The Last Lamb

The last lamb!

I left home, heading for Cornwall, in torrential rain but at Honiton the rain stopped, the sun came out and I arrived at the farm in glorious sunshine. I was greeted by an ecstatic Jess, so knew that James wasn't far away – he was in the lambing shed, milking one of the ewes. The ewe had had to have a Caesarian as her lambs had died in utero, so normal birthing was not happening, and it was the only way to save her life. Amazingly, she had been up on her feet again ten minutes after the operation and was all set to make a full recovery.

Lambing had started just over a week before I got there and of the 20 ewes, 15 had already lambed! My special sheep, Lady (aka No 74), had had a fine pair of twins and mooched over to say 'hello' in her normal, understated, way but that was all the close contact we had as James decided to put some of the older lambs out in the field, because the forecast was for a spell of dry weather. Lady had been the 4^th ewe to lamb so she was in the first tractor load out to the field. It always makes me smile when the ewes and lambs first go out because the lambs have never seen the big, wide world before or felt grass under their feet, so they are a bit hesitant, but the ewes just think 'Grass!' and put their heads down as soon as they get through the gate, quite often ignoring the anxious calls of their offspring.

With only five ewes left to lamb I was desperate not to miss out on any of the births but when I woke the next morning there was another set of twins in the barn – and then there were four! As the weather was fine (but with a chilly wind) I volunteered to take the dogs and walk down to the furthest field from the farm to check on the sheep that were there. Since my last visit, back at the end of January, they had had a lot more rain, and one particular storm had been so fierce that the water running down the farm track had scoured out a gully, washing away the small stones and leaving the larger, loosened, stones behind. This made walking quite tricky and I was glad of my trusty, thumb-stick to give additional support. Having checked the sheep I hurried back up to the farm as I realised that I had been gone for about an hour and another sheep could have lambed in that time. All was quiet in the barn, so that evening I asked if I could be woken, whatever the time, if another ewe went into labour – next morning there were more lambs, but no-one had been awake at the time she decided to produce them – so then there were three!

I was extremely reluctant to leave the environs of the lambing shed after that, so made sure I was within hailing distance at all times. I did some work in the greenhouse and vegetable patch, planting seeds and constructing a windproof, runner bean trellis and then I had a large bonfire in the old orchard next to the house. After a few years of the old pole barn being held up with accro props, James and Nick (the farmer/builder) had completely reconstructed it and, whilst it was down, had taken the opportunity to fell some large ash trees that were growing behind it. This had led to a huge pile of brashy twigs and small branches which, over a period of a couple of days, I reduced to a, significantly smaller, pile of ash! There was also an old apple tree that had fallen down in the gales so James asked me to cut off all the small branches from that and burn them, as well. It was while I was doing this that the cry went up 'There's one on lambing!' I dropped everything and tore round to the lambing shed where James was trying to get the ewe in a pen on her own. 

The pile of branches to be burned

The last three ewes left to lamb were all first-time mums and this one, although pushing hard with each contraction seemed to be getting nowhere – there wasn't even a water bag showing, which is usually the first sign of imminent birth, so James decided to catch her and take a 'look' at what was going on. Having carefully applied lubricating gel to his fingers, he had a feel and discovered that there were the required two feet and a nose, but the ewe had not fully dilated and was unable to push the lamb through the too-narrow gap, so a few tense minutes elapsed while James gently massaged the tight muscles to get them to relax enough to pull the lamb through. At last, after what seemed like an agonising age, a live lamb was safely pulled into the world, but the mum was so shocked by her experience that she refused to have anything to do with her offspring! James is unfailingly patient with his sheep and spent the next half hour or so, on his knees in the straw, coaxing and reassuring the ewe until, the pain receding into a memory (much like humans!) she began tentatively to lick the newcomer, all the time looking to James for reassurance that she was 'doing the right thing'. Once the baby had suckled and was up on its feet, we left them together to bond properly without any more intervention.

It wasn't long before the penultimate ewe went into labour, too, and again there was no water bag first and just a nose to be felt upon inspection. I assisted, by keeping the ewe still while James tried to find the front legs and get them into the approved 'diving' position (legs both forward and extended with the head resting between them). This involved trying to push the head back into the birthing canal, against the ewe's efforts to expel it, whilst trying to flip the legs forward from their backward-facing position. Eventually, the lamb was in the correct position but, again the muscles were tight and it was quite a struggle to pull the lamb out. Once out, it was placed by the ewe's head where she immediately began to vigorously lick it clean while we waited for the twin to be born. Amazingly, although only a little smaller than its sibling, the second lamb slid into the world almost unnoticed by its mother, who seemed quite surprised when confronted with another baby to care for!

