BBC Radio 4 Farming Today

Yesterday, Anna Varle, producer for Farming Today came to the farm to talk about smallholding for a colour piece (huh! There I am using Beeb lingo as if I knew what it was the day before yesterday!).
Farmers have concerns about small scale backyard keepers slipping under the net of legislation and regulation and causing health and welfare problems so Anna came to find out about the kind of things we cover on our smallholder training courses.
I have now uploaded the MP3 sound file to Blogger but the quality is very poor and boomy, so the BBC link is here even though it only lasts 7 days. Our section is 3 mins 20 seconds in and runs til 8 minutes. The ducks are the stars. And all our sheep have a leg at each corner.

Western world preoccupations

I know that you can get terribly maudlin about the state of humanity, and spend a lifetime weeping pointlessly into your beer or beard about things you intend to do nothing much about - infant mortality, torture, abuse of human rights and so on. But there are times when media preoccupations are downright obscene considering what is truly important, and when the ability to value what's significant is appallingly flawed.
This whole week's nonsensical fixation on two light entertainment figures having made a daft balls-up made me want to chuck the whole media industry into a large blender and flick the switch. I wasn't madly bothered about the Russian oligarchy losing its roubles, although I had a moment of unsurprised horror when I read that $70 billion of the $700 billion coughed up by the ailing US government to prop up the financial sector would be going to pay bonuses to those workers who still somehow thought they had reached their performance targets.
But what really pulled me up short was a story so utterly horrific that I couldn't understand why it wasn't front page news and the leader for every TV bulletin.

Somalian rape victim, 13, stoned to death.

There aren't many stories in the press that can make me cry with shame and horror. This did.

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.

Terrific!

Radio 4 is my thing. In the car. After two years in Devon the tuner is still not attached to the radio aerial on the house roof - no aerial, no signal, no usable radio inside the house. Some would have murdered a cat by now. So every car ride ends with me reluctant to get out because something is on the radio and I need my fix.
My patience in not murdering a cat can be rewarded by a choice gem, a nifty morsel, a radio gaga. This week we had Sue McGregor holding hands with Jeremy Paxman and Bettany Hughes around the library table sharing some fave reads. It's not particulary relevant that Paxo chose The Secret Agent, the point is that he described it as "terrific" more times than I could count. And then it became catching and "terrific" was thrown about the programme as if it was an alternative for "and" or "the". The show was punctuated by terrific and I found myself gulping for breath so that I could continue to drive safely without tears of laughter blurring my vision.
And then I started to gasp in wonder. You'll remember Paxo's utterly brilliant interview of Michael Howard where he repeated his question a dozen times and didn't get an answer. On the basis of the "terrific" revelations I'm now wondering whether Paxo is THE interviewer of our times or someone who gets stuck in a salient groove. He sure loves repetition.