The art of incubation

I've had and used a little 20 hen egg incubator for some years; it takes just 15 duck eggs or 9 goose eggs, so my hatches have always been small, but now I have pumped up the volume a bit with one that takes 35 duck eggs (the automatic turning cradle won't accommodate a goose egg).
But with increased volume comes increased risk and increased potential for disaster. If something goes wrong (power failure, unnoticed cracked egg, temperature variations etc) you end up spoiling a larger potential hatch. The phrase putting all your eggs in one basket has never rung so true!
My last hatch was not a success; I hadn't noticed that a batch of bought in Indian Runner duck eggs had rather fragile shells, and as the cradle turned it cracked an egg, and whatever evil humours poured forth ended up contaminating all but six of the fertile eggs.
Bummer.
But yesterday I set another batch of my Aylesbury duck eggs and my neighbour's Cayugas to hatch, and in a week I will candle them, and hopefully if I am properly observant at my daily checks, there will be life in 28 days.
The photo is of three week old goslings, Aylesburys and Cayugas that I put out on grass for the first time yesterday.

Sir Alan says it's ok to lie

Did millions of viewers watch Siralan Sugar's Gerald Ratner moment last night? Did we really see Claire's victory tossed carelessly to a proven liar?
Perhaps I'm being over fussy and prissy, but last week when Lee's CV lies were revealed, I thought his firing was a no-brainer. When he escaped I thought Siralan was keeping him on for a spectacular runner-up firing: "What? Hire a liar and put him in charge of important business in my organisation? Never!". He was obviously lining up Claire to slide into pole position.
But no. Suffering from the myopia that saw the Badger relegated to second place (and Claire is after all the Badger Mark II), Siralan has told the world that it's fine to lie, that we all do it, and promptly picked a prime example of the dishonest charmer breed to represent the kind of person he wants in his organisation.
The brazenness of this decision has all the trappings of the insular view that led Ratner to tell the world that his products were "total crap". Now we all know, endorsed by the small man himself, that his staff are untrustworthy. I can see the painful twisting of Margaret's mouth.
Siralan, it was great tv, but you're fired!

A day of insects

Late afternoon in the glorious sun, a neighbour came and set a number of moth traps. "It's National Moth Night" was the surprise announcement. But it was a cloudless and chilly night, and not the best for catching these nocturnal furred insects (perhaps they aren't all furry, but I know nothing about moths, and furry is what comes to mind).
All the same, when we checked the traps this morning some beauties were caught, recorded and set free to live out their remaining hours; most adult moths live for short periods from a few days to a few weeks depending on the species, although moths that hibernate through the winter live for months.
The traps captured a number of buff ermines, a white ermine (below), a gold spot, a peppered moth and a host of others with wonderfully romantic names. But best of all, there was a great palm sized poplar hawk moth (see above). From the size of the body I could finally see why a bird would find the moth a nourishing feast.
And then I checked the sheep, with relief that shearing is planned for tomorrow morning, and that there hadn't been any signs of fly strike to date. Extraordinary what can happen in 12 hours; 2 sheep now had blow flies buzzing around them and one had dark, moist patches that indicated maggots had hatched. All plans were put aside as the sheep needed instant attention. The two ewes had a full early shearing, and one other had her tail area clipped.
One beautiful, harmless insect, another that can cause death. Truly, a day for insects.

Fairs and such

Nothing like a country fair for putting a gleam in the eye and a pain in the pocket. Last night I was at the private view (champagne reception, natch) for the Contemporary Craft Fair down at Bovey Tracey, where us bods in the arts get to swig fizz alongside those with loose wallets and great taste.
In previous years I've been tempted by the jewellery and have returned with yet another chunky one-off bangle, but I have enough, and this time was there to admire the furniture in particular, purely as a voyeur.
And it being fair season, it was off to the Royal Cornwall today, where in utter contrast to Bovey, the stuff in the massive craft tent was nothing to do with craft and everything to do with mass produced tat, but there were plenty of other marvels to enjoy, including some wonderful artisan work if you kept to the smaller stalls.
Although cattle and sheep outside of Cornwall were kept away because of Bluetongue precautions, the livestock was still wondrous to behold and smell (clean, well cared for and warm). And continuing on the strangely coloured proboscis theme, a blue-tongued skink was doing the rounds, as was some species of skunk (skink/skunk, all the same to me).
The high quality of local food was at the fore; yummy Cornish produce was highlighted - lots of wine, cider, beer, cheeses, chocolate, meats of every variety including beautiful salamis, asparagus, preserves, puds, clotted cream and more.
The sheep shearers and the pig handlers competed furiously, one Gloucester Old Spot hurtling happily across the ring, oblivious to its owners cries.
Prizes were awarded for this and that, and the commentators were so well briefed that it sounded as if they knew every competitor and their animal personally.
And then there were the tractors - most far too large and serious for me, but there was one, a refurbed Massey 35 that looked like a Noddy car in agricultural garb, that I could happily give barn room.

