Autumn Walk

For most of November I have been dog/house sitting in South Somerset, near the Dorset border. I was here at this time last year, too, and it’s a lovely place to be as Autumn draws in – an AGA in the kitchen and log burner in the lounge, so that you can soon feel toasty warm after a walk in the damp and cold. It has been very damp here, for the most part, but I would like to take you on a morning walk with Vesper, the Doberman, and me:

Now, a lot of dog walkers walk ‘meaningfully’ - striding out (or even jogging!) with their trusty hound at their side, walking purposefully and quickly. Me, I’m more of a ‘mindful’ walker – ambling along, completely immersing myself in my surroundings so, come along, what are we waiting for? The morning beckons, it’s dry, it’s sunny, it’s relatively mild!

Vesper wears a harness and sits while I pop it over her head and do up the straps. Last year I used the extending lead and spent a great deal of time feeling that my left shoulder was being pulled out of its socket but, this year, my friend, Emma, showed me a different method, using a double-ended lead and clipping one end to the ring on the chest part of the harness and the other on the ring on the back, thus, effectively, giving you a set of reins. When she started to pull a quick left hand/right hand tug was enough to unbalance her and stop the pulling! It’s amazing, and has made walking that much more pleasant.

The first part of the walk is along the tarmac lane and Vesper must be kept on her lead, for two reasons: firstly, even though it is a dead end, with only a couple of farms further on, it can be surprisingly busy with cars and vans and secondly, because Vesper has a very strong ‘chase’ instinct, she cannot be trusted around livestock, and there are both cattle and sheep along the lane. So, we tend to do a bit of ‘meaningful’ walking here (especially if it’s raining!), with me keeping a careful eye on the way ahead to try and spot any squirrels before Vesper does. Even with the new lead system, I doubt I could hold her if there was a squirrel in close proximity – last year I became an accidental tree-hugger when Vesper chased a squirrel into a large oak tree at the side of the lane!

Down the hill we go, above us the sky is a clear, washed-out blue, with a few high cirrus clouds looking, for all the world, as if they have been combed; the sky is reflected so clearly in the puddles that I can almost imagine falling through them into an alternative world (a bit like Alice Through the Looking Glass!). Faintly, I can hear the drone of an aeroplane, perhaps heading for Exeter airport, and the distant ‘thwack, thwack’ of the local hedge-cutting contractors as they ready the field boundaries for winter. Away to our right there is the distant hoot of an engine, as it rounds a bend, followed swiftly by the rumble of the high-speed train as it makes its way to Penzance or Paddington.

The lane is bounded, on each side, by ancient hedges with, every thirty yards or so, a ‘standard’ – in this case mature oak trees – which stretch their canopies across the lane and down the lane to meet their neighbours. These were grown, originally, to provide shade for livestock in the summer and wood for the fires of winter, plus being an absolute boundary marker that could not be moved, but must be an absolute bane to the modern-day hedge cutter with his vicious flail.

As we near the end of the tarmac, I can feel Vesper tense – she knows that she is about to be released and there may be squirrels in the spinney that she can chase, if she’s quick enough!  The small area of woodland extends away to our left at the bottom of the hill and contains a mix of native deciduous trees. Some, mainly the ash and hazel, have already lost the majority of their leaves, owing to the rain and strong winds, but the oaks are still vivid with green leaves, turning golden and brown, and the field maples glow golden yellow in the low sunshine. There are jays squabbling in the wood, their harsh cries in sharp contrast to their beautiful plumage, and a squirrel scolds, angrily, from the safety of an oak tree, as we pass by.

At this point the tarmac runs out and the track splits in two – one track goes straight on to a couple of farms and the other, turns right, between high hedges, and runs for a further half mile, before petering out at another farm. This is where Vesper is allowed to wander, off-lead, as it is relatively dog-proof and there are no animals in close proximity to the track. This is where I can start to amble and really concentrate on my surroundings.

The air is so still that I can hear faint, far off traffic noise and closer the cawing of several rooks, mobbing a lone buzzard that has had the temerity to stray into their territory. They hound him for several minutes as he twists and turns away from them, until they decide that he has left their airspace and return to their roost in the oak tree.

