You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2008.
Yesterday, we checked the fences in preparation for the coming of THE HORSE on Monday. This link shows a picture of her, she is the beautiful mare on the left at the top of the page.
All seems well, the field is nothing like as wet as we thought it might be, and there is only a small task to do. We need to remove the old and rather manky round bale of hay [ the cattle in the shed will pick over that if we put in in as bedding ] and we need to also also remove the ring feeder. This year’s group of ram lambs are about to be moved across from another field to graze with her and keep her company. Eventually she will live most of the time with the house cow, Ruby, but she is indoors at the moment and due to calve at the end of January. The horse is used to living outdoors, and is coming with her thick rug. There is also an older ‘pet’ wether sheep [castrated male] who can join this little band of special animals, but he is also elsewhere at the moment and it is too complicated to get him back on his own. Other livestock will join this happy little band from time to time as they will always be in the field nearest the house and we always have a procession fo special care animals throughout the year either needing extra food, observation, veterinary care or just plain old TLC.
The road works on Friday were awful, they did both sections on the same day [although the organisers had previously agreed not to] and as we were totally cut off by road we had to set out cross country to take our meat to the market. You could almost hear the pork crackling as the tightly packed boxes bounced about in the back of the 4WD truck. Nightmarish! However as usual we somehow managed to get through and supply our loyal customers.
Saturday was a mixture of really dire weather with squally freezing showers and a bunch of jolly people who turned out despite the awfulness of the day to celebrate my birthday in the barn. Mulled wine, slow roasted pork and mince pies , seemed to go down very well [despite the huge quantities produced there were no leftovers] and the combination of the giant Australian barbeque, and two grain dryers worked hard to try to keep the cold at bay. A strange fact we noticed is that the Calor canisters ice up as the gas vaporises inside the cylinder. It became a trifle dark just as we served lunch at 2pm as rain dripping in from the roof of the 17th Century barn caused some of the lights to fuse and Jethro had to carve the pork by calor gas lamp. Next time we must have more lights, and more heat.
By Sunday we were all very tired and the clearing up, both outside and in, continued into Monday, starting with 14 loads of washing. A combination of the return of the younger generation for the Christmas holidays from Harper Adams and London as well a house full of lovely visitors.
Now I must think about writing Christmas cards, and thank you letters before it is too late to post - in the mail , of course, not on the blog!
We are now besieged by road closures and they could not have come at a worse time. The weather is still dire [as expected for the time of year]; the roads are either frozen or under water or, as yesterday, both.
There have been three large yellow and black signs put up on the grass verges in the last week up, within 3 miles of here, and each notice said something different [roadworks starting for: 1 day, 1 week and 3 days] and after making several phone calls and driving around asking different gangs of men who each in turn grinned and said: “No , not us darling,” I eventually made contact with the powers that be.
We have a farmers market tomorrow nearby and the lanes are very narrow. On Saturday we have my birthday party, at lunchtime, and a lot of family and friends are expected, many have never been here before so imagine if they arrived at the end of the village and found a road closed sign. Not a great idea.
After very constructive discussions with the supervisors we hope it is now arranged that the road nearest the farm will be mended tomorrow (Friday) and the road nearest the market will be mended on Saturday but even if this plan works I do know that all the local drivers will be having a chaotic and frustrating few days ahead. And I still can’t understand why they chose the worst time of year to do it, but perhaps the holes are so big now that they have no choice.
Do you think I should smile sweetly and ask them to fill in the enormous pot holes in the farm drive too? Now that surely would be a birthday present to remember.
The good news is at last the source of the permanently flooding cellar is finally found and has been dealt with. The bad news is that a good proportion of the cellar ceiling has been taken down and the resulting mess is really terrible AGAIN. The row following the mess was also terrible.
Leaking heating pipes under the kitchen cupboards was the eventual diagnosis, and of course it was intermittent, only leaking when the pipes were cold and contracted.
The constant bitter cold has been a reminder that this is how winters always used to be and we all have, of late, got used to much milder ones. Since our trip to Wales, Jethro is much less worried about the grass lasting out as we appear to have a lot longer sward, if you can call it that at this time of the year, than we saw over there.
Now I am off to light the fire and put a beef stew on for supper. Inner warmth is essential when working outdoors in cold weather.