First catch your llama

So, yesterday the vet rang and said "your Bluetongue vaccine is ready for collection. Bring a cool box. That'll be £56.04 for sixty doses. Oh, and you'll have to sign a disclaimer for the llama - it isn't really covered by the regs. And once you've opened the vial you have to use the lot within 8 hours."
The llama hasn't been handled for three years. Yes, he feeds from a bowl in my hand during the winter when he gets his goat mix to supplement the greenery he gnaws on (hedges, bushes, trees, hay, grass), but he keeps a wary eye and won't let me stroke him, even after the best part of a decade. He's shy. Luckily he is a self sufficient animal and doesn't have a worm problem or other ailments, so he isn't handled; it would only disturb him. But now I have no choice, and the afternoon is spent arranging gates in as unobtrusive a set-up as possible, so that he can be enticed in to the field shelter and banged to rights. As in earlier times, I intend to lasso him in a corner. He will resist for a moment or two, then kush; sit down and let you do what is needed.
So, today having vaccinated all the sheep and administered a prick of the syringe into my own finger for good measure, there were efforts to get the llama into the shelter. He nibbles from the bucket but as the field is brimful with grasses, he won't go in. Time for a regroup and a rethink. A hoard of neighbours arrive to use the barn to sort fat lambs for market. Six of us take a long rope into the field and slowly corner the llama so he has no choice but to go into the shelter. Gates are shut, three of us go in. I hand over the syringe so I can concentrate on putting a lead rope round his shoulders, but he stands quietly, and before I blink one of the group has injected the 1ml of pink juice with a sharp new needle, and we are done. The llama doesn't even notice.

The cows are getting it on

A young bull and his four girlfriends have come on a visit to give some of the fields the cattle grazing they need. As it gets dark you can hear him trying out his lungs to let the locals know that he has arrived.
He seems very calm and unruffled, taking his new surroundings and his companions as nothing less than his due.
Once the orchids and other wildflowers have gone to seed at the end of the summer, I will open the gate to the glade of purple moor grass in Moor Wood and they will curl their long tongues efficiently round the plants, avoiding the need for swaling this winter.

Know thy self

I have been lingering far longer than normal for a book, over Doris Lessing's autobiography, Under My Skin. For a change I haven't rushed at it, but savoured the descriptions of a childhood in Rhodesia and furrowed my forehead untangling the communism of her young adulthood.
Last night Alan Yentob was allowed into her kitchen to make her tea, lots of tea, and we were reminded of a woman who has made the word indomitable her own descriptor.
Age presumably plays a part, or perhaps not after all, but I cannot remember ever hearing or reading someone so absolutely self aware, so understanding of her own nature, and with such a sharp and clear view of humanity. This does not make for a soft experience, for her (leaving her first two children to pursue the life she had to must have been beyond painful) or for us (people are interesting but hardly important). She is revealed as a woman full of drives; her love of the physical, the sexual, the political, the humanitarian, all without caveats, all without delusion.
The programme shows her in 1958, very beautiful and specific as ever, sponsor of the Aldermaston marches, putting an unequivocal case against nuclear weapons, coolly and unemotionally.
To be so clear in ones own mind on any issue, about oneself... how few of us have that rarest of abilities. And if we think we do know our own mind, we mostly struggle to express what we know.
Watch The Hostess and The Alien here.

Are reptiles taking over the farm?

What with Hard-hattie making an impromptu appearance, I thought that would be it on the reptile front, but no. Zigzagging through the culm, trying to avoid the clumps of regenerating purple moor grass, I froze.
Sliding swiftly away from me was a thick, scaled, chevroned, slithering length of snake. Shivering with more fear than excitement, I blinked and it was gone.
It's so hard, without seeing the head, to know if it was a grass snake or an adder, but those chevrons were so marked, that I think it might have been an adder. And I was wearing sandals and shorts. Oh my.
(And no, I didn't hang around long enough to take a photo; I whistled my way to the edge of the culm and took my leave).

