Another farm sit and an anniversary!

 

On Easter Saturday Jeni and her workmate, Lou, threw themselves out of a perfectly good plane at 15,000 feet! This was the delayed parachute jump in aid of their firm’s adopted charity of last year, BIBIC. I couldn’t bring myself to watch live so waited at home for a text message to say that she had landed safely. She jumped in tandem with an instructor, and he had an automatic camera on his wrist that took many photos of Jeni on the way down! They were in free fall for over a minute before deploying the parachute and, apparently, it was wonderful, and exhilarating and she wants to do it again!! Where does she get this daredevil attitude from? The most I've ever done is ride pillion on a motorbike at 100mph (twice!) and flown in a glider!

Jeni and Lou back on the ground

Freefall!

Parachute safely deployed - Phew!

We were due to go to Mum’s for Easter, so later that same day I picked Jeni up and we drove to Cheltenham. I’d been gardening in the morning (to distract myself from worrying about the above!) and felt a bit snuffley on the drive, but thought it was just the effects of tree pollen or something. It was due to be a lovely weekend as my brother and my son were both there, too. However, when I woke on Sunday morning I had a sore throat and felt a bit dizzy, so decided to take a Covid test, never thinking that it would actually be positive, as I hadn’t really been anywhere or met anyone, apart from gardening clients, and that was always outdoors. It was positive! By 10.30 Jeni and I were back on the road home, our Easter plans wrecked. Inevitably, Jeni also tested positive a few days later but nobody else got it, so I’m glad we acted so fast and went home. I kept myself to myself for the rest of the week, even though, officially, we don’t have to isolate anymore, and spent a couple of days curled up on the sofa, continually wiping my nose whilst watching all the latest Bond films on catch-up!

Ten days after contracting Covid I had another farm sit booked, so was very glad that I felt almost normal again by then. I did take the precaution of wearing my mask while Sally did the handover, as the last thing she and Geoff wanted was a dose of Covid while on holiday in the Scilly Isles! There were a few less adult chickens than in previous years, but there were two brooders (boxes with heat lights over) with several chicks in each and a tray of eggs due to hatch while they were away, plus two more trays in another incubator, and a random few more in another incubator! There were also three or four pens with broody bantams in, all sitting on clutches of eggs, and these I marked with a piece of red baler twine, as several other bantams were trying to go broody and had to be persuaded off the newly-laid eggs each evening.

I soon got back into the swing of morning let out – checking food and water levels, and lifting the broodies to see if anything had hatched overnight; and evening shut-in – closing all feed hoppers (against the ubiquitous rats and squirrels), picking up eggs and checking that everyone was inside before shutting the hatches. In between, I did a bit of gardening, fed cats, tortoises and dogs, topped up the bird feeders and did a bit of knitting. There are numerous bird feeders hung in an apple tree just outside the kitchen window, so I had a really good view of the birds that came to feed – there were two pairs of bull finches, chaffinches and even a greenfinch, as well as blue and great tits, robins and dunnocks. Sadly, the camera nest box has remained empty this year, even though there seem to be plenty of blue tits around – that was always fascinating to watch at this time of year.

Tortoise picnic

Four days after my arrival, the eggs in the incubator started to hatch and by the end of the second day I had an extra 13 mouths to feed! I set up another brooder box in the barn and carefully transferred the chicks in a straw-lined bucket from one building to the other, where I introduced them to their new home and made sure they knew where the water and food containers were, before leaving them to settle in. It’s very difficult to get a good photo when the chicks are under an infra-red heat lamp, but I tried:

Newbie chicks - so cute!

 

On my last day there, I was checking all the broody bantams when I realised that one, who had only been sitting on four eggs, was now only sitting on three. As I was wondering what could possibly have happened to the fourth egg, and moving the hen around to check every corner, a small black chick suddenly dropped out from under her wing! As she was in a run with a bantam cockerel and they can sometimes kill the chicks, I carefully removed her, the chick and the remaining eggs, to a different house and run, where she soon settled down to look after Junior! All-in-all, I managed to hand back more lives than I was entrusted with at the beginning of the sit, but I did have two hen deaths during the week. When I first started doing farm sits for Sally, which is nearly 11 years ago(!), a sudden hen death would have panicked me, but I’m much more pragmatic these days!

On 7^th May, I celebrated an anniversary – one year since I picked up the keys to my new home! I looked back over the estate agent’s photos and the ones that I have taken during the year and realised that I have actually achieved quite a bit, even though, at times, it felt as if I was running through treacle! Of course, there are still quite a few things that need doing but then, I’d be pretty bored if everything was up together and completed! The garden is gradually taking shape, as I uncover more of the original hard landscaping that had been buried beneath all the weeds, and put my own mark on it, too, although it would be nice to be able to plant more things rather than building raised beds, stabilising banks, repairing fences and sifting gravel! I have just completed a raised bed where I have planted my soon-to-be-espaliered fruit trees - an apple tree from a WWOOF host near Oswestry and a greengage. I have another apple still to plant against the bit of fence I haven't repaired yet, and this one was grafted by a WWOOF host in Cornwall. 

My new raised bed

Fruit trees

I chanced a look on Rightmove the other day to see what was about in the area, in my price range. There isn’t a lot and, I understand, what there is, is selling like hot cakes, but I did notice a bungalow with a good-sized garden ‘in need of cosmetic improvement’, in a village near my best friend …….

The garden in May 2021

The garden in May 2022