The faint, rank odour of a fox still hangs in the air where it has emerged from one hedgerow, crossed the track and disappeared into the other hedgerow, probably some time ago, but the air is hardly stirring between these hedges, so it hasn’t been dispelled yet. Out of the corner of my eye I can see flutterings deep in the hedge as small, brown birds go quietly about their business, a blackbird shrills its warning cry as I pass and wood pigeons crash, ungainly, from the branches above my head. A few, brown oak leaves spiral gently down to land amongst the others on the track and acorns sit amongst the mud and puddles.

The hedges themselves are full of variety, with traditional hedging plants: there are field maple, ash, sycamore, hazel, hawthorn, blackthorn, privet, spindle, dogwood, bramble and briar, each with their different shaped and different coloured autumn foliage adding to the wonder of the day. Thick reed-like sedge grasses grow in the ditch at the side of the lane which, after all the rain, is overflowing with water, gurgling and tumbling over and round rocks and broken branches. There are still rosehips glowing a dull orange in the hedge, and the deeper red of hawthorn berries, but it is the shiny scarlet berries of the bryony that really catch the eye, as they glow like strands of red beads, festooned along the hedge and, here and there, are the startlingly pink spindle berries, bursting open to reveal their bright orange seeds.

We reach the crown of the railway bridge and from here I get an amazing view of the beautiful, rolling countryside of south Somerset, stretching away into the distance, with small copses and spinneys crowning the hills and majestic oak trees standing proud in the middle of the fields, where the beef cattle graze. A sudden movement, nearby, brings my attention back to the field next to the railway track as a roe buck, probably startled by the proximity of Vesper (who luckily hasn’t spotted him!), leaps from the hedge bottom and bounds away to the shelter of the next hedgerow.

About a quarter of a mile further on we have to turn for home as the track finishes at another farm. Vesper tries her luck one last time, by wriggling under a gate into yet another piece of woodland, and disappearing from view. I call and whistle and get no response, but then I hear the indignant cry of a cock pheasant as it hurtles into the air, and a few moments later she’s back, tongue lolling, tail wagging, and we turn to retrace our steps.

Halfway back along the track I hear some chittering calls as a small flock of birds burst from one of the oak trees and fly away in front of me – those hips and haws will not be in the hedgerow long – the fieldfares are back for their over-wintering stay! Now I know that winter is really on the way, another season to look forward to, or endure, depending on your viewpoint; a time of quiet reflection and planning for the new year ahead.

Lots of gardening and an 'epic' journey!

Before ...

... and after

Gardening seems to have been a major player in September, and I picked up a new client, who was given my name by the plant guy, Adrian, at Shepton Market. Barbara had an herbaceous border that needed sorting as it had got a bit out of hand over the summer but, when I went to see it, it was not as ‘jungley’ as she had led me to believe. After four 3-hour sessions it was restored to some sort of order and there were several clear areas just waiting to be filled with new plants!

At another client, we finally managed to finish emptying the old, leaking pond, renewed the liner and refilled with water. The new liner needed to be 16 feet by 18 feet and was incredibly heavy, but it’s amazing what two determined women, of a certain age, can achieve when we put our minds to it! I’m really looking forward to watching this new pond take shape and mature in the coming months, as it all looks a bit raw at the moment.

Stall at Castle Cary Market

In between the gardening jobs, I have continued running my weekly market stall at both Castle Cary and Shepton Mallet, with varied success. I have discovered that there is absolutely no way to predict which markets will do well and which won’t – it’s not even weather-dependent as I have had some of my best sales on days when it has been grey, wet and miserable! I do now have my ‘regulars’ at both markets, who return again and again to buy marmalade, shortbread and jams. Oddly, I don’t often seem to sell chutneys and pickles – perhaps as we get nearer to Christmas this will change?