Pencarrow House

After a solid Saturday of fencing, a gloomy forecast and tired muscles dictated a change of pace on Sunday, so it was off to Pencarrow House for the Cornish Guild of Smallholders Country Fayre and Farmers Market (by kind permission, so it says on the programme, of Lady Molesworth St Aubyn).
Avoiding Wadebridge, the scenic route was taken down and up and down and up a very narrow lane over weak bridges (do they put up those signs to give you a free adrenalin rush?) where every bend required a leap of faith. The mile long drive to the house takes you through fabulous redwoods and rhododendrons, and army chaps (or were they all just fond of camouflage?) point you towards a sensible parking spot. Beautiful views, soggy grass, a heap of dogs (not Mopsa or Fenn who stayed behind to guard the bananas) and a pair of fabulous shires in harness. I have never before seen a horse with a moustache, but one of the shires had this going on in the vicinity of its top lip.
The food on offer was luscious, and the boot filled with flap jack, orange drizzle cake, hog's pudding, veal escalopes, two types of cheese, asparagus and a bag of spuds (the potato bucket was empty). Oh, and chocolate mousse, sticky toffee pudding, a white flowering chive plant and a cone of bramley and cinnamon ice cream. No excuse for starving in these parts.
Back home to find a fox had got through the electric fence and killed the second duck this month. This time however, it couldn't pull it through the new stock fencing and had dragged it as close to the fence as possible, eaten its head and left the body behind. It's clearly time to put up some permanent fox-proof pens for when there's no-one home. On a chirpier note, the incubator has a number of new ducklings hatching, so there are just a few weeks to get the pens sorted before this lot progress to the outside world. The to do list keeps growing.

They're closing my post office

"The Government has decided that up to 2500 Post Office branches across the UK will close. This local consultation will not change the Government decision, but aims to help Post Office Limited identify if the appropriate branches in this area have been proposed for closure."
So says the leaflet I picked up in the post office today. Instead of having a village post office that is open for 16 hours, four days a week with a heap of handy parking for those of us who live out of the village, they are proposing a mobile service open for a total of five hours, two mornings a week, and that we should instead use another post office 4 miles away (8 mile round trip) that is on a fearfully dangerous bend on a main (well, main for round here) road, with parking for one car.
They say that we can also use online services, but the village has been refused broadband by BT.
I am appalled that a Labour government is overseeing the dismantling of rural community services and at their failure to ensure equal access to key services across the country. They are a suicidal government.

Slow food movement?

Ummm... look what I found.
I was checking for Southern Marsh Orchids. I found one, and a second plant not yet in flower. Not the great mass I was hoping for, but I got distracted before I could really peer among the green stuff to see if there were any more promising leaves.
The dogs were nosing at the edges of the field, so were lagging behind me when, well, there it was.
I started to chuckle, and then burst into laughter. The stuff I find on this farm never fails to amaze me.
Having googled and inspected, I think it is a female mediterranean spur-thighed tortoise. That's a phrase I never thought I'd use.
I've put her into the walled front garden where she is safe from the dogs, there is lots of tortoise favourite food growing naturally, and put down a dish of water. I've called her Hard-hat. She doesn't belong to any of my few neighbours. What do I do now?

This is the after shot, after the dangly barbed wire, faded baler twine and rotten posts have been wrenched gleefully from the river bank.
This is the shot of plans fulfilled and dreams realised. Where dogs and humans can reach the river and splash about. Where people can place beer bottles for chilling and dogs can lap water without wire draped about their ears. Where the river can flood its banks without depositing heaps of twigs and stuff in a sieve of unforgiving stock fencing.
The fence will be made anew fifty yards above the river, and I will find a good bum-shaped log to put near the water, so I can watch and think, and watch and not think.
It took one vigorous Sunday morning to do this, and I've been back twice since to admire, and it's only Monday.

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.

Paths and tracks

When I set out each morning to feed and check on the animals I don't concentrate on the path I take across a field or up a track, but when I retrace my steps, empty bucket in hand, pleased perhaps with the progress of lambs, weaners or goslings, then I notice the parallel lines in the wet grass stretching away from me, marking where my feet have scuffed through the sward. It's incredibly difficult not to repeat that first journey exactly.
Often as not I have followed a sheep track, one they have made from hay rack to gate, or gate to gate, often with an eccentric meander round a comfortable contour rather than the shortest route. Like a waterway, the sheep tracks have tributaries and forks, where they split and regroup in answer to some internal satnav.
As the grass lengthens the tracks become more confirmed, better defined, a helpful path. The dogs always follow these paths and only go off-roading if distracted by a keen scent.
Last week I walked with friends through their woodland bordering a stretch of river. "Do you walk through here a lot?" I asked, noting the clear narrow mud track that moved us forward between the swathes of bluebells, wild garlic and orchids. "No", they said, "about once a year". The place is left undisturbed to encourage the bountiful flora and fauna. The track was the work of deer, and in the damp undergrowth we could spot lots of sharp hoof prints.
Somehow the tracks made by tractors and digger just don't have the same romance, but even they follow the animal tracks; animal instinct directs across the firmest and driest ground, why wouldn't a driver take heed?

The boys are back in town

I have used my new found competency and brought home the rare breed bacon. Three Berkshires, my pig breed of choice, and a pair of Middle White/British Lop crosses to make up the numbers.
Middle White adults are the most ugly beast, with squashed wrinkled heads, reminiscent of a Sharpei, so I'm hoping for the sake of not scaring the local wildlife, that the British Lop element will temper their looks whilst maintaining their reputation for perfect pork.

