My little poppy

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

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.

Chance meetings

So much to do, so much to write, so much travel, so much thinking and planning and anticipating. It's spring, things are podding and everything is demanding, so I have been remiss and not posted for a week. A whole week! The financial year is drawing to a close and lambing hasn't even started yet.
I just wanted to share a thought on bumping into people you know when you are away from home. I was pootling about the Midlands this week and bumped into two people I had no reason to expect to see. One on a station platform, the other in an art gallery. OK, I lived in the region for twenty years but it's a HUGE region with MILLIONS of people, so why should I see anyone I know in a snappy 24 hour visit, apart from those I'd actually arranged to see?
And then on the train home I saw yet another friend and we chatted of this and that as the miles were chomped up and I felt as if the journey had been halved, having had company and conversation.

A year in and we're nearly done

Just before my birthday last year the builders arrived. I was psyched up for an 18 month flurry of demolition and rebuild, but I've just had another birthday and the chaps are nearly finished, months ahead of schedule. Just a few days of activity remain. I'm so excited I can hardly believe that the barns are nearly back to where they were decades ago, and looking beautiful.
The last of the scaffolding will disappear this week and then I can post photos of the thatched roundhouse which is tucked behind the threshing barn shown here.
For my birthday, the barns were floodlit so that party guests could ooh and aah as they came down the track, and they did; it was most heart warming. Best of all the nine dovecotes in the cob barn had tealights popped in them, and deep in the cob they were safe from the dramatic winds that howled round and the flames twinkled for five hours. Any birds taking shelter in there will be able to bring up cosy young.

Drunk on apple fumes

68 litres of juice and 145 litres of cider later, I'm ready to fall into a soft sofa in front of the fire. First there was the picking and sorting, then the carrying, the washing, the milling, the pressing, the bottling, the labelling. Not forgetting the sterilising of buckets and bottles and barrels and funnels and the twiddling of bottle brushes of every size and shape to get into those hard to reach corners.
Friends have helped and used the kit all weekend too, so the machines have been worked hard. I suppose 400 litres of juice destined for both alcoholic and breakfast beverage has been churned out in total. Enough to keep us hydrated for quite some while.
The milling and pressing was done in the cob barn...finally it can be put to use.

It's scary, making hay

If you've never indulged some minor masochistic desire to try haymaking, you'll have no idea quite how all absorbing, stressful, sweat-inducing and completely exhausting the process is for folks doing it the old way. Not building stooks or anything quite that medieval, but producing small bales that a person of ordinary strength can manage on their own or shift with the wheelbarrow without the necessity of a mega-tractor and fancy implements.
Turning the hay is fine on a comfy tractor but our tractors are so old they're practically vintage and the seats lost their bounce long ago.

When the hay has reached perfection (which is a big ask, fraught as it is with fanatical weather forecasting) you row up the hay and then the baler comes along sucking it in and spewing out bales. But yesterday the wind was so dramatic that I had to row up with the baler travelling all of six inches behind my tractor as gusts sent heaps of hay into the air and across the field moments after the rows were all neatly created. My clutch foot was so tired by the end of the day that I considered going to sleep in the field rather than walking back to the house.
Every bale gets handled multiple times: to stack so that the flat 8 or Perry loader can pick it up; again to position it on the trailer; and then to heave it off the trailer into the barn, getting higher and higher with every trailer load. You sweat copiously, back bent as the hay gets close to the roof, skin covered in itchy seeds and little bits of dried grass.
Friends appear at your elbow and help load, or unload - life would be impossible without folks like this. Two of the builders come and throw bales around for a couple of hours too, delaying their breakfast.
And then the scary bits. The tractors aren't nervewracking as long as you know what you are doing and the land holds no surprises (no hidden, violent ridge and furrow, tree roots, old bricks, springs, cliffs etc). Bales aren't scary either. But standing on a trailer and building the stack is completely terrifying if, like me, you've a real aversion to heights. I shut my eyes when lifted off the top of a loaded trailer by the bale loader, but then I have to clamber up again back at the barn to heave the bales off. To say this is a trial for me is an understatement. I do my best, I really do, but you won't catch me clambering around the heights with anything other than a grimace and unsteady hands. I only feel safe when I have the solid bed of the trailer once again beneath my feet.
The new bale counter didn't work, so I have no proof as to how many bales were made and handled over the last three days, but I do know it's between 1000 and 1500, and I feel I have an intimate relationship with each and every one. But it's done for another year, and unlike the 2007 washout, the 2008 crop looks fantastic. The sweet smell of well cured hay is in the air, and even a bit of local muck spreading this evening couldn't mask it.

