And that is my 400th blog post. What a sad way to mark this mini milestone.

Empty nest

2009-05-09T16:22:00.006+01:00

I'm seriously down today. I've spent the last couple of months tending to my incubators, had a first decent hatch of ducklings, a second lousy one, tweaked my technique and humidity and had a good third hatch. Last night eighteen glorious ducklings from one to four days old were scuttling about under the heat lamp. I covered their run with weldmesh as always and went to bed.
After six weeks of early lamb-checking rises I have my first lie- in; not because The Last Ewe has lambed, but because she's been told to get on with it as best she might as sleep deprivation can drive you crazy.
There's a polite cough by the bedside. "Are you awake?" Grunt. "We've had a bit of a disaster". I'm wide awake now. "How many ducklings were in the stable?". Eighteen. "Oh. They've all gone".
There in the corner of the stable is a huge heap of fresh earth, the discarded material from a new rat run. The rats have had every single duckling. I want to curl into a sobbing heap. All that effort, mine and the duckling's. I feel sick.
I head to the office, turn on the computer and buy a metal cage brooder that will take 50 birds.
I take Fenn for a walk and there in the grass is an empty egg, clearly predated, not hatched. Sometimes I really hate nature.

2009's king of the castle

2009-05-08T18:45:00.004+01:00

This is a makeshift creep feeder, a dry place to put a small trough of lamb food, with bars across the front (well, back if you are looking at this photo - the bars are out of sight) so that the ewes can't get in but the wee ones can.
Not that they are wee any more...
The creep feed allows the few smaller lambs to supplement their diet if they aren't getting enough milk. We don't supplement the lamb's diet unless a ewe or two is struggling to keep up with the demands of her young, preferring a slow grown grass fed lamb, so the creep feed won't be made available for much longer.
It's crucial to remember (and that doesn't always happen) NOT to put the ark too close to the fence, or with a couple of hops, skips and jumps the lambs bound over the fence and into the blue yonder, hysterical with freedom until they are utterly unable to get back to mother and bleat piteously for some human sap to come and sort it all out.
Once the first lamb is up on the ark, rattling the tin with their sharp percussive hooves, their mates join in until there is no more room at the inn.
Oh, and The Last Ewe (uppercase, up the duff and unpopular) still hasn't lambed.

A spring day

2009-05-03T14:30:00.006+01:00

The skies may have been threatening but what a gorgeous day. Everywhere I turn there is something shouting "Look at me! This way!", another flower, an orange tip butterfly, goldfinches and swallows.
With the dogs I'm never allowed to stay still for more than a minute, so catching a snap of butterflies and whooshing birds is not likely. But as long as it's not outrageously windy, I can do a flower or two. And the moth was most generous and hardly fluttered an antenna.