Mr Fox

Towards the end of September, I attended East Pennard Open Day, which is a village a couple of miles away. I only took my spinning wheel and my needle-felted sculptures, as jams were being sold by a local organic producer, but I had a very successful day and sold several small sculptures. It helped that it was a lovely, sunny Saturday and the local cheesemakers, in whose farmyard the event mainly took place, were open to the public with tours showing the process.

Mr Badger

At the beginning of September, my lovely Light Sussex cockerel, Aubrey, died and Mary and I decided that we wouldn’t get another one … unless someone came with one under their arm saying that it would be despatched if we didn’t rehome it! Cue my 3-day farmsit back at Dundry, where there were several young cockerels, whose fate was going to be just that! After several text messages back and forth to Mary, I duly left on the Friday evening with a cardboard box containing a Copper Blue Maran cockerel! He looked very similar to one of the Maran hens that I’d bought from Sally previously and, as she is called Smokey, he just had to be Bandit (only people of a certain age will understand the reference!) He seems to have settled in well and the girls don’t seem to mind him at all. His crow was still very ‘new’ when he first arrived but he’s been practising hard and it is beginning to sound better now.

Back in March, I had planned to go to London to stay with my brother and family but, on the very day I was due to go, it snowed heavily and the coach to London was cancelled! Richard was coming to the end of his Master’s Degree and had his final dissertation to write, so we put off re-organising my visit until that was safely out of the way. The first weekend in October was when we finally got to re-book! I had decided that, at the age of 65, I really should be able to travel across London on my own without panicking or getting irretrievably lost in the Underground, but it was a huge ‘thing’ for me, as I have never been great about travelling on public transport – airports (not the actual flying) are the worst, closely followed by train stations, large coach stations and the Underground. On previous visits my brother had met me at Victoria Coach Station and chaperoned me across London, but I was determined to do it alone this time!

The adventure started at 7.50am in Shepton Mallet, when I boarded the Berrys coach bound for Hammersmith Bus Station by way of Frome, Warminster and a layby somewhere on the A36 near Codford! During the journey our hostess came round with drinks and snacks, which I thought was very civilised, especially as she had shortbread biscuits. We arrived at Hammersmith at about 11.45 and I descended into the Underground. I had worked out my route beforehand and printed myself a cribsheet, which I now grasped in my pocket like a talisman. On it I had written down each tube line I needed, it’s end destination, the stop at which I needed to alight and how many stops that was from my starting point. So, it was onto the Piccadilly Line at Hammersmith, off at Green Park; onto the Jubilee Line, off at Canning Town; onto the Docklands Light Railway, off at Woolwich Arsenal; catch a bus from near the station and get off at Plumstead Common. Phew! It all went incredibly well and I was on an adrenaline high when I finally reached my destination – no panicking, no getting lost and it had only taken me one and a half hours!

A Thames barge nears the Barrier

Lesnes Abbey ruins

It was lovely to see Rich, Jo and Rosa again – we don’t see each other more than twice a year and it is at least six years since I last went to London. We had a lovely weekend – we walked along the Thames Path, past the Thames Barrier on Saturday, and then, on Sunday, my bro and I went on an 8-mile walk to Lesnes Abbey and back via Thamesmead along another part of the Thames Path, stopping at a pub in Plumstead to have some Nepalese snacks – I love the fact that you can try so many different foods in London! On Saturday evening we all went up to the Criterion Theatre in the West End to see a play called The Comedy About a Bank Robbery performed by the Mischief Theatre, which was highly entertaining and very cleverly done.

Canary Wharf from the Thames Clipper

I was travelling back on Monday evening and Rich had to travel to Leeds on Monday evening, too, so we went up to London in the morning, travelling up the Thames on a boat from North Greenwich and alighting at The Globe Theatre, before spending the rest of the day at Tate Modern. I’d never been there before, and I’m not a great lover of modern art, but there was an interesting exhibition by Olafur Eliasson, who uses complex mathematical shapes in his architecture and is also fascinated by Iceland and the melting of the Polar ice, so quite a mixed exhibition.