Testing competence

Yesterday I proved my competence. Not something I'd normally be able to do, klutz that I often am. But I did do it. Twice. I am now legally certificated (certified?) to transport both pigs and sheep. Good thing too as this year's weaners are being brought home for their joyous outdoor fattening process today.
The computerised multiple choice exams contained a mix of pointless questions (the kind of thing you would expect to be able to check up in a handy notebook kept in your glovebox, as necessary) regarding lengths of journeys and associated paperwork, and things that are absolutely key to animal welfare. Would you haul a pig by its ears or deliberately create mayhem whilst loading your carefully raised livestock into a trailer full of sharp pointy dangerous bits? Not unless you were a sadist.
I can see the point of requiring professional hauliers to take part in a livestock handling course and provide actual evidence of their competence, NVQ style, where observing people in their work situation is key. But filling in a computer test when you may be unfamiliar with a pc, may not be a great reader, but are a responsible driver and have received good training as an animal handler seems a bizarre way of ensuring livestock is actually and not theoretically well treated before, during and after journeys.
As for farmers and smallholders, most of the answers are plain common sense (although the questions trying to elicit that sense can be strangely convoluted to catch out the unsuspecting), and I can't help feel that this process is oddly out of sync with need and reality. Meeting this legal requirement cost me £50 (after having hunted down a cheaper option than I was originally offered). And that was having eschewed the time and £ for the optional prior training course. But I made the best of it; I spent the afternoon with a friend lunching and lounging round Launceston as a pre-exam softener. We both passed.

Future promise

The orchard is blooming. After supper a wander with the dogs to check on the sheep and their lambs, the fencing, the drain repair, the sogginess or otherwise of the ground. And then back through the orchard, which has burst into flower, young trees and old in their May finery.
There was talk of last year's June frost and the poor fruiting season that resulted. But this all looks so burgeoning that it's hard to believe there will be anything other than barrels of apples, armfuls of plums and gages, baskets of cherries, crates of damson and sacks of pears.
Click on the pic to see those amazing pink veins on the petals.

Going the Reagan and Bush route

I know that we are told that folks in the UK like to tag along on the coat tails of the Americans, but I always thought that was a myth, that the British just enjoyed the parts of US culture that it fancied and left the rest (bible-belt belligerence, donuts for breakfast, domesticated Humvees etc) alone. But no, it appears that we are more umbilically linked than I thought.
London (that's our capital, apparently, for those of us who breathe the air hundreds of miles away) was given a choice and London has chosen to be represented by a lying political buffoon. It's like having Donald Duck as mayor. Or Ricky Gervais. I cringe with embarrassment at the image this presents of the UK on the international scene. My sympathy for those Americans gobsmacked by being represented by Bush (both) or Reagan has reached a new high.
In my conspiracy theory moments (of which I have few), I suspect the Tories have been incredibly clever: by putting up Boris for Mayor they have taunted the populace: "if you are prepared to elect this man for London, then you are prepared to vote in David Cameron and his tribe, just because you are so pissed off with Labour".
The fact that they are right shows just how appalling the state of government is. When government is taken over by show business, we are in serious trouble. Brown: get your finger out!
So I offer a flower or two from my walk in the woods yesterday, as a calming influence.

Eden - so near but yet...

...so far. It's only a bit more than an hour from here, but I've never been to the Eden Project. As it's so close I expected a visit would just sort of happen some time without me having to actively arrange anything. Huh! I have friends that visit me from all over the country who are en route for Eden and I can't sort a 60 mile jaunt.
This week I had to attend a work related thing and it was at Eden. Wonderful; I can go round in the morning before doing my work thing in the afternoon. No chance. Too busy. Hung over the balcony of the visitor centre to take a photo, and that was it. It was like being given a sniff but not a taste of a truffle. Now I know what it's like to be a French pig.

My best guess.. not for those of a sensitive disposition

I'd said on Friday that I wondered what I'd find the next day...
Well. Here it is. On the huge rotting engine beam that has been taken out of the round house as part of the barn restoration and put in the ram's paddock. The big patch on the right is about six inches high.
First thought: "the ram's been sick".
Second thought (polite version): "the ram has ejaculated".
Third thought: "It could be some sort of fungus?".
I don't think I'm congenitally suited to being an ecologist. Too dirty-minded. Well, it was Saturday morning.

Farm craft 2

Following my fanciful forays into farm pyrography, I thought I should try my wobbly hand at something else. The entrance to the farm is a pair of ugly breeze block and concrete pillars, cracked and weathered, from which a cattle gate hangs, vital for keeping the livestock and dogs in.
Attached attractively to the gate by cable ties is (was) a plastic laminate-on-ply sign asking that people keep the gate closed at all times; well, they can open it to get in and out, of course...
I had promised myself that when the barns were finished, posts of old stone would replace the current stanchions, but as their worst is covered in ivy that might be something that never gets done. Either way, it was about time I sorted out the gate sign and produced a farm sign to match.
So I nicked a couple of slates that had come off the old barn roof and sat and sucked my pencil end whilst I worked out dimensions, spaces, fonts and so on. Hoorah for computers; I printed out various font sizes 'til it looked ok and then started to copy the lettering in pencil before painting them in with the eggshell left in the linhay by the previous owners.
I'm not one for perfection or patience, so it's kind of uneven. But I like it.