I am greatly indebted to Archbishop Cranmers Blog for bringing to our attention on his Monday’s entry [8th December 2008] of the editing of the Oxford University Press Junior Dictionary. This matter is also reported here . His Lordship quite rightly pointed out, on his post, that many young people still do live in the countryside and enjoy it. Once again we have all been too busy to read the papers so I missed the story on the day it came out and it has taken one of my regular blog reads to update me!
Obviously nothing is sacred: not our countryside, our language, our heritage and our history. How very sad.
I may be very old fashioned too but many of the words taken out according to the Telegraph article [ link above] are in everyday usage around here: porridge [Jethro's breakfast], acorn [we just planted some], leek [vegetables for supper], mint [can't have roast lamb without said sauce], oats [porridge, amongst other things], diesel [for all the farm vehicles], allotment [very popular in the village], dandelion [ a yellow weed], bullock [a shed full of them], starling [pesky flocks are all around]and spaniel [who should startle the starlings]. I even saw a stoat cross the road today, but according to what I have just read that word has gone too, along with many others, describing our Christian heritage, our history and the monarchy.
Is it progress? I wonder?
Yup, well as you can see it is now snowing on the blog and we woke up this morning to a smattering of the white stuff all around and very, very treacherous roads.
At 8 am on the way back from the butcher to check the carcasses for this week’s farmer’s market, there were a few cars in ditches along the back roads. Jethro was very cross with me for using the back way this morning [ I should have kept quiet] but I was careful and slow and the local town was already to a standstill.
The vet is booked, and the horse transport alerted [our livestock trailer is not a horse trailer] so here’s hoping the horse is as fit as she appears. Fingers crossed.
Back late last night from a few delightful hours in a sun showered Wales with 6 more little piggies, collected on the way home, to fatten for next year. The small herd of rare breed pigs at Prosperous Farm cannot yet supply our customers with all the meat they require, so we are still relying on the help of other rare breed pig keepers to keep our supply constant, and cope with the pork waiting list while we slowly and carefully build up the herd here. The provenance and full traceability of all our meat and their feed is something we are very proud of and the latest animal health scare in Ireland makes us shudder terribly. However I need to know more facts before I can comment on this further.
It was so very quiet and empty at the motorway services at 8pm last night where we stopped for a hot drink and a handwash, was everyone watching the X factor?
The adventure that I spoke of fleetingly on Friday is merely a beginning. It will be I hope the start of a very special relationship - with an animal - to be exact – a horse. A horse to ride round the farm and view the stock from, a horse to have fun with and to work with. Avery special horse from a very special place. A small Welsh hill farm with a wonderfully knowledgeable farmer who uses horses to do most of the outside stockwork from checking boundaries to moving their sheep and cattle.
The search for the right animal has taken me since early August. It has not been something that could be hurried and I have relied a lot on the goodwill of many country and horsey folk as I have searched the length and breadth of Britain for the right horse. To them ALL I say a big thank you, it has been a very great pleasure to meet so many wonderful people and be welcomed into their homes and farms and be allowed to ride their horses. Every single owner I met and/or spoke with was most concerned that their horse would go to the right home. This too was very commendable and heartening to hear, especially now in these harder times.
Finding the right horse [as other horse owners may agree] possibly ranks harder than finding the right husband, and is just as serious a matter. In an emergency your life may actually depend on the right partnership between horse and rider. On the matter of finding both – horses and husbands- well I am sure luck and perseverance play their parts too.
In the course of the last few months I have met some wonderful people, made many new friends, and tried a lot of really nice horses since I first decided that Shank’s pony was getting too slow and the knees were suffering too much when trying to gather cattle in and trying to run around the fields. Running has never been my thing, but riding always has.
There was one little black mare that really took my fancy, and I went to Worcestershire three times to ride her, but after the final visit, still I hesitated, and in the end I realised that the familiarity of the tasks and animals involved on a busy livestock farm would be more important to an ‘older’ girl like me so I started the search again this time looking for stockhorses.
This task is harder than you think, this is England, it is not America where the cowboys ride, but Britain where hacking [riding out for fun], hunting and eventing are the most popular horsey pursuits. However, I do now know the stock horse are there, and the skills to train them are there too if you are patient.
