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!

I'm claiming it on expenses

Like most people, I've been watching the unravelling of the MP's expenses scandal open-mouthed. I'm so jealous I can hardly splutter forth venom. As an M.P there'd be no need to pay for my Tampax anymore; I could have my poshest rugs repaired and paid for by other tax payers; I'd enjoy a variety of houses and flats pretending I'm living in whichever one took my accountant's fancy that week; I'd get my mole problems sorted at no cost to myself, and I wouldn't have to show receipts for slap up meals or treats that cost less than £250. Best of all, none of this would put a dent in my £65,000 salary. Show me the money!
There'd be one downside though, come to think of it.
No-one would trust me ever again. I would be despised at least as much as Fred the Shred. None of my good intentions or pleas for a refocussing on the important things would have any credence. My name, my judgement and my honour would be mud and filth. I'd have to spend all my time making feeble excuses rather than bellowing "Hear, hear" in the House, and have to satisfy myself instead with cries of "I didn't break any rules" in the comfort of one of my other houses.
But at least I'd have the satisfaction of knowing incontrovertibly that I'd been one of the gang responsible for ending parliament as we know it. My name will be forever secure in the history books.
And that is my 400th blog post. What a sad way to mark this mini milestone.

Empty nest

I'm seriously down today. I've spent the last couple of months tending to my incubators, had a first decent hatch of ducklings, a second lousy one, tweaked my technique and humidity and had a good third hatch. Last night eighteen glorious ducklings from one to four days old were scuttling about under the heat lamp. I covered their run with weldmesh as always and went to bed.
After six weeks of early lamb-checking rises I have my first lie- in; not because The Last Ewe has lambed, but because she's been told to get on with it as best she might as sleep deprivation can drive you crazy.
There's a polite cough by the bedside. "Are you awake?" Grunt. "We've had a bit of a disaster". I'm wide awake now. "How many ducklings were in the stable?". Eighteen. "Oh. They've all gone".
There in the corner of the stable is a huge heap of fresh earth, the discarded material from a new rat run. The rats have had every single duckling. I want to curl into a sobbing heap. All that effort, mine and the duckling's. I feel sick.
I head to the office, turn on the computer and buy a metal cage brooder that will take 50 birds.
I take Fenn for a walk and there in the grass is an empty egg, clearly predated, not hatched. Sometimes I really hate nature.

2009's king of the castle

This is a makeshift creep feeder, a dry place to put a small trough of lamb food, with bars across the front (well, back if you are looking at this photo - the bars are out of sight) so that the ewes can't get in but the wee ones can.
Not that they are wee any more...
The creep feed allows the few smaller lambs to supplement their diet if they aren't getting enough milk. We don't supplement the lamb's diet unless a ewe or two is struggling to keep up with the demands of her young, preferring a slow grown grass fed lamb, so the creep feed won't be made available for much longer.
It's crucial to remember (and that doesn't always happen) NOT to put the ark too close to the fence, or with a couple of hops, skips and jumps the lambs bound over the fence and into the blue yonder, hysterical with freedom until they are utterly unable to get back to mother and bleat piteously for some human sap to come and sort it all out.
Once the first lamb is up on the ark, rattling the tin with their sharp percussive hooves, their mates join in until there is no more room at the inn.
Oh, and The Last Ewe (uppercase, up the duff and unpopular) still hasn't lambed.

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.

Five finger-piglets!

Hoorah, the poet who wrote the phrase I'm most likely to use at the drop of a picnic, has been named Poet Laureate. Congratulations to the marvellous Carol Ann Duffy.
And the phrase? "Five finger-piglets" of course, the best description I've ever heard of a hand greedily hunting through a box of chocs.
As it was printed in the Guardian a year or three ago, I don't think I'm breaking any rules by repeating it here.

Chocs
by Carol Ann Duffy

Into the half-pound box of
Moonlight
my small hand crept,
There was an electrifying rustle.
There was a dark and glamorous scent.
Into my open, religious mouth
the first Marzipan Moment went.

Down in the crinkly second layer
five finger-piglets snuffled
among the Hazelnut Whirl,
the Caramel Swirl,
the Black Cherry and Almond Truffle.

Bliss.

I chomped, I gorged,
I stuffed my face,
till only the Coffee Cream
was left for the owner of the box -
tough luck, Ann Pope -
oh, and half an Orange Supreme.