Slow, slow worm

There it was, minding its own business when someone (me) came along and picked up a few stones to make sure the mower wouldn't crash and burn later in the year.
This is the first slow worm I've seen on the farm. It was all knotted up like a Celtic tribute. It eyed me as an interfering force, so I put the stone back and left it to its curled comfort.
I love how there is so much going on around us and that just sometimes we catch a glimpse of what is there. It was new and exciting to me, but to the slow worm it was just another minute in its day.
What might I find tomorrow?
(If you click to enlarge you can see its eye and nostril at the bottom of the photo).

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?

Protection racket

For 31 days one of the geese has been sitting on a clutch of eggs and yesterday just three out of about ten, hatched. Whilst she has sat she has eaten practically nothing, although I put a bowl of fresh corn by her nest each morning. She gets off the nest once a day to grab a mouthful of water and a snatch of grass, and she is back to the job in hand.
Geese lose an enormous amount of weight during this period; their fat reserves gone, their feathers go dry and brittle, and there is none of the usual chubbily overfilled nappy effect dangling between their legs.
Two other geese have also been laying eggs in the same hut, but have not started to sit as yet; they might if the new births don't distract them permanently.
Today, the goslings came out of the hut, down what for them must be an Everest of a ramp, and onto the grass which they pick at in curiosity. The sitting goose is surprisingly not central to the outing; she is off, heading for food, like the starving animal she is. Instead, the eldest goose seems to have taken charge - that's her, tattered head, sitting proudly as matriarch. The tattered head is the result of amorous gander behaviour; he's obviously keen on the old lady as her battle scars are worse than those of the younger geese.
But now the goslings are here, the gander will forsake fornication and take up position as prime protector. Each time the goslings wandered through the stock fencing he nudged them back with his beak. I couldn't get any nearer without risking a major pecking and a blast of ear-drum shattering honking , so the image is taken from a distance.
The extended family of the goose is something to admire; a whole army of aunts and dad to keep you safe, and the hand that brings the chick crumbs and fresh water at bay, or at a safe distance. I suspect the rest of the eggs will go to waste as the excitement and duty rota created by the new babes takes precedence. But at this young age, I'm not counting my goslings; even with the best protection racket in the animal kingdom, there may be none left by the end of next week.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Enough of lambing and spring. Let's leave the pastoral red in tooth and claw world for some rat race sneering.
I don't know anyone like the competitors on The Apprentice. I have no idea if they are actors or one-offs or clichés of a group that I just haven't come across (other than in the zoo perhaps). They lie without compunction (have they forgotten that they are being filmed, watched and noted?), have the kind of bitter rows I've only ever seen within families, and are, each and every one, vile on a surfeit of ego.
Can you imagine announcing to anyone let alone to the whole BBC viewing public, that you have a high IQ? Serious chips on shoulders and inferiority complexes going on there. Or perhaps you'd feel happier emphasising some part of a self-perceived brilliance? No. The narcissism is of truly Greek proportions.
It makes for extraordinary viewing and tells you everything you need to know about how not to manage people. Not one of the current crop is a simply nice, intelligent person with good or interesting ideas; they are all deeply flawed humans. They will all be fired because of their hubris, human frailties and the will of the gods - aka Siralan (is that one word or two?).
I wonder how they would fare being put in charge of the lambing shed? How would they divvy up the shifts, make sure they had the right equipment and skills, collaborate in a life or death situation, ensure cleanliness and good husbandry? If they can't run a pub grub night effectively (otherwise known as a piss-up in a brewery), they wouldn't stand a chance.
Horrid tykes the lot of them. I watch it through spreadeagled fingers; it's almost unbearable.

Yodelayheee!

You learn something new every day. Have you ever heard of a Tyrolean flicker gun? Yes? Well it's a first on me. What with the Bernese Mountain Dogs and tools more familiar with lederhosen than American workwear, this is turning into mini Switzerland; all it needs is edelweiss and cuckoo clocks to complete the cliché.
Splat, splat, splat they've gone all day, coating the external cob with lime render, smoothing (not too carefully, the base isn't MDF ) the splats so that the limewash will take.
And there may not be edelweiss, but there are marsh marigolds and wood anemones dangling at the waters edge. But I do have a cowbell hanging from a hook in the kitchen that gets shaken to call the workers in for refreshment.