In the end I rode four different ’stockhorses’ over a two day period, which is actually a hard thing to do because it is hard to differentiate, but one WAS different. A well-bred American Quarter Horse mare, born here, who stood out above all the rest. Her current owner has done a fantastic job on bringing her along for the job she was actually bred for – moving cattle. Her nature is sweet and she likes people which is important as we have many visitors through the farm here and a seemingly unfriendly horse [to strangers] would not really work in the long run. This particular aspect of owning a horse was not something we had thought of until we were halfway through the process, and rode a few of the interesting Criollo horses from Argentina. They too are great work horses but some can [perhaps on account of their handling when young] be rather aloof in their demeanor. That would not have worked here. The whole process has actually been a steep learning curve for us all and in truth the whole thing has been very enjoyable.
I went to Wales to ride the mare again yesterday to be absolutely sure she was the one, and Jethro is happy with my final choice. We now wait for the vet’s inspection, which we are all sure will be a formality, and then I will tell more in due course.
The last ’stockhorse’ I had was in back in the ’80’s – a half thoroughbred bay mare - again with the sweetest nature, she would carry a lamb in a sack tied to the saddle or bags of mineral thrown over her withers and not budge if you got off to see to a sheep in distress.
I am actually really excited, and yet slightly apprehensive too. The work will really begin when she arrives here and we get to know each other properly and she learns the layout of farm and meets the animals out in the fields before I can ask her to help with any ‘work’. I do not know how long this initiation will take for the two of us but hopefully I can update the blog step by step. It will be fun, and slightly scary too but it is these constant challenges and new interests of working with animals that keeps us all going and gets our creaking joints out of the warm comfy bed on a cold frosty morning.
Technology and methodology have moved on since I last had a horse and I must ask Father Christmas to kindly bring me a few essentials like some grooming kit and a hoof pick, and will have to find the best saddle for the job. In the meantime I hope to borrow a saddle from a long time friend while I work out what works best for the comfort of both horse and rider and vitally for my stability while mounted!
More water in the cellar this morning and the source of this water is still unknown, but much worse is that the oil delivery [ I asked Jethro to order it for just before Christmas!] has just arrived and I was not fully dressed. Hey ho!
Frosty and cold again and we have more rare breed weaners to collect tomorrow to keep our customers upplied with pork in early 2009 until our own bred ones are big enough and our supply regular enough.
We are also off on an adventure to Wales this afternoon. It is my second adventure to that part of the world in a month but this time Jethro is coming too, obviously to keep a watchful eye on his old mother!
EDIT 1.30pm. We still don’t know the source of the water which is coming in through the cellar ceiling, and down an old tree trunk that holds one of the beams up! Yes, this is a very old farmhouse that is not maintained perhaps in the manner that the property needs, but the house is not ours and we do the best we can to live and work in it and make it home.
I am now trying every sink, bath, appliance in turn using food colouring in the water to try to pinpoint the source. My fingers are now pink from cochineal and yet we are no further forward. The dishwasher is now on and over the next hour we will see if the leaks increase.
The real problem is that if we don’t find the source soon we will lose the ceiling as well [it is now bulging] and we have only just cleared out the cellar or centuries of rubbish, sealed the walls and ceiling with PVA and painted the same walls and ceiling and even scrubbed the floor. I can hardly bear the thought of all that work wasted and we have had to move a lot of the stuff out of the cellar agian which does not thrill Jethro who is still in a pre-Christmas major house sorting mode.
We have water in the cellar and cannot find the leak… it does not appear to be an internal one so one would think it must be external… All the fascia boards under the kitchen cupboards have been ripped off in the search for the source of the problem. Unfortunately this hurried investigation has caused a certain amount of damage to the paintwork, but it turned out to be simply dry and rather dusty under there, which contrasts somewhat to the seeping water down below.
One of my regular meat customers has failed to return our calls about their delivery and has now missed the slot for courier delivery of her meat, and it probably leaves me with a whole lamb to sell to someone else. This is very unusual and I just hope they are all alright.
Three lambs and two pigs went away this morning, our final selection for this year. One pig is mine and will be slow roasted in celebration of a landmark birthday. The others will be sold at a one off Christmas market next week. Normal service for us will resume in January when the butcher has recovered from his Christmas orders to the catering trade.