The view from Tate Modern

Rich saw me across town on the tube and we parted company at Green Park Station as he was getting on the Piccadilly Line going in one direction and I was going in the opposite direction, back to Hammersmith and the Berrys Coach home. It had been the start of the Extinction Rebellion protests in London that day and two or three of the passengers returning to Somerset had been at Lambeth Bridge all day. I do wonder if they will have an impact on Government and its decisions regarding climate change – I know my fourteen-year old niece, Rosa, is very concerned about the future and took part in the school strikes recently.

Where did August go?

Beautiful hydrangea at Cilrhiw

I’ve finally got around to writing the August blog!

August on the Cotswolds

August started in typically manic mode, as I started the month still in South Somerset, where I finished my dog/house sit on the Saturday morning, before driving back to Shepton Mallet, unpacking, repacking and going straight off to Cheltenham on the Saturday afternoon! The weather was lovely and I decided that, as I had never actually stopped in Tetbury on my many journeyings through it, if I could find a parking place I would finally break my journey and have a wander. I drove into the car park near the centre of the town, only to see the car in front of me take the final parking place! Doh! I’ll stop there one of these days! I carried on across the Cotswolds rejoicing in the golden stone walls, the abundance of wild flowers in the verges and the barley ripening in the fields – all the things I love best about my native hills.

The Golden couple and family!

On Sunday morning, Mum and I donned our glad rags and set off for Oxford to attend Mum’s cousin’s Golden Wedding Celebrations. The venue was the Oxford University Rugby Club pavilion and, although I’d found it on Google maps, it all looked very different on the ground on a very busy and very hot Sunday! It was at this point that, just for a short time, I wished I had Satnav. However, following my nose, and having a vague idea of the area I needed to be in, we actually found it and were only half-an-hour later than I’d intended. It was a great afternoon and I got to see my two cousins, one of whom lives in New Zealand, who I have rarely seen since they were children.

I stayed at Mum’s overnight but left soon after breakfast as I had a gardening job to do on Monday afternoon, followed by baking for Tuesday’s market. As you can imagine, by Wednesday, I wasn’t sure who I was, where I was or what day it was!

The following weekend I did a short farm sit for my friends at Dundry, so that they could attend a birthday party in Cornwall – I was amazed to see the size of the chicks that I’d looked after a few months ago, and the ducklings that had hatched just after I’d left, were now indistinguishable from the adults. As I drove home across the Mendips on Sunday evening I suddenly realised that I’d left my wellingtons behind! For a gardener/farm sitter this is a bit of a disaster but, I also realised that I would be almost driving past the door again the following day so could stop and collect them then.

Monday morning saw Jeni and me heading north (via Dundry) up the M5. However, there was so much traffic on the motorway, that I decided to get off just north of Bristol and head up the A38 to Gloucester and beyond. We were going to Oswestry, so went up the border, stopping at the wonderfully-named Trumpet Tea Rooms to have some lunch, break the journey and look around their lovely little art gallery. Dawn was working in a shop called Rowanthorn on Monday, so Jeni and I dropped in to see her and ended up buying things – although the contents are similar to those on offer in Glastonbury, Mike prices everything so reasonably (and gives such lovely hugs – a very important factor as far as I’m concerned) that it seems wrong not to indulge!

Fish and chip supper at Barmouth

This may well be our last visit to the lovely Cilrhiw, as they have received two offers on the property, and we were there for a short break to do some gardening and also spend time with Dawn. Tuesday was a dry day, so we worked most of the day in the garden, weeding paths and flower beds and cutting back the triffid-like hardy geraniums. On Wednesday it rained, so we turned our attention indoors and painted the bathroom, shower room and conservatory – once we get started there’s no stopping us! The weather on Thursday could have gone either way, so we all took the day off, put Jasper (the Miniature Schnauzer) into the car and drove across North Wales to Harlech, where we spent quite a long time on the beach. Dawn and Jeni wanted a paddle so left me sitting on a rug on the sand. There had obviously been quite fierce storms in the days before we arrived as the high tide line was marked by great swathes of seaweed, and there were numerous dead jellyfish littering the sand – poor things, although they do look very much like aliens! From Harlech we drove  a little bit further south to Barmouth and ended the day sitting on the promenade, eating fish and chips and keeping a wary eye on the seagulls!

