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| James making a much better job of feeding the ewes than I did! |
The day after I arrived
in Cornwall, on 6th March, Jo and James headed off to help
their son and daughter-in-law get ready for their imminent house move
and I was left to tend the sheep for ten days. Because we had a
couple of bright, sunny days the mud in the fields started to dry up
and this, although better from a human point of view, doesn't seem to
be quite so good for the sheep. The sticky mud gets between the two
digits of their cloven hooves and then, because of the heat of their
bodies, bakes hard so that it must be like walking with a huge stone
in your shoe! After a couple of days I had a few lame sheep in the
pregnant ewe flock so managed to entice them into a pen in the yard
with the help of a bucket of feed and the rather sporadic 'help' of
Jess, the sheep dog. Once the sheep were milling about in the pen it
was almost impossible to see which were the ones that seemed so lame
out in the field but I did manage to catch and treat three of the
worst offenders by getting the hard mud out from between their
'claws' and then spraying their foot with an organic fungicidal spray
(which, incidentally, smells lovely!).
After a couple of
beautiful days, the weather returned to cold, wet and windy and
feeding the sheep and riding around on the quad bike, with trailer
attached, became less of a pleasant occupation. Unfortunately I still
had a very lame sheep in the flock of last year's lambs (now called,
mysteriously, hoggets) so decided that I must try and pen them up,
too. Unlike the ewes, they have not learned to, reliably, follow a
bucket of sheep pellets, so I tried to enlist Jess's help. It would
have been funny if it hadn't been so frustrating as, when I
gave her the command 'Away', which was supposed to send her in a
sweeping arc around the sheep in an anti-clockwise direction, she lay
down and, when I became more insistent, she actually put her nose
under her tail as if, like a toddler that closes their eyes to become
invisible, I would no longer be able to see her if she couldn't see
me! In the end I had to resort to stealth and cunning by positioning
a barrow of silage at the far end of the pen and waiting until their
natural curiosity and greed got the better of them. In this way I
managed to corral all but two of them and was able to catch and treat
the lame one by turning him over and cutting his toe nails, which had
trapped a lot of gritty mud in them ,and then spraying with the foot
spray again. I sent Jess home in disgrace!
The other flock of
sheep, consisting of ewes that weren't put to the ram this year, for
one reason or another, and a few castrated males (wethers) who were
not heavy enough to go for slaughter when they should have, were all
out in a field on a hill and every morning and afternoon I loaded the
trailer with silage and hay and took it out using the quad bike.
After a couple of days of heavy rain the steep slope up to the feed
rack was getting quite slippery and, even in 4-wheel drive, gave me a
couple of heart-in-mouth moments as the back end twitched and slid
sideways – but then I am a bit of a 'wuss' when it comes to
off-roading and it was never a real problem. The biggest problem was
keeping the sheep at bay while I tried to lift the silage into their
rack without being squashed by 39 bodies all trying to get the best
bits at the same time!
The hoggets were given
some sheep pellets, in a long line of troughs, morning and afternoon
and a top-up of their silage rack but they were still a bit hesitant
about coming close to humans and so this was not a difficult task
but, the pregnant ewes were a completely different story! They also
had pellets in the morning and afternoon and would wait by the gate
bleating impatiently while I loaded up the big green handcart with
silage and poured two bucketfuls of pellets into an old feed sack.
Then they would follow me closely down the field where I would move
the troughs (to stop the ground getting too muddy round them) and
wipe them out before getting the heavy bag of pellets and trying to
pour an even stream into the troughs whilst walking as quickly as
possible along the line. Each morning it seemed to get more difficult
to manage this without being barged, from all directions, by woolly
bodies until, after about four days, they managed to trip me up.
Luckily I fell fairly gently onto the soft, muddy ground and hardly
spilled any of the pellets so I just got up and carried on. The next
morning they did it again and I began to feel that I was in a
wrestling match – three falls or a submission to decide the winner!
I must admit that I felt like submitting at that point. It was
actually more like being in a Rugby match with 34 players on one side
and only one on the other all piling into the scrum, or possibly the
first opening of the department store doors on Black Friday! Finally,
on the morning that Jo and James were coming home, they had me over
for the third time and this time, instead of falling backwards, away
from the trough, I fell forwards hitting my knee and shin on the edge
of the metal trough so had a couple of pretty bruises by the end of
the day!
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| The weeded and rebuilt herb bed (and Jess) |
In the hours between
feeding the sheep, and when the weather was dry enough, I finally
finished a job that I had been trying to do for three years – I dug
over and weeded the small bed outside the house that is going to be a
herb garden. It was edged with large rocks, some with beautiful
quartz veins in, but these had become surrounded by a very invasive
perennial grass as well as Lady's Mantle so that I had to remove them
all (and some of the paving slabs in front of them) to remove as much
of the root system as possible. It ended up being a much larger job
than I'd first thought but it is now done and ready for planting. I
do wish I would remember to take 'before' pictures though!
I also went to help at
the churchyard tidy-up day – lured by the promise of a bonfire and
pasties for lunch, and met up with several people that I'd worked
with on the tidy-up day back in the autumn. I also attended the local
WI (I'm thinking of becoming a member!) and had another of those odd
coincidences – I was chatting to the lady sitting next to me,
during the social time, and telling her about some of the places I'd
WWOOFed and it turned out that, for twenty years, she had worked at
Kincardine Castle on Royal Deeside where I WWOOFed for two weeks
about three years ago! She had actually retired from there the month
before I arrived and then moved down to this tiny rural community in
Cornwall. I almost come to expect these coincidences now – and to
think that I used to think that Dickens' plots were contrived!
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| The empty maternity suite |
Once Jo and James
arrived home we made a start on preparing the 'maternity wing', as
the ewes could start lambing within ten days, so I spent a couple of
days pressure washing metal hurdles, hay racks and feed troughs and
then erecting pens in the covered yard. As the weather had turned
back into warm, balmy weather and this was forecast for another week,
James wasn't going to bring the ewes in just yet, but it's a good
idea to be prepared well in advance.
On Thursday, 19th
March I packed up my little car and headed off, in beautiful
sunshine, towards home. The sunshine lasted until Exeter when it
became overcast and windy and this continued all the way back.
However, I had decided to visit a National Trust property on the way
and, in the end, decided on Barrington Court, near Ilminster. I got
there just in time to join a guided tour of the house, which was very
interesting. Unlike most National Trust properties, there is no
furniture in the house as it is the architectural features that are
most noteworthy. I didn't watch Wolf Hall on television but,
apparently, a lot of it was filmed in the house, which is of the
Tudor period. When it was taken over by a member of the Lyle family
(of Tate & Lyle) in the early 1900s it was little more than a
derelict shell being used as farm buildings, but he was very keen on
architectural salvage and searched out panelling, staircases and even
ceilings of the correct period with which to restore the house –
the result is breathtaking!
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| Barrington Court |
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