Fluff

There are times (like now) when you can have enough of sheep. Two ewes are left to lamb, one of which is more a shipping container than a mere box of frogs. It is completely wild, and has no concept that the sheep is a domesticated animal, bred for centuries to be farmed. No. This sheep is a wolf, a piranha, and as I discovered this morning, a battering (ewe) ram.
My left tit (ok, TMI) is all purple bruise where this particular nutter took a flying leap at me, having given itself a considerable run up first, and launched into me full tilt like a bowling ball at a skittle. I managed to stand my ground, but only just, and the pain!
I know that a flock can have its flighty moments, but I've never known anything quite like this, particular at lambing time when my close and constant presence is at its most acceptable. The old girls positively welcome me helping out if they are having a little trouble and will come up to me if I'm sat on my stool observing, to give my hand a sniff. They crowd round me when I have a bucket of feed, and just a glance of me has them trotting over to see if there might be something good on offer. But not the flying ewe. I hope this one lambs on her own and needs no assistance; the consequences of having to help her could mean serious injury... to me!
So, to take my mind off sheepy things, and in line with the remaining quality of brain I have left, I have buried myself in fluff. I'm not recommending the Jilly Cooper romances for anything other than helping you drift off to sleep on those occasions when counting sheep is more likely to send you into an anti-farming frenzy, but Bella, Imogen, Prudence, Emily, Harriet and Octavia, although not bearing any literary examination, have kept my head quiet, a fictional morphine if you will, over the last couple of weeks. Jilly makes me chortle. It may be hogwash, but sometimes a hog can help you forget a sheep, bruises or no bruises.

Families and solitude

At 6.30am feeding time, all the sheep and their lambs rush alongside me to get noses first into the feed troughs. It's loud, it's fast, it's physical, it's a race. Two hours later, having finished my other animal duties, I come back to check all is as it should be and the scene could not be more different. With full stomachs requiring most of their energy, all are now sitting or lying in lone parent groupings, chewing the cud companionably as if they were at a Gingerbread meeting. The lambs have given up their games of group chase and snooze next to or on top of their mothers. Siblings rest together. It's a wonderful, peaceful scene and a chance for me to check that each family group has bonded as it should and that no lamb has been abandoned or is in trouble.
In the next field the llama looks morose, and sulks, if a llama can sulk, disliking his solitary situation. In a few days all the sheep will join him and he will nose each lamb, adding them to his stock of extended family smells.

A big (barn) day

Yesterday was a big day, barn wise. Although there is much to do still on the cob barn, the main roof is now on and looking gorgeous; reclaimed local rag slate and hip and ridge tiles were used, so there is nothing new or shiny about it - it just looks in good shape for an ancient building.
It makes sense to swap effort to the threshing barn to get its roof on too, and then all the joinery and finishing can take place on both barns knowing that the structures are secured and weatherproof. Finishing sounds posher than it is - external lime render and limewash is the sum total of that; these are barns, not holiday homes.
So it was back to demolition mode again, removing the treacherous stone that sat above the huge rotted beam that originally supported the horse engine in the attached roundhouse, and taking down the areas of failed cob. But new cob blocks also went up, so destruction to construction in one day.

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.

Box of frogs

Mad as a box of frogs is a choice description that my neighbour generously contributed to my vocabulary. Box of frogs is now the name for any of the first-timer Torwens who don't realise they are lambing, drop their burden from a standing start and run off, relieved that the tum and bum pains have finally stopped. You have to corner these skippity creatures and herd them into a pen where their wet lamb is waiting to be licked into the world. The bonding is fine once the ewe gets her first sniff and taste; the problem is getting them to realise that the pain and the lamb are in any way connected. Expecting them to appreciate that they are in lamb at all and therefore shouldn't be leaping over feed troughs, straw bales and each other is an unwinnable battle, and the older ewes just look at them with disdain: "keep your strength for later, young'un".

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.

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!

Rage! Blow! And please be done with it quick smart before any of the lambs succumb to hypothermia.
I haven't yet been carried off across the Cornish border by the determined gales, the menagerie is still intact, and the fires haven't gone out, but it's not nice out there.
It comes in flurries; the trees sway and bend and the wind howls round the buildings, then suddenly everything is quiet, the trees stand straight, before another determined whoosh that rattles branches onto the barn roof, makes the loose straw skip, and parts the fleece on the outside ewes. Worse, a few bits of corrugated tin on barn roofs and walls that were thought to be well secured are being persistently jiggled about and I suspect will be ripped from their moorings before the weather settles; it is far too dangerous to do anything about it in this wind.
The house is in a hollow and naturally well protected, but as soon as you walk away from it to check the sheep, jackets flap, hats sit askew and dead leaves and other detritus eddy across your path. This should be a day for baking, reading the weekend papers or a Jilly Cooper, but instead it's on with the outdoor gear and up the hill every hour or so.
Like the wind, lambing comes in flurries with two lots of doubles in the last twelve hours - a break from the dreaded triplets - and more looking interested in producing some of their own.