On Friday morning we said a sad farewell to Dawn, Jasper and Cilrhiw – both Jeni and I have done a lot of work in that garden over the last nine years! I can’t quite believe that I will never experience the solitude and quiet in that valley setting again.

My son, Dave, came down to Somerset on the Saturday, to help me celebrate my birthday and, as he was on ‘Factory Fortnight’ he stayed in my caravan for a few days and we were able to have a much-needed catch up, plus he got to see some Bristol-based friends, too.

And then, suddenly, we were at the Bank Holiday weekend and I was off to the farm near Pensford, on the way to Bristol, to farm sit for the alpacas! At least, I thought, I won’t have to worry about the imminent arrival of baby alpacas, as they must all have been born by now. However, Sarah had another nerve-racking task for me – one of the baby alpacas (cria) needed to have a top-up bottle twice a day, as his mum didn’t seem to be producing sufficient milk for him. First, catch your cria as, unlike most bottle-fed lambs, he didn’t come galloping towards you whenever you appeared. Sarah found the easiest way to feed him was to scoop him up, sit down in a camping chair, with the bottle in the drinks holder, fold his legs under him, so that he was sitting on her lap and then, keeping a firm pressure across his back with one arm (to prevent him scrambling off) hold the bottle in the other hand. It all looked quite easy, but I knew that was just an illusion! 

Dougal xx

On Friday afternoon I had my first solo experience. Dougal did not want to be caught, particularly by a complete stranger, but I carefully and quietly walked him into a group of adults and, hoping that they wouldn’t kick me, managed to catch him. When I scooped him up I was really surprised at how light he was – they are all long legs and fleece! We managed to sit down quite comfortably and it was rather pleasant, cuddling a baby alpaca on a warm, sunny afternoon, whilst watching the other alpacas and the sheep in the further field, whilst large dragonflies hunted for insects beneath the trees bordering the River Chew. He was not a fast feeder, in fact each feed took about half-an-hour and he was only having 5 fluid ounces of goat’s milk at a time. He also hummed most of the time, too. I thought they only hummed if they were nervous, but Sarah assured me that it is just their way of communicating. They all hum to a certain extent but Dougal seemed to do it far more and I found myself humming back, which he didn't seem to mind! I think I am now fluent in alpaca-speak!

I’m pretty sure that the other animals recognised me from my last visit as, apart from two additional goslings that hadn’t met me, they all behaved very well – I even think I got most of the chickens into the right runs this time! As it was such lovely weather, I spent quite a bit of each day in the garden weeding, first the herbaceous border and then an area, overgrown with weeds, that had fruit bushes in it. Bonnie, the lovely Labrador tried to help by tearing up mouthfuls of couch grass!

Before the day got too hot and again, in the cool of the evening, Bonnie and I would go for a walk along the river, up through the wood, stopping to check and feed the male alpacas, and then back through the meadow to the house. A couple of times we went a bit further, up the Public Footpath that runs through the meadow, across the next field and then back down the green lane that borders their land. This green lane is, very obviously, an ancient trackway connecting two villages as it lies sunken between two banks and with a rough stone track bed, but it is now only used by the occasional horse rider and boys on scramble bikes, and even they must struggle to get through in places as the brambles virtually meet in the middle. I often wish that I could go back in time to see what these places looked like in the past.

And there we are – August in a nutshell, and here we are already into September and the seasons are turning again with brambles laden with fruit, sloes ripening on the blackthorn, tomatoes and courgettes in the garden and me, with a slight sense of panic as I feel I have to somehow pick and preserve all this bounty!

The fruit bed - before ...

... and after!

Fun-packed July!

Well, July has been and gone, and it’s time for another blog! I cannot believe how fast this year is whizzing by!