First catch your llama

So, yesterday the vet rang and said "your Bluetongue vaccine is ready for collection. Bring a cool box. That'll be £56.04 for sixty doses. Oh, and you'll have to sign a disclaimer for the llama - it isn't really covered by the regs. And once you've opened the vial you have to use the lot within 8 hours."
The llama hasn't been handled for three years. Yes, he feeds from a bowl in my hand during the winter when he gets his goat mix to supplement the greenery he gnaws on (hedges, bushes, trees, hay, grass), but he keeps a wary eye and won't let me stroke him, even after the best part of a decade. He's shy. Luckily he is a self sufficient animal and doesn't have a worm problem or other ailments, so he isn't handled; it would only disturb him. But now I have no choice, and the afternoon is spent arranging gates in as unobtrusive a set-up as possible, so that he can be enticed in to the field shelter and banged to rights. As in earlier times, I intend to lasso him in a corner. He will resist for a moment or two, then kush; sit down and let you do what is needed.
So, today having vaccinated all the sheep and administered a prick of the syringe into my own finger for good measure, there were efforts to get the llama into the shelter. He nibbles from the bucket but as the field is brimful with grasses, he won't go in. Time for a regroup and a rethink. A hoard of neighbours arrive to use the barn to sort fat lambs for market. Six of us take a long rope into the field and slowly corner the llama so he has no choice but to go into the shelter. Gates are shut, three of us go in. I hand over the syringe so I can concentrate on putting a lead rope round his shoulders, but he stands quietly, and before I blink one of the group has injected the 1ml of pink juice with a sharp new needle, and we are done. The llama doesn't even notice.

Chocolate rum truffles - for those small gaps left in your stomach

Here’s a present for the New Year - I strongly suggest you use rum or brandy and not Calvados as Hugh suggests. Green and Black’s Cook's chocolate (and their cocoa for sprinkling) is fab for this. The recipe is tweaked but based on River Cottage chocolate brandy truffles - makes about 50 and I doubt you could eat more than two at a sitting.

300g dark chocolate (2 x Green and Black's Cook's choc bars), broken up
200ml double cream
75g icing sugar
50ml dark rum or brandy
2 heaped dessert spoons honey
Pinch of salt
Sifted cocoa, for dusting

Put all the ingredients (except the cocoa) in a heatproof bowl and place over a pan of just-boiled water. Leave to melt, stirring only once or twice. When the truffle mixture is completely melted and blended and thick enough to spoon and not too hot to handle, spoon into petit fours cases on a big tray. You will get drips on your fingers - cook's treat - lick well. Leave to cool, then put the loaded tray into the fridge to chill truffles until firm. Sieve with a bit of cocoa before serving.

Amazing, easy to make, can be done from store ingredients (if you can keep chocolate in store) and gets the best compliments ever. I gave these as presents, making good use of my empty Bravissimo boxes - they take a good number in a single layer, and folks look temporarily aghast that you might have given them lingerie.

