Spring farm sit and other shenanigans!

 

Spring flowers on my decking

Yet again, it’s been quite a while since I last wrote a blog!

At the end of February we experienced Storm Eunice, which was very scary perched on Windmill Hill in Glastonbury as the winds shrieked around the house, took out the electricity and threatened my new fence! I was very glad that I’d had the log burner installed as, if the power was off for too long, I’d at least be warm and able to cook toast and heat soup! In the event, all was well, although one part of the old, rickety fence on the other side of the garden succumbed to the inevitable. As the house on that side of me is empty at the moment, I have decided to instigate repair works myself, to save any further problems. The next morning, as I packed and prepared to go off to farm sit the alpacas near Bristol, I noticed a strange film on all of the rear windows of the house. Upon further investigation (I ran my finger over the film and then licked it!) I discovered that it was salt spray, brought over 15 miles from the coast at Highbridge by the wind!

The following day was a lot calmer weather-wise and I made it to the village of Woollard in good time, and was duly taken around the farm to see where everything was, prior to Chris’s and Sarah’s departure. Everything was going smoothly with the hand over until we came to the boy alpaca field. Sarah had suggested that she show me how to catch the alpacas, in case I ever needed to as, in fact, I had needed to back in November when I was last here, when one of the boys got a noose of baler twine, from a hay bale, caught around his neck and I had had to catch him and then cut the noose with my pen knife. Luckily for me (and for him) he was one of the calmer, more amenable boys and used to being handled so, although nerve-racking, had not been impossible to do single-handedly. To demonstrate the catching technique we first gathered all the boys into a large pen and it was then that we noticed one of the boys had a weepy eye. On closer inspection we could see that he must have got something in his eye and the cornea was quite ulcerated and obviously very sore – cue urgent phone call to the vet who, unfortunately was nearly 20 miles away doing a tricky lambing, and couldn’t get to us for at least two hours. Poor Sarah and family, their anticipated departure time got later and later, but at least when the vet came, she could give eye drops and pain relief and a long-acting antibiotic so no further treatment should be needed, as long as I checked each day that it was healing OK.

My duck patients!

 I also had, in my care, and housed temporarily in the large cellar larder in a dog-whelping crate, two poorly ducks. They both had ‘bumblefoot’ which sounds rather cute and slightly amusing but is anything but! It is caused by a virus entering a wound on the foot, caused by stones, a foreign object, such as glass, or a thorn. The virus creates a painful swelling and overgrowth of tissue and the bird struggles to walk and is more common in chickens – it is also more easily treated in chickens as, once the swelling has been cut away, it is relatively easy to bandage a chicken foot. It is not easy to bandage a duck’s foot, as you have to be careful not to bind the webs between the toes too tightly, as the circulation is then compromised! As the wounds had to be dressed, at the very least every other day, it was decided that I should take the ducks to the vet, a round trip of about 20 miles, to enable the feet to be checked, assessed and re-bandaged. I popped the two girls into a cat basket for the trip and they seemed to quite enjoy the ride and Classic FM on the radio, they weren’t so keen on the vet procedure but we were soon on our way back. All was going well until the car in front of me decided to brake suddenly coming up to Bristol Airport, necessitating a bit of an emergency stop on my part. Imagine my horror when I heard behind me the sound of the cat basket shooting forward and obviously rolling over! As soon as I could I pulled into a field gateway and leapt out, expecting the ducks to be very distressed and/or hurt, but they seemed fine, a little confused as to why their world had suddenly turned upside down, but no worse for their adventure. Phew!

The rest of the farm sit proceeded in a fairly straightforward manner with no more animal emergencies, and I managed to hand back the same number of living creatures as had been entrusted to my care – always a good thing I’ve found!

A view from the Tor

My ‘intention’ to climb the Tor regularly got off to a great start with a climb at the end of February that took me 27 minutes ‘Door to Tor’ with three stops on the climb up the steep side to catch my breath, and another climb the following week that took 25 minutes with no stops! However, if there had been anyone at the top of the Tor that morning, I would have been completely incapable of speaking to them for at least 5 minutes! Since then I’ve only been up the Tor once more and that was more of an amble with Jeni, stopping to admire strange tree roots, wild flowers and a small vole who poked his nose out of his burrow jus as we wandered past. Needless to say, it took us 45 minutes with countless stops along the way!

In the middle of March, Jeni and Hutch went off to Egypt for a much-delayed holiday, and I de-camped to their house in Shepton Mallet to look after the cats. I was still able to get to my gardening clients, so life was almost normal, apart from the fact that the cats insisted on sleeping on the bed with me, which is something I wouldn’t normally tolerate, but the alternative was them scratching at the bedroom door all night. At least they were fairly well-behaved and didn’t wake me in the middle of the night.

The day after they came home, I drove to Cheltenham to stay with Mum for a couple of nights as it was Mother’s Day on the Sunday and, on the Monday, we had a funeral to attend in Gloucester. This was the funeral of a lady who featured a lot in my younger years, as we all used to go on holiday together; five in our family and five in theirs, with the three children in each family being of a similar age. My older sister drew the short straw there as her ‘corresponding’ child was a boy! In a way, I was doubly lucky as my corresponding child was a girl, a year younger than me, and we got on really well but I also got to hang out with the older brother as we both liked to go rock-pooling. We had some amazing holidays, staying in self-catering cottages or bed-and-breakfast on farms in both Cornwall and Wales, where lots of childhood memories were made. It was seven years since Carol’s father had died, which was when I had last seen the majority of the family, and it was a bitter-sweet day as we said ‘Farewell’ to Audrey and then exchanged memories and chat at the ‘wake’, held in the same hotel as before. I was a bit unsettled by it, to be honest, as it brings home the passing of time and that we are all now ‘old’!! I can’t imagine that Kevin and I would be much good at rock-pooling any more, or that Carol and I could get so enthusiastic about getting up in the middle of the night, to go and see a calf being born! (Actually, I can still imagine us doing that!)

I don’t have many photos to share this time – I’m not sure photos of old bits of fence prior to refurbishment are that inspiring. Perhaps there will be more next time!

My camellia in full flower