The Wedding Gazebo

Assembling on the terrace

At the beginning of July, our local choir was asked to sing at one of our member’s daughter’s wedding. We usually sing at a couple of local weddings during the year and have quite a selection of suitable songs in our repertoire, but this was a coach outing to Portland on the south coast near Weymouth! The venue was a stunning, castellated house overlooking the sea, set in beautiful grounds. The weather was perfect for the outdoor wedding, with blue sky, blue sea and a gentle breeze that kept the temperature at an acceptable level. Our job was to sing a medley of songs for half an hour whilst all the guests assembled and then move to another part of the terrace, overlooking the wedding gazebo, to sing for the bride’s entrance (The Rose), the signing of the register (Songbird) and the walk back up the ‘aisle’. The couple had requested Elbow’s ‘One Day Like This’ as the final piece and we had been practising it for a couple of months. The altos (including me) were very excited as we, finally, got to sing the tune, instead of being the support underneath the sopranos! As the bride and groom processed up the aisle, followed by their guests, we burst into song and, when we got to the final chorus, everyone joined in, so we just kept on going, repeating the final phrases over and over, as the wedding party came up onto the terrace and walked past us singing their hearts out. What a wonderful experience!

The following week my daughter and her partner went on holiday to Crete and asked me to cat sit for their two feline friends. As they only live in Shepton, it was easier for me to move into their house, rather than drive a couple of miles twice a day to feed them. It was a real pleasure to be able to leave the car parked on the driveway and walk into town to do a few bits of shopping or meet up with a friend for coffee, without having to worry whether I had overstayed my time in the car park! If I had a large enough garden, I think I could be happy living in a small town. The weather was lovely, for the most part, during my 10-day stay, so I did a few weeding jobs in the garden, repaired the water butt tap and mended the bird bath. I had an epic fail when I tried to repair the outside tap but, armed with the correct tools and with the benefit of a YouTube video about the correct way to install plastic push-fit connectors, I will return!

The rest of the month has been the usual round of gardening jobs and market days, but I had two particularly good days at Castle Cary market (It was actually a bit profitable!) and I found that my stocks of jams and marmalade were perilously low so, on some of the hottest days this year, I was to be found, in the afternoons, stirring pans of raspberry jam, summer fruits jam, rhubarb & ginger jam, and marmalade! In the mornings of those really hot days, I went to my gardening clients at 7.00 am and worked for 4 hours to avoid the worst (best?) of the heat. Then it was drive home, lunch, fall asleep (it’s an age thing, I think) then wake up and do the preserves.

Tug-o-War in the kitchen

I was only home for a week before I drove to South Somerset, to a new client, where I have been looking after 2 dogs for the last week. One of the dogs, Bella, is a stone-deaf, 12-year old chocolate Labrador and the other is a 20-week old Cava-Cocka-Poo (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel – Cocker Spaniel -Poodle)! As you can imagine, the pup is a real live wire and continually wants Bella to play. Sometimes Bella will indulge her with a game of tug-o-war but, more often than not, she just wants some peace and quiet, so keeping Pebble entertained and distracted has been my major job.

I am always surprised at how different the topography of South Somerset is, compared with the more northern area that I live in. Here, the hills are more rolling with lots of beautiful and majestic, mature oak trees and big, open vistas of sky. The air seems to be particularly clear so that each tree on each hillside stands out in crisp relief. Our nearest walk is just across the lane, in a large field (8-10 acres, I would guess) that has recently been cut for silage. It is very popular with dog owners in the village, but we usually have it to ourselves. Here I can safely let the dogs off the lead and, while Bella and I stroll round the perimeter at Old Lady Speed, Pebble aka The Black Streak, whizzes around and covers at least six times the distance that we do! This suits us all very well, and also gives me the chance to really observe my surroundings. 

The majority of the hedges around the field seem quite old with hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, elm, oak and crab apple in the mix. There seem to be a lot of sloes this year, and the hazel nuts will ripen soon. There also seem to be a lot of haws forming and many apples on the crab apple, so a lot of food for the animals and birds come autumn. Although the field is mainly meadow grass, around the edges, where the mower couldn’t reach, there are clumps of campion, mayweed, meadowsweet and yarrow as well as the ubiquitous thistle, so there is an abundance of insect life. There are Large White butterflies and Meadow Brown butterflies and, this morning, I spotted a beautiful Brimstone butterfly and, as I walk, I send up clouds of small, pale diurnal moths that flutter away and land again amongst the grass stalks.