The last ewe was almost a week behind the others and was not due until the following Saturday. Jo and James were going away for a few days on the Monday, returning on Thursday afternoon, so I felt confident that nothing would happen before they came back, and I could just concentrate on feeding the rest of the flock and keeping an eye on things. They had also dropped the small bombshell that this was probably the last year that they would be doing any lambing, as they are scaling back their farming enterprise in the run up to ultimate retirement.

On Tuesday morning I fed the ewes and lambs left in the barn and the ones out in the field and checked on the other two groups of sheep before coming back up the farm track with the intention of going in doors for a coffee. I casually glanced in the lambing pens as I walked past and was surprised to hear the tell-tale whickering bleat of a ewe that has just lambed or is about to lamb! I did a double-take and then took a closer look as she repeated the noise – there was very little evidence that anything was happening, but her behaviour suggested otherwise, so I quickly constructed a smaller pen to contain her and then rushed into the house to wash my hands thoroughly before returning to the barn. In just those few minutes the ewe had gone from bleating to full-scale contractions, but there was no water bag and, upon inspection, only a nose that was fast becoming the whole head – there were no legs obvious. I tried to gently push the head back to give me room to try and find the legs, but the contractions were really strong. In the end I remembered a useful tip that I'd once been given – turn the ewe over and raise her back legs in the air so that gravity works in your favour, and by doing this I was able to get a finger looped around one leg and pull it forwards. There was, however, absolutely no sign of the other leg, and the ewe was pushing so vigorously that the head was almost born, so I took the decision to birth the lamb with only one leg forward, as it was all taking far too long. Luckily for me, this ewe was fully dilated and the lamb, although a single, was not overly large, so it burst into the world quite easily. Unluckily for me, it no longer seemed to be breathing, so I swung it to and fro trying to clear the airways of the fluid it must have inhaled as I struggled to bring it into the world. After what seemed an incredibly long time (probably no longer than a minute or two) the little scrap coughed, sneezed and shook its head, so that I could at last offer it to the ewe for cleaning. I have never been so relieved or full of joyous wonder at the miracle of new life!

However, I was brought down to earth with a bump (if not a resounding crash) the following morning when I noticed one of last year's lambs looking a bit under the weather. As I went to take a closer look, it collapsed and could not get up, so I made a pen at the top of the field, near the gate, and, by rolling it onto some old silage wrap, pulled it up the field and put it in the pen. It seemed to have a runny nose and its breathing was a bit erratic, so I thought it might have contracted pneumonia. James had shown me where all the medicines were before he left, so I drew a syringe of a broad-spectrum antibiotic and gave the sheep an injection in its rump. However, when I went back to check on it a couple of hours later it was dead – such a fast decline! I was still feeling bad about it when Jo and James returned but I couldn't have done anything more than I did. That's the trouble with farming – elated one minute and depressed the next!

The rest of my stay was pretty uneventful, which was probably a good thing, and I spent my final weekend trying to construct a replacement willow sheep for the one that I made a couple of years ago – it didn't really look much like a sheep to me, but it will be a talking point for people coming to stay in the Shepherd's Hut!

And finally (with apologies to Shakespeare):

                                                           East Penrest

                                 I know a bank where the wild primrose grows,

                                 and violets nod when a gentle breeze blows;

                                 where celandines with yellow heads

                                 and ferns, unfurl from grassy beds.

                                 In fields nearby lambs bleat

                                 and anxious ewes reply,

                                 whilst overhead an arc of sky

                                 so blue it takes your breath away.

                                 I know a path where the silver stream glides

                                 down to a pond with steep grassy sides,

                                 where kingfishers flash in a shaft of sun

                                 and moorhens shelter when day is done.

                                 In woods nearby jays call

                                 and distant birds reply,

                                 whilst overhead an arc of sky

                                 so blue it takes your breath away.

                                  I know a wood, so ancient and still

                                  away down the track, at the base of the hill,

                                  where squirrels leap from tree to tree

                                  and deer rest quietly, too still to see.

                                  It's here that my soul finds sanctuary

                                  and ancient spirits hear my cry,

                                  whilst overhead an arc of sky

                                  so blue it steals my heart away.

All change on the vehicle front

The Tollgate Tearooms just outside Bath on A46

I was home from Shropshire for less than a week when we decided to go and stay with Mum for Easter (we did ask her if that was OK...eventually!). Jeni had been intending to go for the weekend anyway but her car developed some problems that were just too expensive to make it worthwhile to carry out, so I agreed to pick her up on Good Friday morning at about 10.00am. I was ready to go much earlier than I'd expected so turned up 10 minutes early to find Jeni frantically washing up, trying to pack and have breakfast all at the same time. A small germ of an idea had already been forming in my brain and this started to grow as I witnessed her less-than-adequate breakfast – we would (finally) stop at the Tollgate Tearooms on the way to Cheltenham and have coffee and a snack.