Birthday pleasures

Yesterday I became just seven weeks away from half my Mother's age; she will be ninety before the year is out. I sit here goggling at the thought, as has everyone before me who has reached their middle years and realised that their school mates are probably older now than their teachers were then. I feel the reality of it drift and sink in my head like sand.
I woke up to a gratifying heap of cards, knowing that today was not my turn to do the animals. I could do a bit of duvet wallowing, just enough to savour the cosiness. Then my ears pricked; there were sounds. Voices. A bit of Led Zeppelin. John Humphrys. Yes. YES! Radio 4. In stereo. Loud. Clear. All mine. I scooted downstairs, and saw it - a new, discreet cable headed south from the ceiling attaching the tuner to the chimney mounted radio aerial. Two and a half years I have waited, patiently and not so patiently for this moment. I go away for a couple of days and miracles have been worked, the floorboards lifted and replaced, connections made. I can now listen to The Archers and get a handle on how to farm for real. I know how much effort went into this. I am thrilled, I am moved, I am jigging about with pleasure.
There are books, wrapped in pink princesses and white ponies. As intended, I drop forty years in as many seconds and feel the pleasures of pulling off paper from unknown goodies. I stroke the book on owls, their incredible faces captured for me to look at again and again. And last of all, a wooden boot jack, again made in my brief absence, from oak board removed and saved from the dilapidated calf pens. It is beautiful, it is waxed and sealed, and will be used every day. Underneath, the carpenters mark of the maker and giver is stamped clear. I stroke that too.
I chat on the phone to say thank you for the book tokens as the finishing touches are made to my birthday cake. Adult chocolate, raspberries picked fresh from the garden, cream, heaven. It is proudly secured in the fridge away from tongue wielding pets, as I pack the car for a day out.
Back to Northcott Mouth for a taste of paradise. There are just two other cars parked. The tide is out, the dogs romp off the lead by our sides, and we leave first footprints on virgin sand. The sea is vigorous, the breeze brisk, the sun generous for November. I wear warm wellies, a jacket and a wide smile. There are black fish in the rock pools, thick as a finger and twice as long. Mussels are picked; Mopsa tries some straight from the rocks, cracking the shells with her teeth. The rocks and stones are beautiful, ancient as time. Moments don't get any better than this.
Back at the farm the builders are starting to take control of the site. Two containers arrive as site hut and store. A small and ugly breeze block gatepost has to be removed so that the lorry delivering the containers can reach its destination. For a change someone else is doing the work; it is a very strange feeling.
A bunch of flowers has been left, no note, by the front door. There are more cards in the day's post. Friends drop by and we eat ambrosial slabs of chocolate and raspberry cake and drink tea until it's pitch black outside. The fire is lit, Scrabble is played, but I don't concentrate, turning over as I am the pleasures of the day. I listen to The Archers and Front Row for the first time in this house. I drink champagne and eat some fabulous kedgeree with a generous addition of tiger prawns and mussels c/o the National Trust. Would forty-five more birthdays just like this one be too much to ask?

Heading north

OK, apart from Cornwall, everywhere you can get to by car is north of Devon. I've walked the dogs, washed off their beloved fox shit and am sorting out papers and stuff for my trip to the Midlands. Just a couple of days away, to see friends, and as a welcome change be on the receiving end of some training. I'm looking forward to it, but even before leaving am eager to return. This place has got its hooks deeply embedded in me. I thought that would take a lifetime but it seems not.
The rapid churning of the season just emphasises what I will miss by averting my eyes for 48 hours. Yesterday the small non-fruiting fruit tree in the garden planted by predecessors (cherry I think - the tree that is, not the previous owners) was aflame. Today the flames are snuffed out, every last flicker dropped to the ground. The hedge cutter will have topped and tailed a carefully selected range of the hedges whilst I'm gone. I hope he can make out my multi-coloured markings on the map of the farm, the paper tucked behind the steering wheel of the tractor or balanced on his knee as he traces his path, shaping and trimming the boundaries. I think I might also come back to a front door freshly painted if it doesn't rain.
Although the dogs will be walked, it won't be me that takes them. I won't see them flush out the incredible number of pheasants about at the moment or pursue a scent trail at speed, or stand with one paw raised as they stuff their snouts deep into a bank, inhaling the shadows of secretive creatures.
I will be visiting three old stamping grounds. I will notice major changes - houses built, children grown, alterations and improvements to my old home, Birmingham bustling. There will be puppies and toddlers and good conversation. I will learn things (I hope) and will have seven hours on the road all told, there and back, to think, to listen to the radio and just be. And then there will be the lane with the grass growing down the middle, and I will be home.

Spinal treat

I wasn't planning on doing a post tonight; the lamb korma needs my attention. But the lovely man at The Spine (Guardian accredited dontcha know) has obliged and produced a collided and elided Janet and John that absolutely proves my point that Mr Depp and Ms Street-Porter are Russell Brand's parents. The Sun will carry the full story tomorrow.

Autumn hedgerow dalliance

Hard not to feel whimsical and chilled this weekend. Duck, goose and hen huts all mucked out and stuffed with fresh straw, I headed out across the farm, ancient stained trug picturesquely in hand, to snatch probably the last makings for a blackberry crumble to feed friends due to arrive for lunch. And no, there was neither skipping nor gingham apron. I left the dogs behind as there are now hundreds of sheep in lamb scattered about and when I forage I tend to forget to keep the necessary beady eye on the hounds. But I did take the camera to capture this autumn moment when everything puts its last effort into looking gorgeous before wilting.