In the mornings, when it is still relatively cool, the Swallows and House Martins are hunting insects high up above us but, come the evening and they are skimming over the grasses as the insects fly closer to the ground. Pebble thinks they are there just for her entertainment and rushes around the field trying to catch the darting shapes, but they easily fly out of her reach!

And now it is the beginning of August - I wonder what adventures the month will bring? 

Pebble (aka The Black Streak)!

Alpacas!

Angelina and friends

It’s been more than two years since I last wrote a blog, and I really didn’t think I had anything left to say, but a friend told me that she really missed reading about my goings-on!

I know it’s now July, but my first blog is going to be about June, so you might get two this month! But first of all, a very quick update on what I’ve been doing in the last two years. I am now a regular trader at two weekly markets – Castle Cary and Shepton Mallet, at which I sell my homemade preserves, cookies, scones and cakes, plus woollen items – hence the name of my stall – A Little Bit Sheepish. On the days when I am not at market I do gardening for a few local clients and several times a year I do dog-sitting and smallholding-sitting at various places. That’s my life in a nutshell!!

My son made his annual pilgrimage to the Glastonbury Festival at the end of June, so I had to prepare my old caravan for his arrival. Of course, last year there was no festival, so the caravan had had two years of ‘stuff’ deposited in it, which I had to sort through and put away so that I could construct the bed! What was originally the tiny shower room is now floor to ceiling with boxes and bags of knitting wool and vacuum-packed fleeces! I really must stop acquiring yarn and raw fleeces, but it is very addictive. If someone offers me a fleece, especially one that I don’t already have in my ‘collection’, I find it almost impossible to turn it down. Last year I went to help a friend when the shearer came, as she thought she would struggle to handle the sheep by herself, but the shearer brought a helper, so I really didn’t do anything to earn the Manx Loaghtan fleece that I was given! When the shearer heard that I did spinning he offered me a Wensleydale fleece as well! Oops!

Anyway, once the caravan was put in order and son had duly arrived, I had to leave him to it and travel twenty miles nearer to Bristol to do a weekend farm sit for some new clients. They had chickens and geese and ducks, a Labrador and … alpacas! I did explain, before I went, that I hadn’t got any hands-on experience with alpacas, but thought I would just be checking that they were all upright and had fresh water. However, Sarah explained that I would also be on babywatch as they were due to produce cria in July, but they could always come early! I was only staying one night, so thought I was probably going to be OK.

Before they left on the Saturday morning, Sarah showed me around their beautiful smallholding, located in a tiny hamlet, right next to a river. We let out the geese and the goslings, let out the ducks and the hens and then went off to see the alpacas. They are fed every morning with a special camelid feed and are also given hay, especially now that at least six of them are heavily pregnant. They kept their distance from me at first but came a bit closer when Sarah was feeding them. We then went to another paddock where the boys live to feed them and check that they were all OK. During the previous week Sarah had had a terrible fright when one of them choked on his dry food and she had to call the vet. All was well in the end, but she has been advised to add some water to their feed to aid its progress down their long neck – a bit of a design fault really!

Sarah had kindly printed me out a comprehensive list of everything that needed doing, which is brilliant, because you think you will remember, but you never do! We had run through the evening routine, so I felt quite confident that all would go well – how wrong I was! I had forgotten that people’s animals act quite differently when a stranger shows up.

The first job was to let the two goslings out of their pen in the paddock and walk them back up the hill to their dog cage in the first goose house, making sure that they had fresh water and feed available overnight. At my approach the goslings went into panic mode and started racing around their pen shrieking in terror, which meant that all the adult geese came over to the fence and started hissing at me, which just added to the goslings’ fright. In the end, I had to pick them up and tuck them under my arms and carry them back up to their cage.