The fear of the pig

How can someone who keeps pigs not be thinking about swine flu?
Like everyone, I'm confused. Do we have a pandemic of pigs, every known breed keeling over from some deadly virus? No. Is eating pork somehow dangerous this week when it wasn't last? No. Are people in Mexico dying from a ghastly influenza because their health care system isn't looking after them properly? Yes. Is there a risk to vulnerable people? It would seem so, yes. Is there a need to take this all very seriously indeed? With people dying, yes, of course. Is religion entering the fray? Yes; Israel wants to change the name to Mexican flu because Jews are not allowed to eat pork (although I'm Jewish and I raise pigs, but there you are, there's always one). And another country whose predominant population also abhors the swine is killing all its pigs even though there are no cases of swine flu yet reported there and there is no suggestion that it is present in the pigs raised by minority groups for their use, either (do you get the feeling that Salem has moved to Egypt?).
Why do we so easily rush to blame something other than human error; inadequate health systems and inadequate care of livestock (if that's behind this and at the moment it seems unlikely that any pig has been involved) are down to people failing each other and their animals.
I'm very concerned for the poor pig whose name has been taken in vain and is now global public enemy no.1, and of course for pig farmers. And no, it hasn't taken anyone's mind off the financial crisis, just in case any politicians are deluding themselves.

A pair of goldfinches

Ok, there's only one in the photo, but the noise of the catflap being replaced sent the second goldfinch off into the nearest tree.
The catflap had been hammered beyond repair by full tilt kittens running away from the boogie man, otherwise known as the gorgeous trespassing tabby that must belong to someone, but I've no idea who, and it certainly makes itself at home, chasing my three tabbies on their own turf.

Taking a stroll

Just taking a stroll in the rain, through the farm, with the dogs, one can become the absolute centre of attention.

Ducks + water = happiness (and lots of sex)

The new duck pens have been in use for some weeks now, but I haven't been able to let them into the pond as it had to be fox-proof fenced.
About, ooh, 20 seconds after the last widget was clenched (you get the picture, lots of tools, ironmongery and stuff were used) the Aylesbury ducks were let out for a session of swimming and bonking, both of which were achieved in, ooh, 60 seconds.
The Black Indian Runners, who share the pen next door, will be allowed out tomorrow (can't have inter-duck sex or I'll get zebra ducks and unhappy customers). As it was, they came rushing to the fence and squawked to be let into the pond too.
I apologised and tried to explain that they'd get their chance soon enough.
Impatient things, ducks.
And if you peer behind the galvanised field gate you might just see a sleeping black pig.

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.

Welcome to the world

Two thirds of the way there now, and here's a shot of a few of the dams with lambs out on fresh grass.
Suddenly the flock has multiplied and keeping count of 30+ scampering lambs isn't easy. I have no idea how farmers with flocks that number into the hundreds manage this, or whether they just scour the field boundaries on their quadbikes to make sure nothing is hanging on the wire or caught in brambles.
I'm back to encouraging the final third to get on with it through bribery...if you have your lambs you get an extra feed of nuts and then it's onto fresh grass you go!

Lambing well underway

What do you think of my wee Scottish Fold? Seriously floppy ears, but otherwise quite perfect (in fact it is MORE than perfect - every flaw is a beauty spot). And no.5 has a great pair of lambs, and the Torwen has such a great big ram lamb he is staying entire and will remain balls akimbo for sale as a potential breeding ram. A heap of them are back out in the fields, and about half remain plump and purposeful, waiting to create a few leaping lambs of their own.

Some light relief

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Fed up

Doesn't this ewe look completely fed up with waiting for her lambs to arrive? I can walk right up to the ready to pop girls without them even stirring; they just can't be bothered to move or succumb to flight instincts.
They are arriving thick and fast now, squirting out triplets and doubles and the odd single.
The larger of the triplets in each case are being fostered onto mums with just one of their own, a process that is anything but failsafe, but less risky than buying shares in a bank.
I keep trying to take a decent photo of the gorgeous Torwen lambs to post up here, but they are so frisky they all come out with the shakes. OK, back to the grindstone!

three's a crowd...

Remember when I said I'd had the ewes scanned and breathed a huge sigh of relief that only one was due to have triplets? Well, scanner man nil, ewe three.
This is the first ewe to lamb - last night, just before midnight. She was due to have twins, but had three, just like she did last year. And she was first to drop again, too.
So now it's up to the orchard every couple of hours to see what's happening, who's getting restless, dribbling mucus or looking like she's got a pain in the guts or has a head or foot poking out of her bum.
What larks. Rather them than me. All I have to do is get up at 5am for the next month.

