The fear

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

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

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

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.

Duck in bucket

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.

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.

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.

Snow damage

It's weighty stuff, snow. Look what it's done to the roof of the old cow pen. And there was me thinking I'd done worrying about roofs for a few years.
Anyway, I'm too busy laughing at a letter in this Saturday's Guardian Weekend to fret.
To quote: "It's so annoying. There is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall with a lovely recipe for pheasant and bean soup (Slurp Happy, 31 January), and I've just used up all the leftover pheasant to feed the estate workers and have nothing but swan on my hands".
I'm not going to get all snotty of Tunbridge Wells about this, but it was a wonderful illustration of different worlds on one tiny island. Pheasant is cheap, local, and plentiful to many people living in the country, and I don't remember letters of disapproval heading to the paper from them when sushi ingredients, passion fruit or even the ubiquitous but far flung banana appear on the recipe pages, all of which are no doubt regular must-haves for someone.
I've just carved the breasts and legs off two braces of pheasant and jammed them in a casserole with leek, celery, butternut squash, carrot, cider and thyme. The carcases are steaming in the stockpot for soup. And there isn't an estate worker in sight, never mind a swan. Not that I could tell if there was one floundering about in this weather.

Needs must...

Well, when vehicles are out and wheelbarrows are just not making the grade, imagination takes hold. In less than twenty minutes a makeshift sledge was ready and hay could be taken (slowly, laboriously, one bale at a time) to the sheep.
This new snow fall is very different from the last - wet and heavy, slushy beneath the gorgeous surface, and a good six or more inches deep.
The farm looks wonderful, but I'm grateful that we are still eight weeks off lambing. Walking across the farm to check on the livestock is exhilarating but exhausting.

It's a white out

8 am. Poor pregnant ewes, facing off the elements, noses in troughs, building up whatever fat reserves they can to keep warm in biting weather. The black ewes are almost as white as the ones meant to be that colour.
But as the sun rises higher, the wind drops and the blizzards clear, it's glorious. The snow is perfect sparkling soft powder, about three inches thick, creaking under wellybooted foot. There are robins all over the place. Anyone would think it's Christmas.

Minus 8 degrees facing south

It sounds like autumn underfoot, what with the crackling of fallen leaves, but it's as depths of winter as it gets, and it's the ice, not the dehydration, that crackles.
Troughs need breaking three times a day, and I worry that the animals aren't getting enough to drink, even though they rarely suck from the troughs and will be ingesting lots of moisture with their sugar-frosted feed.
But it's glorious out there if you don't need to drive; sunny, dry, cold as can be, but oh so fresh.

Left, right, left

6am and I push sleepily into the bathroom. Through the windows I can see it's soot black outside. Mind on the warmth of bed my head jerks up as I hear, distinctly, "left, right, left" being bellowed from somewhere close by. My ears strain to catch other sounds, but I can't hear any marching, trudging or even creeping.
My thoughts whirr - too much Survivors - as I imagine the farm is under siege, that the army manoeuvres on Dartmoor have gone further off the moor than usual, or that some militarily trained burglars have decided to try their luck.
Feeble, and more pressingly, cold, I leap back under the duvet, listening hard. No matter how cold it is, the window is always ajar at night, but I can't hear a thing. Half an hour later the dawn chorus gets rolling, cockerels first, then the wild life. There it is again, "left, right, left, right", only, it's not a drill sergeant, but a corvid of some kind. I wonder if it's the same crow that imitates a mobile phone?
My turn to do the animals again this morning, and it's colder than ever. I'm wearing double layer fleece gloves, so thick that my fingers are kept stretched apart. When I open one of the metal field gates my glove sticks so firmly to the latch that I have to take my hand out of the glove and tear it off, leaving a line of the beige nap behind. I walk back from the sheep and there is the welcome of the smoke from the chimney, just visible in the photo.

The big melt

Weather warnings across the South West not to drive, and I don't hear about it until I'm out in the car, you know, driving. It's clear that water has whooshed down the roads overnight, leaving huge mounds of leafy, twiggy and branchy detritus. The gullies are roaring streams and the river is just contained within its banks, having subsided from the surrounding fields. Everywhere water. My twenty year old Puffa, without even the vaguest memories of waterproofing, is quickly soaked through, and I keep warm if not dry, by hurling soiled straw out of bird huts into the wheelbarrow as quickly as possible.

The frost report

Gloves are now a key part of the outdoor pocket patting repertoire, alongside checking for penknife and baler twine. My pockets are getting more like those of a small boy every day: grubby hanky, acorns and rosehips, useful bit of string, chunk of wood, bent nails, dusty handful of ewe nuts.
The gloves are to stop my fingers sticking to the metal field gates and suffering freezer burn. I have to huhh on the gate latches like some heavy breather to melt the ice so that I can open the gate. I'd rather walk through than go over at the moment as it's rather treacherous climbing over the gates as the bars are so slippery with frost, but I do it when I have to and hope I won't find myself dazed on the hard ground with the sheep looking down at me still waiting for their hay.