The second job was to put the two groups of geese back in their respective houses. Luckily, although they hissed quite a lot, they behaved impeccably and put themselves in the correct houses. Next it was on to the ducks – there were three adults (1 male, 2 females) that were in one pen, and 7 large ducklings that had a separate pen and house but could squeeze through the stock fence and roam in the bigger paddock with the geese all day. However, the three adults had somehow got out of their pen – the male was in the large paddock and the two females were in the duckling pen, so I had to sort that out. Meanwhile the 7 ducklings popped back through the stock fence looking for their tea, except only six managed to squeeze through, the seventh was clearly too big (or thought he was) and started running up and down the fence looking for another way in. After many fruitless attempts to guide him round the fence to the entrance, I finally succeeded, only to find that the adult ducks had broken back into the ducklings’ pen and scoffed all their tea, and chased them back through the fence – it was all starting to get a bit farcical! Eventually, I got all my ducks in a row, and in the right houses, and could turn my attention to the hens.

I was beginning to feel that the gods were against me, and the chickens proved to be my biggest challenge. Picture, if you will, a small paddock in which about 30 hens are free-ranging. Within the paddock are 4 hen houses and attached runs, of various sizes; two of the houses and runs hold the majority of the hens and one cockerel, one house and run houses 4 hens and the last house and run houses one cockerel. According to Sarah, this is how the evening shut-in works: throw a small amount of corn into the run of House #1, all the chickens will rush in, then throw a small handful of corn into the run of House #2, some of the group will now rush in there. Close both doors on the runs and then walk the solitary cockerel down to his house and shut him in. Once that is done, walk back to the runs, where the 4 hens that live in House #3 will have realised that they are in the wrong place and will be waiting by the doors to be let back out. All chickens should now be in the correct runs. Job done!

What actually happened was: throw handful of corn into the run of House #1, most of the chickens rush in, move to House #2 and throw in more corn, some chickens rush in. Close doors to both runs, only to discover that there are still a lot of hens not in either run, and they are running round the perimeters of the houses, like the proverbial headless chickens, trying to find a way in to get to the corn. Open both doors to runs, throw in more corn, chase outside chickens round the pens towards the doors, only to see a bunch of chickens making their bid for freedom. Eventually, all but one chicken is in the two pens, re-close doors. Walk solitary cockerel to his pen - this bit worked well! Return to the pens expecting to see the 4 awaiting release (easily identified by their green leg rings). Wrong! Go into each pen and try to separate out the 4 from the melee of slightly worried hens, who all seem to think that they are in the wrong pen! After much frustration, I have 4 hens with green leg rings outside the pens and manage to get them into House #3. All of the hens that should be in House #2 have white leg rings – half of them seem to be in House #1 – I open the doors and try to remedy the situation with a resounding lack of success. In the end all of the hens are safely shut in the two runs except for the original escapee, who seems to think that she lives in house #3, despite the fact that she has a purple leg ring and I already have the Green Leg Four safely shut in! I give up – I open House #3 and let her in. Everyone is now safely shut in, not in the right houses, it’s virtually dark and I’m exhausted!

The final challenge of the day came when I finally got around to feeding myself and discovered that all of the kitchen cupboard doors have child locks on … and I had no idea how to open them! (We didn’t have cupboard locks when my two were small) Luckily, the cupboard housing the saucepans hadn’t quite closed and there were enough dirty dishes in the dishwasher to enable me to eat off a plate. Sarah had told me to ring her if I had any problems, but I was too embarrassed to tell her that I couldn’t open the cupboards!

Next morning, the routine went more or less like clockwork, there were no baby alpacas, and Bonnie, the Labrador, and I went on an amble around the smallholding and spent a long time sitting on a bank in a grassy meadow watching the alpaca boys eat their breakfast, to make sure that nobody choked. There were bees, Meadow Brown butterflies and Marbled White butterflies flitting from wild flower to wild flower and House Martins hunting insects low over the waving grass. A tractor was busy cutting grass, either for silage or for hay, on the hill opposite and it was difficult to imagine how close to Bristol we were. I still consider myself to be very lucky to live and work in such surroundings!

Baby Albert

Sarah and family duly returned on Sunday evening and I returned home. On Monday morning, Angelina, the large white alpaca gave birth to baby Albert – talk about a close call!