Dittisham Lady 933 - name that pig

Can you get a gal to look up when you want her to? Nope. But here is the new Berkshire breeding sow, moments after she swayed slowly down the trailer ramp.
See those teats? She had her previous litter weaned off a few weeks back and is now dried off, but she should be in pig again; sows have two litters a year.
Various domestic names have been suggested - you can't call your first ever in-pig sow number 933 after all - and Nigella, Daphne and Primrose are all in the running. Nigella would enable future females to be Delia, Elizabeth, Sophie, Clarissa or Jane for example, whilst Daphne might run to companions named Daisy, Delilah, Doris or Dorcas. Primrose's mates could be Rose, Lilac, Primula and Peony. You get the picture.
Any ideas? I had some fabulous suggestions from you when it came to the naming of kittens, and just like Blue Peter, I can ignore any I don't like!

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.

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.

Woodland nymph

There's been playing about in the woods the last few days. Time was getting short for coppicing so it rushed to the top of the list. It's too wet to take a vehicle down, so a barrow was piled with chainsaw, loppers, appropriate lubricants (chain oil not brandy), thick thornproof gloves, and the dogs were called and off we went.
On the way there were various distractions; snow-cracked prone willows had to be cut down to restore the pathways, and I oohed and aahed at the bubbling of the new tadpoles and the fresh flush of primroses.
This Green Woodcup (or Green Elfcup) caught my eye, as it always does. I am a stickler for picking up rogue bits of plastic and twine, so I always check out patches of unnatural colour. Only this is entirely natural, and a pleasure, not a pain.

Past the dung heap

It's not a good photo. It's the one that gets sifted to the bottom of the heap and then has folks peering through the murk to test their memory of places or faces. But it's taken from the sole vantage point (other than bird's eye, and I don't have a micro-light, plane or hot air balloon) that captures a decent proportion of the farm; not easy in this undulating landscape. So I get to the top of the hill, and right smack bang where I intend to press the image making button, is a new and vast dungheap. All fine and proper, but I can't see through a dung heap.

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.

Time for an off-farm topic rant

Lordy, lordy, I'm getting crosser by the second.
You'd think, wouldn't you, what with the Freedom of Information Act, the desire for open government (huh!), and the stated aim of helping small businesses stay in business during this painful financial slough of despond, that access to information about government grants and tendering opportunities would be freely available to all, not on a pay per view basis like some seedy porn channel in a one night stay hotel chain.
Whether you are a third sector organisation with charitable aims of alleviating poverty, or simply a micro company doing everything you can to provide a product or service, unless you can come up with the dosh, you cannot find out what opportunities exist that you may be eminently able to exploit/deliver beautifully to a client's satisfaction. Some portals say that you can register for free (again huh!), but in fact give you a peek into limited possibilities and then pull out the stops to rake in your cash (from a couple of hundred quid up to nearly a thousand) for access to the fuller picture.
At any time I think this would be a serious failure to ensure equal access to public sector contracts and grants, would wonder if it was in fact legal, would hate the fact that some middleman was given a contract to control access to this information on behalf of the public sector by provison of some halting, circuitous, irritating portal, but now? Now you can add immoral, spiteful, stupid and shortsighted to the charges.
Next thing we'll have to pay some company somewhere enough to make them profits just for supplying us with water....
Anyone for a gallon of air? Going cheap.

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.

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?

From mega to micro

We move from the megaspawn to the mini egg. Not of the chocolate kind, but of the duck sort. On the left, modelling the natural look of this season, is Mrs Aylesbury duck egg. It covers the palm of my hand; small hands I may have, but these eggs are considerably larger than the one from the chicken you more likely chomp with your toast soldiers.
On the right is also an Aylesbury duck egg. It's the first egg this duck has ever laid and she's working up to the fully fledged bonanza.
It was about an inch and a smidgen from top to toe and she'd forgotten to include the yolk.
That was yesterday. Today, all the eggs were of normal size. Quick learners, my ducks.

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.

The image of the moment

From time to time I find myself linking unexpectedly to a popular image. It might be the most adorable thing to pop up when you Google "sharpei", say, or the most spectacular of the many birds of paradise. It could be a snap of a badger, a nod to super bunny, or a reference to a dodgy moustache.
And then the numbers of visitors to this blog quadruple, leaping from an average fifty hits a day to over two hundred, and it can last for many weeks, until some other blogger or linker takes hold, or the item in question falls off the media radar.
If you had real nouse it would be possible to create a popular blog simply by inserting the zeitgeist image. But the images of the moment are not those that normally interest me. The one I've been trying to catch for weeks and failing to do so is of a pied wagtail. They fly off every time I reach for the camera, and although they are happy to bob about the yard, refuse to pose. This puny effort is the best so far; I will persevere.