An unexpected phone call

The morning round complete, I check emails and start work. The phone rings and an unfamiliar chatty, chilled Totnes voice says she hopes I don't mind, but she's just been googling "cob barns", seen the farm website and wonders if I can help.
She has a friend, a Buddhist monk, who is looking for a cob barn to buy for hosting educational children's workshops. I'm so stunned by this that I don't hear that much of the rest.
Just last week I gave short shrift to a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses who thought they might convert me on my doorstep, but not even I can be rude to a Buddhist monk or their putative friend, even though I was beginning to think "scam". Perhaps I jump to negative conclusions too quickly - actually there is no perhaps about it - but when she mentioned that her monk had charitable funding to buy said barns, the tone was set. Ivana, she said her name was. And yes, the STD she left was indeed a Totnes code.

The lambing quickstep

It's all slow, slow, manic, manic, slow on the farm at the moment. You wait for something to happen, then everything hits in a rush (heaps of triplets, all night vigils, donning the long plastic gloves for an up-the-sheep moment), and then it's all quiet again.
It's as emotionally exhausting as being a young girl at her first disco, hugging the wall for a few records, being whizzed around for ten minutes by some overly hormonal partner, then rejoining the other wallflowers.
The sheep with lambs are now out in the orchard, enjoying the sun on their backs and the fresh grass. I go up with the bottles and top up any triplets that aren't getting enough milk. It's always a relief when the lambs turn back to their mother once they've had their fill, rather than follow me around - I'm not looking to be a full time surrogate mum!
So, I will waltz, slowly, up the hill to see if any ewes are doing the lambada.

Five minutes peace

I can't believe how tired I am, and lambing has only started and there are just a couple of dozen ewes to deal with; how friends with 500 manage, I can't even start to imagine. Either way, you're in and out of the lambing shed like some crazed self-winding clockwork toy, checking behaviour, changes in eating patterns, signs of water bags, general atmosphere, and topping up one set of triplets with bottled milk as their first time mum hasn't really got enough of her own. Neither me nor far more experienced farmers I know have ever come across a first-timer having triplets - what was she thinking? Luckily the lambs are evenly sized and full of energy and survival instinct, so no larger bully is benefiting over the others.
Mini and major dramas are enacting themselves all over the place. The first batch of incubated goose eggs are starting to pip, so I am hoping there may be goslings under the heat lamp in a couple of days. One of the geese is sitting on her own full nest, au naturale, as proud and protective as can be. An Aylesbury duck suffered from a prolapse of the oviduct, so she has been dispatched, plucked and is in the freezer, my clean lambing Dickies boilersuit now covered in white down. A ewe gave up trying to lamb after some sterling effort, and intervention brought out one malformed lamb that had blocked the cervix causing another perfectly good lamb to die, leaving the mum with one good healthy ram (this run of triplets is ridiculous - that's three sets so far). Saddest of all, the matriarch, Mrs Longtail, succumbed to pasteurellosis, something the flock had never suffered from until last year when two ewes were also lost to it in the final stages of pregnancy. They are all vaccinated against this lethal pneumonia, have been well fed and are in a well ventilated barn, but you can't avoid the inevitable stress to the body caused by lambing or stop cold windy weather. I'll have to discuss future planning with the vet.
My old cat is getting scrawnier, but still eating, drinking, purring, strolling, mock-hunting, and as you can see, happy to share a bed with Mopsa on a filthy welly-boot dirt strewn kitchen floor. And I am off to check on the ewes, again.

It's started

...and it's triplets! Not entirely something to celebrate really - a ewe only has two teats after all, and triplets rarely do as well as doubles.
Not the best photo, but at less than 12 hours old they are uncooperatively fixated on breathing, eating and investigating rather than posing. Oh, and they are ALL boys. This is one of the prettiest ewes in the flock, nicely marked and with delicate features.

Easter egg hunt

If you look closely, you will see one of the crème eggs from the handfuls poked into various hidey holes in and around the barns for the builders to find, this last morning before their Easter break.
I used to love treasure hunts, the kiddy sort rather than those beloved of suburban families in cars during the seventies and eighties that I remember from summers in North West London.
I left a note stuck on the window of the converted shipping container the builders use as an office, attached to one egg, that said there were nine more to find. There was a chuckling but plaintive response asking whether there were really ten in total. One egg is still sitting untouched in one of the dovecotes. It's really hard not to look at it and give the game away.

I'm a llama - let me out of here

No, this is not an image of the remaining traces of an escapee llama. If you walk along the fence line there are numerous catches of his hair where he has stretched his extraordinary neck to chew on some succulent shoot in the hedge.
The fence also has rubbings of fleece - black from the Torwens, white from the Torddu. And now I am finding a different kind of black, white and chestnut fur where it shouldn't be.
Fenn, the young Bernese Mountain Dog, has decided that she is in fact a steeple-chaser, and is leaping five bar gates and barbed wire fences with impunity. All physical obstacles put in place to dissuade her from this potentially dangerous feat have failed. The cast iron spike by the preferred "show-jump" has been wrapped so that she doesn't impale herself.

