Boxes and baggages

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.

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.

A spring day

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.

What's next?

One ewe left to lamb, but it's a hurly burly of activity all the same. As I traipse from barn to field, to duck huts to pigs, round and round, back and forth, I stop mid tracks and look up. Where was it I was heading? What's the next job on the list? Have I forgotten to feed/check/water something?
I try to head for the top of the farm and work down so as not to miss anything, but some mini problem or distraction usually puts that idea out to grass. A sheep who's drunk her water bucket dry, a sleeping lamb that I need to check is just snoring and not ailing, a clot of blood on the grass from a ewe I know is healing from her birthing or is it something more sinister, a pig with the trots...on it goes.
Throughout the day I'm checking the egg filled incubators (last night the power in the barn where the incubators sit, tripped and I have to make sure that doesn't happen again) and that the heat lamp over the ducklings is working properly; casting an eye over newborn lambs and mums to be; peering at the back end of the sow to make sure she has taken from her serving by the boar and isn't coming back into heat; watering the seedlings in the polytunnel as there is a danger of frying in there; answering calls and queries about ducklings and posting off hatching eggs...and still on it goes.
And in between that I'm trying to sort out new work arrangements, transferring phones, broadband, banks, and talking to all those companies you really hate dealing with (if I get put on hold one more time, emailed stuff in non-English that's both unintelligible and irrelevant to my question, or told six different stories from six different reps from the same company I'm likely to decide on (very) early retirement instead (I wish!).
The dogs are looking particularly mournful as their walks have been curtailed and ad hoc but I have promised them and me a trip to the beach as soon as the last ewe has performed.
I'm not complaining, honest, just in a bit of a springtime whirlwind, and would relish a couple of days in complete slut mode with nothing to do but snore, breathe fresh air and read a new good book. Any reading suggestions for when I come out of the maelstrom?

My favourite flowers are blooming

In a hidden corner among the rubble in the garden, a small clutch of snakeshead fritillaries hang their heads shyly. But when you're as beautiful as this, what is there to be shy about?
Every night the pixies come out and paint them. I know this must be so because they always forget one or two, and leave them creamy white, a blank canvas to be filled another night.
I always believed there were fairies at the bottom of the garden. When you're this tired (two weeks into lambing), whimsy welcomes you in its warm embrace.

Stop Press...Hard Hattie has emerged

It's not only official, it has the seal of approval from the tortoise. Spring is here!
Today, the Hard Hattie of West Devon came creeping backwards out of her hibernation box. Yesterday I'd put it out in the sun to start warming the gal up, and it worked.
I've fretted mildly, on and off, all winter, just in case Hattie had gone to bed without adequate fat reserves, or that I'd done something wrong, or, or, or... but here she is, wading through long grass, chomping apple, generally giving it large. I'm incredibly pleased to see her.

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.

Blowsy or delicate?

I spend so much of my walking time seeking out the delicate notes of wild flowers that it's a shock to see the horticultural brassiness of the cultivated varieties in my tiny front garden. But this week the bloodshot eyeball peony and the Dame Edna gladioli are visual tricks that are somehow trashy in their exuberance in comparison to the delicacy of the ragged robin, the stitchwort and the many varieties of the carrot family that Jackson Pollock and Miro the hedgerows.
If I was to determine which of these two opposites describes me, I would have to go for the blowsy, in the same way that I'm a Bernese dog person and would give nil house room to a chihuahua. But it's those wild fragile blooms that attract me; those banks awash with the froth of cow parsley, red campion and bluebells just steps from my door.
Oh, and before I forget the sensation, today I smelled coriander in the orchard. There are no cultivated herbs planted there, so I stopped and sniffed again. I just adore the scent and taste of coriander; along with thyme it is my favourite herb, but it was not supposed to be there. And then I pulled down to my nose the nearest branch of apple blossom and inhaled. Yes. A definite but subtle hint of coriander. I felt a Jilly Goolden moment come upon me as I checked that it was a cider apple, a Bulmers Norman in fact.

Hedgerow life

So many wonderful things to be seen if you walk rather than drive. Yesterday I found an early-purple orchid on the verge as I walked the outer boundary of the farm, and today I spotted a bright blue egg in a hedge, tucked behind gorse. I think it belongs to a song thrush. And then I noticed that a lot of the ferns are starting to unfurl; they look like ammonites.
What did you see today that gave you a thrill?

Snowstorm

Out bleary-eyed at 6.30am to find small polystyrene pellets clinging to my hair. I find a beautiful pair of big ewe lambs have been born since the last check, the first birth I think that has gone unattended; the ewe must have gone from nought to sixty swiftly and easily.
I feed and water everything accompanied by excitable bleating. Now the majority of the ewes have lambed and are outside, they bellow at me to get a move on as I walk through them to the feed troughs. They try to get their noses into the bucket as I move fast to avoid being tripped up by their eagerness. I iodine the new lambs, feed the llama, let out the geese and the ducks and fill a haynet for the ram. The polystyrene balls are turning to flakes, thick and heavy, and start to settle. I grab my camera and as the sun comes out to melt the snow, take a record of the morning's chilly beauty.

Deadheading the farm

The dogs are desperate to be taken for a decent walk, so today as the unlambed ewes seemed intent on retaining their burdens for some while, I indulged us all and walked the hedgelines with Mopsa and Fenn to check on spring.
Notwithstanding my fears that all the chopping, laying, banking, coppicing, fencing and general mauling about would lay the place to waste, spring has made long bacon at me and burgeoned regardless.
It seems that a farm is not dissimilar to a rose; you hack it back with some care, and it will burst out with new growth, knowing better than I that it will survive and thrive on drastic treatment.

Horology

There I was, minding my own, when from between my wellies was a reminder of fleeting hours, weeks, month, years. And it was already starting to disintegrate. Thanks.
And then I looked at the calendar, and it told me that clocks change in less than a fortnight.
I know I said I wanted lambing to hurry up and start, but now I've changed my mind. Just SLOW DOWN will you?

Love is in the air

Cole Porter was on my lips even before I read the Guardian's Saturday Poem. I was composing and humming a lewd farming version to myself, whilst admiring the gander's ability to copulate with three different geese in the space of ten minutes. Putting the ducks to bed later the drake couldn't even go the distance from paddock to hut without a quickie en route with his favourite bird.
The ram, now in sweet seclusion having done his thing during November and December, is still feeling distinctly amorous and I had to remonstrate with him quite firmly that no, constant head-bashing of the gate was not going to lead back to the harem.
The ewes, on the other hand, are heavily in lamb, with just six weeks to go. They spend their time eating and lying down, mating a distant memory.
All of which leads me to this week's bad joke. At some point in the next few days there should be a magnificent erection; the roof trusses are due to go up on the cob barn and a crane is on order. Pictures will be taken.