Cobbo

Off to the theatre last night to see the first performance of Cobbo by Theatre Alibi.
We chortled and laughed and giggled and snorted and gasped. The full house audience wriggled with pleasure at this short, simple, effective, fantastical piece. It was particularly warming seeing a play based in the place we were in, with references to the Devon County Library, the Quay, the river and the draining of the waters from the moor down to the city.
The story of love between a woman and a swan inevitably played on mythical ties to Leda and the Swan, the young woman in the play dreaming that her mother had hatched her from an enormous egg, but although we had to firmly suspend our disbelief, the play was rooted in the here and now, not some ancient past. The supermarket checkout girl, psychoanalysing every purchase as she pushed it through the bar code reader; the prevalence and loneliness of singledom. What is timeless is the portrait of self hatred and frustration that turns into mindless violence towards the vulnerable, and the determined lack of self-knowledge and understanding beyond one's own immediate realm that ultimately makes people unlovable.
The abiding big-grin image that I have taken away from the piece is that of the swan wrapped in big women's underpants, stuffed with panty liners (with wings, of course) to deal with his guacamole-like involuntary excretions. That and the cheese biscuit swans and chocolate eggs nestled in white feathers we were served along with the booze at the end of the play (first night pleasures - oh joy).
And as I drove away from Exeter, full of sadness at unfulfilled love, there at the side of the road was a couple deep in discussion, when the woman put her arms across her face in utter despair. Oh god.

Please sir, can I have some more?

When I saw this on the news I couldn't believe it. Farmers queueing for grants, first come first served, with no reference to levels of need or strategic use of sparse funding where it would have most impact.
What next? First come first served pensions? Egg and spoon races to determine child benefits? Begging bowls for incapacity benefit and disability living allowances?
If this is how we deal with government finances, why do we need civil servants or politicians, or democratic decision-making processes? Let's just have a free-for-all; the market place has gone entirely mad.

The full cycle

Ok, I know you can't see their faces, but they are rummaging in their new indoor quarters. A great big farrowing pen has been built in the cob barn in anticipation of bringing home a Berkshire breeding sow, but for now, five new weaners have taken residence for a couple of weeks until the ground has dried out a little and they can romp as usual outside.
It's been some months since there were pigs, rather than pork, on the farm, but once the sow arrives pigs should be in permanent residence.
The pen is a massive construction of box steel frame and galvanised tin, concrete floor and inbuilt drainage. There is nothing (I hope) that a pig can get its nose underneath - the strength in those snouts is unbelievable. Once the weaners are permanently outdoors, this pen will have a creep area built in so that future piglets can get away from their mother's monstrous bulk if she threatens, inadvertently, to squash her young.
Getting home from picking up the new weaners, I rush round feeding the sheep and putting away the geese and ducks before heading back to ear tag the weaners and put them in their new pen. But there, in the duck pen is an immaculate but rather flat looking duck. Dead as a dodo.
My guess is that as this was the beginning of the laying season and we've had, as everyone knows, a cold spell, that she was egg bound. She looked fine this morning. I never thought about picking up each duck to see if they were overheated...they all looked so well.
So, new movements both on and off the farm. Spring and all its excitements of life and death is announcing that it's very nearly here.

It's a scan

Yesterday, for the first time ever, the pregnant ewes were scanned. I know, god-like, how many offspring each ewe is due to produce.
There was much rejoicing at the news that just one experienced ewe was having triplets. None of this bonkers multiple birth stuff that happened last year, then.
Lots of doubles for the more mature gels and almost all singles for the first-timers, which is just how it should be.
Those with singles have been split into a separate field from the doubles and triplet bearing mums, so the latter can receive a bit more grub.
Now I know exactly how many lambs could be born, I feel increased pressure to do whatever I can to see them through to life, but there are no guarantees. At least I won't have to poke about wondering if a ewe has dropped her full load. But of course, these things aren't failsafe.