Butchering the sausages

I am cursing. I forgot to take a photo of the carcase hanging from the ceiling on the hook in the freezer room-cum-garden shed. I have no evidence of the first stage of home butchery, so you'll just have to take my word for it that I ferried whole sides of pig, tails and trotters intact, back from the abattoir. The pork cuts and sausages were weighed, a year's supply frozen and the surplus distributed to friends who will be back in a week or so for their gammon and bacon, currently curing at the Cornish Farmhouse Bacon Company. The friends were fed and watered, indulged in blackberry fool, and sped home in the dark with cars full of porky promise.
Today is sausage making day and first task is stripping off the poorly epilated skin, discarding the line of nipples and the remaining coarse black bristles. It reminds me of scenes in Silence of the Lambs.
With the pork cut into manageable chunks it takes its first turn through the mincer with a shake of fine oatmeal, salt, pepper and small slugs of water. Each batch has its own flavourings: plain; thyme, marjoram and chives for the herby variety; apple and Calvados; sage and onion. The second run through the mincer sees 60lbs of sausages come churning out through the sausage nozzle, wrapped in natural casings in metre lengths. The dogs are remarkably well behaved considering the presence of so much meat. I squeeze and twist the lengths into links and there you are. Bagged up, labelled and stuffed in the freezer, that lot should last 'til the end of next summer. Sorted.

Pull!

Having fun should come with a health warning. Yesterday I had a lot of fun, and today I am suffering , and it has absolutely nothing to do with alcohol.
Summer has finally and belatedly arrived, and so an impromptu party for friends and neighbours was conjured out of thin air, the vegetable patch and the local butchers (no time to thaw adequate heaps of home grown carnivory). There was a whirlwind of hay turning, mowing and topping. There wasn't time to get the lawnmower out, so the tractor and its mega mower danced across the garden too and we just ignored the tractor tyre tracks it left. Bowls of edibles were produced, and then a borrowed clay pigeon trap was set up.
It is many years since I've used a shotgun, but as the afternoon shadows started to lengthen, I took my first shot since arriving on the farm. The explosion in my ear was literally deafening. My ears rung and shut down for a few daze making moments. When my head steadied I ran off to fetch the ear defenders, and then settled the gun back into my shoulder. With the decibels more under control my body had the capacity to consider the recoil as I thundered out half a dozen or more pathetic attempts to catch the birdy, but the wind caught them each time and I didn't have my eye in to anticipate as needed.
As folks arrived we drifted into the garden and ate our fill, talking until it was too dark to see each other.
This morning I have a bruised right tit and armpit and my shoulder is stiff with surprise. I can't wait to have another go.

Ancient friendship

I have just been reliving my childhood. The best bits, the giggly bits, the frozen chocolate mousse round the mush bits. My oldest friend (not as in aged, but as in I've known her longer than any other friend) came to the farm for the first time and spent the weekend here. It was grey and it rained, but we chirped and chirruped and chortled and chatted and totally reverted to the girls we once were. The old nick names and fish-lips face contortions were greedily adopted and enjoyed again and luckily this time I refrained from wetting my pants under the duress of hysterical laughter plus full bladder combo.
There is nothing quite like a large chunk of shared history, a time when we felt that we were more important to each other than our parents were (or at least we felt that to be the case much of the time, with parents being the voice who should be obeyed/disobeyed according to whim and circumstance). Because I see my friend only every couple of years and speak infrequently, I can forget in between how deep the feelings go and how key our friendship was through childhood and the teenage years. Our lives might be in huge contrast now, but for me, the most significant thing remains: that after a little while together the shorthand of years of knowledge kicks in and we don't have to explain or embellish. Ordinarily I laugh a lot but I don't think I have giggled quite so joyously and freely and in such an unencumbered fashion for a long time - I gurgled like a child and that is something I loved then and treasure now.

Bugs and gruesome tales

Last night off to the local farmer's group held monthly at the pub. Set up during foot and mouth by the local vicar to cheer things up, there is a speaker and Q+A followed by a carb blowout of ferociously hot chips, sarnies and potato croquettes. The speaker was a hospital microbiologist, a farmer's daughter with a knowledge and love of all things bug. You want ringworm? We saw the pictures. You prefer Listeriosis or MRSA? We had the lowdown. You like swollen digits and pots of sample poo? We had those too. You want to hear that farmers only go to hospital when they are really ill? She flattered us. The beer glasses didn't move, the pool table was empty, the darts board unused. We were riveted. We went home and threw away old dishcloths, got in the antibacterial soap and stuffed grimy towels in the washing machine. It didn't stop me from having very vivid dreams of pus and worse. All this for £1. Bargain? You betcha.