A Spring farm sit and lots of gardening

 

Well, we seem to be galloping through the year again at breakneck speed! Having told myself that I really ought to try and cut down on the jobs I do, I’ve just acquired a new gardening client! She lives in Wells quite near to the Cathedral and, as I weed away in the herbaceous borders, my time is marked off by the quarter jacks and the hourly chimes. It’s a small, pretty garden with a high wall to one side forming the boundary between her property and the Cathedral Music School, so I get serenaded as well. This wall has a beautiful rambling rose growing over it, fronted by a couple of acer trees in different colours, a Magnolia stellata and several smaller shrubs, and I am enjoying working in it enormously!

New client's garden

I have recently returned from the first of my Spring farm sits – this one at Dundry for the poultry, sheep, tortoises, cats and dogs. I realised when we talked about the ages of the dogs that I have been coming here for at least 11 years now, usually twice a year – it doesn’t seem possible that it has been that long!

When I arrived Sally was having a cuppa with a veterinary nurse that she’d known for many years and I thought, at first, that one of the cats must be unwell. However, she had just delivered two more tortoises to the menagerie, so now there were seven for me to look after! These two were younger than the others being 17 and 23 and my goodness they had big appetites – every lunchtime I was cutting up bananas, nectarines and lettuce, grating cucumber and lightly cooking broccoli and then watching over them all as they ate. This was because the two Labradors would have gulped down their food at one side of the house and then galloped round to the ‘tortoise lawn’ to finish off the tortoise picnic!

Hungry torties!

Spring was definitely in the air for the three male tortoises who spent most of the time, when they weren’t eating, trying to persuade the females to be more friendly! I can’t blame the females for declining their advances however, as tortoise courtship seems to involve biting legs and heads and some very aggressive shell battering! Hardly subtle!

A tray of eggs arranged my someone with mild OCD!

The weather, for much of my stay, was warm and sunny and I was able to finish creosoting a refurbished chicken house and do some work in the vegetable garden. We did have a couple of spectacular thunder storms with lots of rain, but they didn’t last long.

Sally warned me about a couple of aggressive cockerels and the cantankerous gander, who’d given her a very nasty bite on the hand that took weeks to heal and left a scar. Most of the poultry are fine but every year seems to throw up a couple of cockerels who are just too big for their breeches and will fly at you with beak and spurs outstretched! Needless to say I did not go into any of the runs without a large stick in my hand and, sometimes, the big fishing net that she uses to catch hens for any reason – they absolutely hate that and even the most pugnacious cockerel beats a hasty retreat when he sees it!

Another aspect of my stay is keeping the bird feeders topped up. There are multiple bird feeders hanging in the trees outside the kitchen window and they attract an amazing number of wild birds. I didn’t stand at the window for ages watching but I still managed to see at least three pairs of bullfinches, blue tits and great tits, goldfinches, chaffinches, robins and a pair of great spotted woodpeckers. There was also a nest box with a camera rigged up to the TV, so I was able to watch a pair of blue tits incubating their eggs, although they weren’t due to hatch until after I left. The female was such a busy little housewife, continually re-ordering her nest material and fidgeting about!

I had to leave before they got home from their holiday, as they’d been held up by a puncture and had to use their spare which can only be driven at 50mph – at least they had a spare, as I believe some modern cars don’t have them as standard!

The next morning, after unpacking and repacking my bag, I picked Jeni up from her house and drove to Cheltenham to spend the Coronation Weekend with Mum. Dave also came over from Northampton, so it was lovely for us all to be together and, while he cooked us a Sunday roast, Jeni and I took Mum to her favourite garden at North Cerney House where we had a short wander in the walled garden and then made our way to the bothy for tea and cake!

I’m due to go off for another farm sit this weekend – this time for the alpacas, but a couple of weeks ago I received a message from Sarah asking if I’d like to go and help with the alpaca shearing. I’d never seen alpacas shorn before so jumped at the opportunity and got there part way through the afternoon. They’d been shearing since 10.00am but with 25 animals to shear and each one taking about 20 minutes, plus the catching and tethering time, there was still plenty for me to see. You cannot shear an alpaca in the same way as a sheep as they are, physically, just too big, so the traditional method is to catch the animal and turn it onto its side, then tie its front legs together and its back legs together and then stretch it out between two stakes so that it is immobilised. It looks a bit brutal but is the only safe way for both the animal and the shearer and most of the alpacas were relatively sanguine about the experience. However, a couple got a bit stressed and I fully expected them to gallop off to the far side of the field as soon as they were released. Not a bit of it – they calmly got up, wandered off a little way and then came back to inspect the generator at close quarters and then to inspect the quality of the shearing of their fellows! You could almost hear one of them say “You’ve missed a bit!”. 😊 We finally finished at about 8pm and I was invited to stay for supper before driving home as the last light died from the sky.

Initial tethering

The shearing begins

Incredibly long fibres!

Looking slightly smaller!

Finally, coming right up to date, last Thursday afternoon I drove to Mum’s to do a bit of gardening for her and take her to a nursery on the other side of town to buy some bedding plants. On a whim we dropped in to see an old family friend who can’t get out anymore and had a lovely reminiscing chat with him for an hour or so. On Saturday morning I drove from Cheltenham to Northampton where I did a weekend’s gardening for Dave and we went to a local nursery to buy him some bedding plants, so his garden is now smart and summer ready. I drove home on Sunday evening, went to bed and got up on Monday morning ready to start on my next gardening job. Talk about a busman’s holiday!

Before...

... and after

Before ...

... and after