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?

It's oh so quiet...

It's oh so still in this grey, watery run up to lambing. No tractors are out and about - the fields are too sodden to take the strain, everyone is dealing with indoor tasks, sorting their paperwork and tackling VAT returns. Farming seems on hold apart from those with dark shadows under their eyes from nights in the calving pens and lambing sheds.
I feed the sheep and check their udders and girths. In theory they could start lambing the day before Easter Sunday, and one or two look like they might oblige, with swollen udders and teats becoming more prominent. The lambing shed is all ready, old straw and muck removed, pens set up and fresh straw scattered, water buckets and haynets on hand and gloves, lube and iodine in place.
Lambing has been happening since Christmas round here, so the wait seems particularly extended and I feel the urge to get going on this most exciting and exhausting occupation in my farming year. More than anything I want the rain to stop and the sun to shine, encouraging fresh shoots of grass to welcome the new arrivals.
Even though they are brought in at night and many lamb between dusk and dawn, inevitably, some of the ewes will lamb outside during the day and I don't want them to drop their young into puddles. I'll be going up and down between the house and the orchard where the expectant mums spend their days to make sure nothing untoward happens and my calf muscles will build their April shape. I've been known to take a stool up there and watch a ewe determine her lambing space and go through the whole process, and when the lambs are up and happy, take mum and offspring into the lambing shed to iodine the navels, feed and water the mum, and give them up to 24 hours in there before giving mum her first pedicure in five months and sending them off into the sun.
But for now, it's the quiet before the storm.
Tomorrow I'll try and take a photo of the heavily laden ewes between downpours.

Wishing for otters

From time to time when there are no sheep in Second Lower Moor (no, not an inspirational name, but historically correct), I let the dogs play there by themselves whilst I slip through the gate into the adjacent copse and check out the otter holt. I peek into the entrances and lightly poke about the area looking for trails or spraint.
I get a physical surge of excitement just at the prospect of otters choosing to live on the farm. I have seen very few wild otters ever, the sightings don't yet make a handful, and I have yet to see one in Devon although I have smelled their presence just a short stroll from here. So when I saw the picture of Lotty in this Saturday's Western Morning News, I was to be found stroking the newsprint in a quite pathetically wistful manner.
I now have the cutting pinned on my noticeboard, next to my computer, and I gaze at the seven week old beauty, with her black button nose and her black button eyes with something akin to adoration. I wish she'd come to stay.

The elements

I wondered why the barometer manufacturers had bothered with those extreme gradations so far below the "bloody awful weather" category. Now I know.
I kept waking in the night, hoping that willpower alone would keep the half finished barn roof in place. Having three chimneys in the house, the wind whistles and hoots through its trio of echo chambers just to make sure the inhabitants have plenty to keep them wakeful and worriting.
The blustering is as bad as ever and it's not yet safe to go and check if any trees are down or for any other damage. The sheep are ok and the dogs will have to be content with poking their noses and behinds briefly out of doors; no walks today.

Snipe

It's been raining in short, hard bursts, and the lower fields are soggy and soft. As you sploosh your way through, there is a stirring and a whirring, and a plumpish shape or three or thirty rise noisily and move off for a while. Skewers with wings, these extraordinary birds love the wet rushy pasture, but are incredibly shy and I only ever see them making their getaway. A couple of years ago I saw a parent and a number of young in a field ditch, but they too took to the air as I unwittingly disturbed them. I only wish the snipe would have let me take this photo.

Women in Farming

This evening I was mingling with artists and farmers at the Phoenix Arts Centre for the exhibition resulting from the Women in Farming project put together by Aune Head Arts.
It's a topic close to my heart and in the press too, this week.
The work was beautiful, honourable, moving, familiar and unfamiliar. Framed by mounts of felted fleece and adorned with gold plated copies of their ear tags (made by Louise Evans), Jennie Hayes' photographs of the sheep on Sue Peach's Dartmoor farm made me want to wrench the images off the wall and take them home with me. I was drawn again and again to look at the detail of their heads, their gaze, their ear tags, their carefully shorn necks, every inch as imperious as any senior politician sitting for their portrait.

Swaling

There has been swaling. Because the culm hasn't been grazed by cattle this year and needs the thick thatching cleared to encourage fresh growth, a carefully controlled burn has played gently over about a quarter of the purple moor grass tufts in Moor Wood. The ground is very wet, and so romping flames are unlikely here, although on Dartmoor where the gorse is swaled to keep its spread under control, they have firemen on standby. Now, why didn't I think of that?