A whole month since I saw snowdrops in London, they have finally bloomed in Devon

The minister of silly thoughts

This is utterly irresistible. You couldn't make it up.
There's this Minister of the Environment who's banned this ad because he doesn't believe in man-made climate change.
Now, if he was minister for transport, or minister for using as much electricity as possible, or minister for self-indulgent ideas, or minister with absolutely no portfolio, or minister for irony, or minister for stirring things up by saying truly daft things, or minister with the most inappropriate qualifications for his job ever, or minister for denial, or minister for sticking his head in a pillow case and then in the sand, or minister for having his cake and eating it, or minister of pillocks, or minister of laughing stocks, or...
Come on, suggestions please. What job would you give him?

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.

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.

I've been thinking about this ever since I heard it

Goodness, it's hard to love America, notwithstanding some great art and literature.
All that misconceived superiority, the election of cretins, the lack of universal health care, the assassination of Martin Luther King, the McCarthy era, binning Kyoto, Guantanamo, 50% of people believing in creationism and not evolution, to pick a few things that spring swiftly to mind.
And then something happens that suddenly humanises a nation that seemed anything but.
The last time I remember deliberately turning on the television during the daytime it was to watch, open mouthed, the collapse of the twin towers. On Tuesday it was to hear Barack Obama’s inaugural speech, which made me glad and hopeful and worried that too many people see a clever, able and inspiring man as a saviour and with huge relief expect him, not us, to improve our faltering world.
But just read it - an intelligent, thoughtful, determined, hugely human approach that doesn't shrug off the ignominy of the very recent past, but draws a line between the approach then and now.
Gordon Brown talked about change, change, change when he took up the UK premiereship. Huh! We can but hope that Obama will deliver where Brown just teeters on the brink of indecision and same, same, same. The world will be watching like never before.

Learning from your mistakes

I eat a lot of lettuce: rocket, little gem, lamb's lettuce, butterhead, Romaine/cos, Chinese cabbage, Webb's Wonder, salad bowl, even the universally chomped but sneered at iceberg. And though there's a polytunnel in the veg garden, I've not yet attempted to grow lettuces in it over the winter. So, in the not so productive months, when I can't resist a crunch of fresh green, I have been known to bite my lip about the food miles and buy imported salad.
But I should know better than to buy it from Spain. I can't remember when over the last few years a well-washed Spanish lettuce hasn't given me gut-churning spasms and worse. But very occasionally I forget to look at the label, or I think I'll just be extra careful with the washing. But no. Whatever it is they do to their exported salad delivers a swift and painful dose of food poisoning.
I've never found a slug in an imported lettuce; if I had, I could at least be reassured that it hadn't been blasted with a chemical cocktail containing bleach and who knows what else. And I could enjoy the extra protein for free.
Apart from exotic fruit such as mangoes, bananas and pineapple that don't grow in the UK, I am going to swear off imported foodstuffs, even if it's being sold in the local market. I know that seasonal is how it should be; that's how I eat 90% of the time, so I'm just going to have to swap my lettuce for leeks and parsnips, which are still there for the pulling in the veg patch. Complete with slug.

Brushing against the bizarre

The adverts trailing the walls alongside the escalators in the tube have always intrigued me, indicative as they are of the inner London Zeitgeist. I'm as curious about the positioning of the worn out stubs of chewing gum as I am about the content.
Coasting up the escalators this week I was reminded of how when times are tough our proffered entertainment becomes increasingly surface, aggressively light-hearted.
There was the big, round, over-made- up face of Jimmy Osmond, mascaraed and foundationed within an inch of his middleagedness. He's in Grease, which I can just about fathom, and is shortly to move to Chicago where he's to play Billy Flynn - which I find entirely unimaginable and absurd. Wondering how the little cheeky chappie of Puppy Love fame can exude the slick, sleek, sophisticated, manipulative odour of Mr Flynn (Bryan Ferry would be MY choice), nearly had me tripping over the last moving step and into the unsuspecting back of my fellow commuters.
And then there was Dame Edna Norton. Sorry, Graham. He's starring in La Cage aux Folles as Albin the drag queen. I felt as if I'd fallen back into the seventies, goggling in surprise at Danny La Rue. There were the huge ads for six packs if you would only stick to a full-on gym regime and take a heady concoction of supplements. And on it went. It was bizarre - this determinedly showbizzy presentation of life when all around me people were looking grim.
The most serious thing I could find was an ad for using tissues to avoid spreading cold germs.
And in the train, squashed far too close to everyone else in the Friday rush hour, I overheard parts of a truly odd conversation. It became clear that a teacher was talking about a colleague who was having an inappropriate relationship with a sixteen year old student. The word inappropriate was his, but he felt it wouldn't do him any good reporting it, and as the student was sixteen, it was kind of alright, wasn't it? But, he hummed and hawed, it was never really alright if you were the teacher and the sixteen year old was your student, was it? I could hear him tussling with what he'd like to call his conscience, and failing to come to any conclusions either way. The young woman he was talking to was decidedly not sitting on the fence; it was wrong in her eyes, a teacher taking advantage of a situation where a pupil should be able to trust them to do the right thing.
It reminded me of my history teacher who went out with and then married an ex-pupil shortly after she left the school. And the girl student who stole a male teacher away from his fiancee who also taught at the school. And the teacher who was mentally abusive and cruel to a pupil he went out with immediately after she left school, and.....
Life is much simpler, back in Devon. No escalators with ads, no eavesdropping train crushes. Just the odd bit of burglary, arson or murder.