The first of the month

December arrived with a vengeance today. The first time that I've crunched rather than splashed across fields to feed the sheep, and every water trough surface had to be smashed; inch-thick ice stretched opaquely over each one.
The holly berries are out in great clusters, vying with the rosehips and occasional string of bryony for who can do the scarlet drapery thing best.
It's all very festive, but it's incredibly difficult to poke my nose from beneath the duvet when I know it's my turn to do the animals.

Time out

It's been over a week since I've had time to play blogger rather than farmer, trainer, or consultant. I've been shooting about like a mad ferret and the lead up to Christmas looks as if nothing's gonna change soon. I'm already planning a New Year's resolution; do more of the stuff I love, less of the stuff I don't, and tighten my belt.
So, although wearing slatey grey eyebags that would only lighten with copious applications of sleep, I kept an appointment made months ago to get up and go fairly early this morning with a friend off to the Devon and Cornwall Waterfowl Show at the Royal Cornwall Showground.
I had my eye on getting some more Black Indian Runner ducks to join Beany and co, so slid along the for sale section, clocked a nice young pair, shoved over to the Treasurer's desk, paid over my beer vouchers and clicked a sold label onto the cage so that I could go and admire the show birds at leisure.
Many shows auction their birds, so you have to wait hours if the pens you are keen on have high numbers, and you have no idea how optimistic the bidding will be. I much preferred this civilised approach - each pen had a clear price tag, and if there was no sold label, you sauntered apparently casually, but actually at top speed, to put down your dosh and the deal is done. No argy bargy, no haggling, no competition. Lovely.
The long lines of runner ducks of every colour on show had me enthralled (only the white runners are on show in this photo). Unlike the other ducks of a more squat stature in square cages, runners are given tall pens to accommodate their naturally vertical stance. They stand in lines like soldiers on parade. It's a good thing they weren't all for sale or I'd have come home with armfuls of the beauties.
I iffed and butted over two pens of Silver Appleyard ducks for a friend, but closer inspection revealed imperfections that I wouldn't have been happy with, so I resisted. I chortled over the Sebastopol geese - a lovely example in the photo above - with their crazy ringleted feathers, the Shirley Temple of the waterfowl world.
The only problem was that the huge cattle barn the event was held in was freezing. It was colder inside than out - we shivered as we walked into the shed and my feet were numb in ten minutes. There were very few people there; much more body heat was needed to create a comforting guff. But I'm back in the warm now, and my two new black beauties are on straw, with feed and water, and getting over the trauma of the journey and their new home.

Rain stopped play

Next to the almost completed cob barn is the linhay, an open fronted barn originally used for storing hay. With the barn looking so shiny, the linhay sulked alongside, and worse, had started to drip onto the feed bins stored underneath. It was time to give those lovely granite posts a new hat. One weekend was nearly enough, finishing touches to be sorted today. But rain, of course, intervened. It might be another week, or two, before it's safe to clamber about up there and tap the last sheet and the capping sections into place.

The tears of a clown

For the first time in recent summer memory, it seemed like it might just possibly be a day without rain.
At 6 o'clock I go and give the pigs their evening feed, and gaze out at the grey, grumbling clouds over the hill. I can't feel any wet in my hair or on my face, but there on a stone by my foot is a large splash; a harbinger of a battalion of splashes.
Even the ducks are fed up with being permanently damp.

A breathing barn

Weird. After three years I finally have an inkling of what the roofless barn will look like with its hat on. That extraordinarily high tech breathable membrane pinned to the rafters may look oddly modern, but it will be entirely hidden by local reclaimed slate and ensure that moisture doesn't drip onto the floor and that any wet in the building will be able to escape through the roof if it hasn't run out of the doors first.
That's not so daft as it sounds. Yesterday the river below the farm burst its banks spectacularly and caught folk unaware. Fenn swam for the first time, unable to touch the ground as the water reached tall human thigh height on the road. Twenty minutes previously it has been an inch high, but turning to retrace their steps, dog and dog walker communed with the African Queen experience.

Committed

Well, at this very moment the hay fields are being cut. Five days without rain are being forecast, but whether that'll hold true, who knows? But waiting for the possibility of another clump of wet-free opportunities is a chance that cannot be taken. So in a few days, all being well, I will be humping small bales onto trailers, off trailers, into the Dutch barn and crossing all digits that any rogue precipitation is short and mild. If things don't go so well on the rain front it'll be wrapped into large bales for haylage, which the sheep don't really like. Apart from lambing, this is the most worrisome time of the year.