Rampant Roger and pal Romeo

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.

Piglet update

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.

All anticipation

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.

Snowmail - Channel 4 news

"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

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.

Another slow worm

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.

Casserole mole

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.

Too bucolic for words

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

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.

Monochrome idyll

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.

What animal am I?

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

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!

It's snow time (again)

Well it's back.
I spent the early morning sliding round the farm feeding things and trying my best not to fall on my arse, whilst rootling around my pocket for knife, tissue or camera.
The quality of insulation provided by llama hair never fails to amaze me; the sheep had a light dusting of snow, but there were great clods of the stuff on Humphrey.
Mopsa lay belly down on the snow, unfazed by it all, in her natural element. The geese were unbothered. But I am hoping that in three weeks time we are out of this return of real winter weather and the lambs can emerge in the sun.

There's a nest in the Landrover

Something went ker-phut with the starter motor last week so the Landie has been sit-satting there, no use to man nor beast.
Ummm, no, that's not true. Something likes stationary. It likes the convenience of a dashboard shelf. It likes being undisturbed by shake, rattle and roll. Beastie wants to make a nest, and beastie has.
No sign of life, but a very neat doughnut of soft leaves, straw, hay and moss has been formed. Is it a bird? Is it a mouse? One says former, others say t'other.
But now the Landie is fixed, so perhaps I'll never get to see the inhabitants.

Mega spawn

Now these are amazing photos of this year's frog spawn and reminded me that it's about time to go on the jelly hunt. But I didn't expect to find megaspawn.
I counted eight separate nuclei in one bonkersly over-sized egg. What's that all about then? Conjoined froglets? Octuplet amphibians? All I could think of was the immense relief that Mama frog must have felt dumping that lot in the water.

Who lives in a hole like this?

The hole is about the size of a two pence piece. Somebody or something has created an entrance which might tunnel down to subterranean depths, or just a few inches. I certainly wasn't going to insert a finger to find out. And it was far too blustery to stand around and wait for anything to emerge.
I suspect it's a vole, but rather like the idea of an extended nest that could contain the length of a weasel.

Squirrel hounds

There's a small oak and ash copse at the far end of the farm, and Tarzan and Jane live there. They do. Honest. They swing from tree to tree, effortlessly, gracefully, competently. Usually.
Last week I watched them engage in their usual acrobatics when there was a thump as Jane (or was it Tarzan?) fell fifteen feet to the ground. Being a squirrel she/he was back up in the tree tops before I could pound my breast and alert the jungle to the news.
But now the dogs know they are in with a chance. The hollow tree from where the mighty had fallen has lots of holes and nooks and crannies and is investigated by large, damp, quiveringly excited snouts. No hidey hole is left uncharted, no bit of bark left unscraped. It happened once, they think. It'll happen again.
I do love the optimism of dogs.

The order of things

Each week the order of things change by a tweak; the routine is not as routine as one might think. Animal requirements alter with the season, livestock is moved from field to field, and post-abattoir some fields are left empty for a time.
On this first day of a sparkly new year I was more conscious than usual of the adaptations of my progress through the morning hour of feeding and watering the hordes.
First task is to tend to the indoor beasts. Cats and dogs sorted, I cover up with thick gloves, jacket, hat and neoprene lined wellies and cast myself into the frozen wastes of Devon. Animals closest to the house are next in line. I go through to Little Oaky where the last batch of 2008 lambs for meat are picking disconsolately at frozen grass. I cram a bale of hay into their hayrack, scatter a few nuts for their added inner warmth, and crash through the ice covering their water trough.
It was too cold last night to fill the rubber water buckets and skips; the hoses were frozen solid, so I have to go to the dog room and fill up buckets from there, carrying several loads for the Aylesbury and Black Indian Runner ducks. It's treacherous; the water the ducks spill in great abandon round the buckets has frozen into a slippy sheet and I try to take firm steps. I let the ducks out into their runs, give them their feed and admire the heap of ice bullets that emerged from the hosepipe yesterday.
I check on the cockerels being fattened; their run has been left open and a pair of them are pecking round on the barn floor, nibbling up strands of stray wheat heads. The surplus wheat straw from the roundhouse thatching is being steadily used up for poultry bedding and the cockerels spend hours denuding the wheat ears. I corner and pick up the birds, put them back in their run, add some more feed and refresh their water.
Up to the rams' paddock, I stuff fresh hay into the makeshift rack and whistle. They both come charging up to snatch at the hay, and I check them over for bumps and bruises. Catching up a length of scaffold pole I mash through the ice in their trough, which leaves my hands ringing.
I shovel out poultry corn and goat mix into a pair of scoops and go into the orchard. I trail an equitable line of corn on the ground for the geese and let them out of their hut, smashing the ice in their trough too. I stand and watch them for a while; Frankie the gander lords it about but is careful only to hiss at me once I've already moved off to check on the ewes in Long Lands. All ewes present and correct I put the goat mix in the llama's bucket out of sheep reach, crack the ice in their trough and check on the hay situation - they'll need more this morning. The old landrover is hooked up to the battery charger and is full of fencing tools so I stuff a couple of bales in the back of my car and take it up to the sheep by road, turfing the bales over the gate, ram the loosened bales in with foot and fist, so that I can make some attempt to close the lid of the hayrack.
I fill a barrow with logs and take it back to the house; time for my own breakfast and to salute the new year.

Rounding up the cattle - wild West Devon style

I was wearing wellies, not cowboy boots, and a fleece hat rather than a stetson, but there I was, blocking the entrance to one of the potentially distracting offshoots that the herd might prefer to their route home. Wasn't sitting on a hos either, but the stampede was wild west enough for me.
All round about here, cattle are being taken indoors for the winter, and those summered out on the farm and the one adjoining were being collected to cavort the few miles home through the Devon lanes. We were primed and ready in place, and could hear the quads motoring across soggy fields. And the engines continued to roar and still no sign of beasts. 45 minutes later a cloud of steam heralded hot-blooded action. They had eluded the cowboys for a good while and were overheated and overexcited and full of beans. Their great feet clattered on the road and as soon as they saw me screeched to a standstill. I stepped back and they nosed forward, gathered pace and were off again. It was all I could do to restrain myself from yelling Yeehaaa!

Incredible structures

From domestic micro roundhouses to huge macro industrial structures that fill the horizon.
Whistled along the Severn Bridge to bounce through Wales en route for Herefordshire and some new additions to the flock.
The travelled through landscapes of Devon, Somerset, Wales and Herefordshire are all so distinctive, all beautiful.
But home is always best. So glad to get back and let the shearlings out of the trailer.
I checked in the barn and yes, the hired cider press and mill had been delivered - a whole weekend of cider making and apple juicing ahead.