A weekend of animal husbandry

I hope some of you know how to have a relaxing weekend. Saturday and Sunday are when I forget what it's like to sit down for a minute.
After the general round of feeding and watering the first task was lifting two enormous second hand pig arks off a flatbed trailer, onto another one that could be pulled by a tractor, ferrying them to their various pig paddocks and gently, gently using lengths of scaffold pole as rollers to slide them to the ground. Much scratching of heads to perfect this process; number two ark came off in seconds.
Then it was time for inveigling the weaners into the tractor link box, carting them into said paddocks and watching them run with glee and abandon, round and round and round. They found the ark and its thick bed of straw, sorted the drinker and were off again to enjoy their freedom.
Into town to satisfy my Saturday Guardian fix, buy some R clips from the tractor shop and post some hatching eggs.
What next? Mucking out the four duck and goose huts and candling the eggs in the incubator. Then I walked to the far side of the farm to bring home the eight tegs being kept to add to next year's breeding stock. They are incredibly skippity and bounce rather than trot. I had to scamper in ungainly fashion, across mud and rush and sheep poo to keep up with them. They came to a particularly muddy, squishy gateway. They yearned to go through but didn't like to get their dainty toes wet. I clanged the two buckets I had in my hands and yelled and terrified them across the sludge. Then it was full pelt, them and me, towards the gate into the field they were headed for. They haven't done this journey for many months, and then only once and in the opposite direction, but they knew where they were going. They stood back for me to open the gate and then whizzed through, heads down to nibble whatever poor grass they could find.
By now it was time to feed all the neighbours' animals as they were having a short jaunt out. I can't believe the size of their boar - he is huuuggge! Then back to put all the animals here into their pens, night time feeds and last check at everything before collapsing onto a plate of mutton stew cooked overnight in the Aga.
Sunday was the diaried day for worming and vaccinating all the sheep. Now kept in three separate flocks, everything had to be brought one flock at a time into the barn, dealt with and returned before the next bunch could be jabbed and drenched. Taking advantage of the dry weather, I clipped off any dingleberries, and squawked when I handled a soft sample. Back to the house to nailbrush vigorously under my finger nails. Yeuch.
Off to one of the top fields to burn up the brush from the hedgelaying from last month. The dogs and I play about, having a love-in moment whilst the digger pushed the massive heap of twigs onto the flames; it's so hot I have to move back and take off my jacket. After making dinner and feeding and bedding once again, I trek up to the fire and fork in the bits around the tonsure.
I head for the shower and realise to my shame, that having done the usual early morning stint in nightie, tracksuit bottoms and wellies, that I still have my nightie on. It's dark, all I'm going to do now is hoover, have supper and fall into an armchair, so after the shower I just stick a clean nightie on and hope my lapse at failing to get dressed all day is a forgivable sin. It's not as if I lay in bed all day, is it?

The woman who swears by the tissue

When I was a teenager, my nose was a constantly streaming article. Allergic rhinitis was not a lovely condition for a girl with fresh hormones; the accessorizing of every outfit with a lump of tissue stuffed up the left sleeve was not guaranteed to get the boys interested.
I remember going to girlfriends' houses and gawking disbelievingly at their small cube boxes of peach coloured paper hankies, decorated with swirls and flowers that matched the décor of their rooms. First, I thought anything that girly was truly yuck in the taste stakes (snobbery was always at the fore, although I have no idea why as I'm sure I had nothing to be superior about), and secondly, what were you actually going to do with anything as physically challenged as those tiny squares of stuff? Mansize was the only thing that did it for me.
As a child we had cotton hankies. My mother would get out the Burco Boiler and boil those babies for an age, swirling them through the snot infested water with a wooden paddle. The dry hankies would be folded and put in the airing cupboard from where you could help yourself. In Goldilocks fashion I avoided the huge ones that were my father's domain, and the lacey jobs that my mother favoured, and the recollection of peeling the freshly laundered hankies apart where some lump of mucous had maintained its grip is horribly real even now.
Life eventually became too short for the Burco boiler, and at the same time as I was sent off to the launderette, pulling the overstuffed shopping trolley of dirty clothes behind me and desperate not to bump into anyone I knew, my mother started to buy paper tissues. Being a family of snufflers with a serious bronchitis sufferer in the mix, there was a box in practically every room in the house.
These days there is always a tissue in reach, if not jammed up my sleeve. I have wads in my handbag, a box in the car, my suitcase is kept well supplied and so on.
In my house there is a theory that if there was a nuclear explosion, I would reach for a tissue to wipe up the spillage. That might be a step too far (or perhaps not), but I regularly dust with one. No, reword that. On the very few occasions that I dust, I'm more likely to be found waving a tissue, possibly unused, possibly not, over the item being tackled.
I scoop up cobwebs with them, even though a new crop appears overnight. I swab my desk with them as they are at hand and I have no idea where a duster might be, or even if there is one. I wipe the eye bogies from the dogs and their earwax with said tissue. I'll remove a tapeworm from the cat's tail, mop up spilled liquid (cold) and pick up anything a bit yuckety with one. If I can't find a scrap of paper I'll use a tissue as a bookmark. A tissue gets swiped over the tv and pc screens to remove the woodfire film of dust that collects on every surface, and I have been seen using one to dab at the milk slurp marks on the kitchen window (the cat sits on the windowsill to munch and drink out of dogs reach).
So, although I declined to do the full Lady Thinker tag, I have at least written about my slatternly household ways. My tip? Never be without a 3-ply mansize tissue.

Guess the object...

Back in November I was all excited about learning new things. And then I found myself committing publicly to learning something new, something substantial.
And now, sitting in the kitchen, is one of these. Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it roundy and shapely and solid? Isn't is pleasingly old fashioned and homely and almost museum-like in its charm and antiquity? Don't you just yearn to turn on that little Bakelite switch and see if it works (it does) and what noise it might make?
I can't tell you how thrilled I am to have brought this home courtesy of placing a small wanted ad in the local smallholders magazine.
So your task for the day is to either:
1. guess what this actually is, or
2. make some daft suggestions as to what else it might be used for.

Seasoned with sneeze

I know I wasn't alone this Christmas in seasoning my offerings with sneeze. Up and down the country competent cooks, tolerable trifle titivators and practised poultry preppers will have been struggling to juggle the ingredients for the multiple yumptious accompaniments to that special meal. I trained as a chef at one point in my varied career, so as long as the items on the list are on standby in the fridge and on the shelves, pulling off the annual feast doesn't faze me.
There I stand, up to one elbow in chestnut, the other in apricot stuffing. My hands couldn't be greasier and that is the moment when the phone goes and my nose twitches.
I am surrounded by raw foodstuffs: the goose, devils on horseback and pigs in blankets to my left; the bread sauce, leeks and peas to my right; cranberry straight ahead; parboiled spuds, parsnips and carrots behind me and my hands encased in stuffing. My nose is full of onion and pepper scents. There is nowhere to turn my head and sneeze safely. I don't have a cold, but you can't always ensure a dry sneeze. I look at the phone, still ringing and utterly incapable of offering aid. There is a tissue in my apron pocket (yes, I wear an apron, ok?) but with hands covered in forcemeat what can I do?
I lift my head to the ceiling and sneeze upwards, no doubt creating a cloud of unwanted spice to descend on every part of the deliciousness about to be cooked. I tell myself that this is the magic ingredient I was missing. I wipe the stuffing from my hands and answer the phone.