Mr Micawber and me

Goodness, I'm about to sound like a real old whingeing puritan, and I failed my economics A level (it was soooo boring that I fell asleep, literally, several times in class, only ever getting the O level grade), so I probably should keep my trap shut, but...
Everyone is in an almighty panic that people aren't spending. The same way (or is it the opposite way?) that there was equal panic that everyone was maxing out their credit cards for the whole of the last decade. How can both these stances be right?
If you're facing hard times (and who isn't?) doesn't it make absolute sense to curtail your spending, wear last years clothes (in my case I still wear stuff that's twenty years old, but then I never was a fashion plate and the livestock don't give a hoot), and basically live off what you've got wherever possible? I'm not talking about UK poverty here, which is a real and separate major concern, but about those of us who have to live more frugally than we've had to in the past.
I'd have thought the press and the government would have been applauding us for not stripping the shops bare at Christmas, for being more reasoned and responsible about our expenditure, and for finally having the strength to resist the cult of more, more, more, spend, spend, spend.
I suspect that 2009 will be the year of anti-conspicuous consumption; grunge will be back. Muddy ten year old Volvo estates will be the car of choice; charity shop clothes with the Oxfam tag still swinging from the collar will be the thing; huge plasma screens bought in 2008 will only be able to show yet more re-runs of The Good Life in 2009; private schooling will gurgle down the drain; and bangers and mash with onion gravy will become the plat du jour.
For the next decade I predict:

1. money management classes in every primary and secondary school
2. the death of the Porsche
3. the digging up of flowerbeds and their replacement with veg
4. demand for allotments skyrocketing
5. downsizing, downshifting and other euphemisms for one or no income households
6. that all ex-battery hens will find a home in suburban gardens, producing cheap eggs
7. the diminishing of the cult of celebrity
8. the rise of the knitter on the train
9. less fanfare, less hubris and a curtailed Olympics
10. an emerging generation of workers with different aspirations and expectations

What are your predictions?

Keeping warm on cold nights

It was ages ago that I posted about my first visit to the Dartmoor tannery, salted lambskins heaped in the back of my car. Five months have gone by and I've been back and forth, collecting the skins and delivering more for curing.
And here is a picture of two of the resulting skins - a lambskin (right) and a sheepskin - that I've kept back to snuggle into on winter nights. I can't believe how warm and comforting they are, how they seep heat into your back and ease the efforts of the day.
What's fascinating about the Badger face is the black belly, and this results in a natural chocolate brown or black border in contrast to the creamy centre. The sheepskin (from a ewe that went for mutton), has a blacker border and shorter pile (she had been shorn a few months before), whereas the lambskins are completely unshorn, so have that curly Mongolian look that has been so fashionable the last few years. Every one is slightly different, no homogeneity here, with some having a darker base layer of fleece that gives a lovely variation in tone.
For years I've been hoping to do this but lived too far from a tannery, but now I am content that every useful bit of the sheep has a purpose.
Several were given as Christmas presents, and others are being sold, contributing to the keep of the sheep. The next batch to go includes a lamb with a big brown spot on the side; I wonder if I can justify keeping it for myself?

When you know you've arrived

I always looked with envy when I visited a farm at the beginning of a new year and saw a clutch of manufacturers' calendars nonchalantly heaped on the dresser. I reckoned that receiving freebies from the agricultural trade meant you were a real farmer.
So, I say tadaaa! I've officially made it as the real thing, for two, yes TWO 2009 calendars (freebies, gifts, free lunch stuff etc etc) are in the kitchen, proclaiming my verisimilitude to a farmer. OK, I have yet to wear a gratis boilersuit with a Massey or John Deere badge, and I haven't got a plastic thingummybob from some quad bike dealer, but you have to take these things slowly.

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 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.