It was an absolutely glorious day with bright sunshine and a clear blue sky, so the countryside looked at its best as we drove along and the view from the Tearooms was spectacular; out across Bristol, across the Severn and into Wales, where you could see the mountains. I am so glad that we stopped – the place is beautiful and all the staff were friendly and helpful. It turned out that they had closed for a refit and for a new gas main to be laid, thinking it would be for two weeks, but it turned into two months! We decided on coffee and a toasted teacake each – when the teacakes arrived they were larger than your average tea plate, so we could probably have shared one! If you ever find yourself in the area they are well worth a visit as they do lunches and afternoon teas, as well. Fortified, we returned to the car only to find a huge queue of traffic stretching as far as the eye could see! After about ten minutes of crawling along the reason became clear – everyone had decided to go to Dyrham Park on such a glorious day. The queue from the other direction stretched all the way back to the motorway junction, round the roundabout and down the slip road – really annoying if you were trying to get to Bath!

We got to Cheltenham in time for lunch and Dave arrived from Stevenage, too. As the weather forecast was dire for the rest of the Easter weekend, we went for a little stroll in the sunshine in the afternoon, but the wind was chilly. All the gardens are beginning to look colourful, particularly Mum's as it really is a Spring garden (her favourite season) with daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, hellebores and primroses, plus some flowering shrubs. The little magnolia stellata was trying its best to flower but looked a bit bedraggled after the rain and wind on Easter Saturday.

Over the weekend I came to a decision and offered Jeni my trusty Peugeot to take the place of her VW Lupo. This then catapulted Dave and me into a search of Autotrader to try and find a replacement vehicle. I finally decided on a Honda Jazz at a garage in Yeovil so, on Easter Monday I went down to have a look at it, took it for a short test drive and bought it! It's very low mileage for its age but the thing that really sold it to me was the fact that the back seats fold down completely flat in one simple movement! They needed to service and MOT it so I couldn't pick it up until Thursday afternoon, and on Friday morning I was on my way across the Mendips to farm sit for my friends at Dundry. It seems a bit strange to be driving a different car – I keep looking for my lovely blue Peugeot, but I suppose I shall get used to it eventually.

The new motor

I was at Dundry for a week looking after 4 dogs, 5 cats, 25 sheep, 4 geese, 9 ducks, 4 quail and untold numbers of chickens! In actual fact, after the morning flurry of feeding and letting out, there wasn't too much to do until the evening when it was shutting up time and egg collection. There is one cockerel who likes to play me up; last year he was in a pen on his own and was always really difficult to get into the house, and now he is out with his girlies he's just as bad. He will also have a go at me if I try to go into the run with him, so I always left that pen until last, in the hope that it would be dusk by the time I got to him and he would have gone to bed. Even this didn't work, as he would still be lurking outside the house even when all the hens had gone in to roost, so I had to resort to the large keep net that Sally has for catching any escaped birds, which he hates, and then he would retreat (backwards) into the hen house so that I could close the door. I'd been warned that the gander was a bit touchy at the moment as well as the geese had started laying and he was very protective but, compared to that cockerel, he was an absolute angel!

I had a very unpleasant task that I had to perform while I was farm-sitting. It was inevitable that, at some point over the years, one of the chickens would become very ill and need culling. I found a hen that was egg-bound (she was trying to lay a huge egg that had got stuck) but her efforts to lay had caused a massive prolapse so that, even when I'd managed to remove the eggs (there were two, one behind the other), things didn't return to normal. In sheep, if they have a prolapse you can gently push it back in and put on a harness that keeps everything in place, but I couldn't think of a way to make a harness for a chicken that wouldn't slip off, as a sheep is basically a rectangle with handy anchorage points at all four corners and a chicken is a triangle, with the point at the bottom – but I did try! In the end I had to admit defeat and rang Sally's poultry friend, who will always come and despatch any sick birds. Unfortunately he was on holiday in Cornwall, so I knew I would have to do it myself. Gulp! I have never killed a chicken, although I know, in theory, how to do it so I looked it up on Google and there were such horrific stories on there that I felt quite sick and decided to just do it as best I could. I won't go into the gory details, suffice to say that I did it and I hope it's a long time before I have to do it again.

While I was there I managed to catch up with Bryony, the WWOOF host who introduced me to Geoff and Sally in the first place. It's been a while since I saw her and visited her farm. The forest garden that I worked in has really started to mature, she also practices natural bee keeping and often holds courses at the farm, as well as having an orchard that supplies apples to Thatchers Cider. I have made a note in my diary that she holds WWOOF weekends in October to help with the apple harvest, as I may be around to help then.

On Sunday I handed back the reins to Geoff and Sally and returned home, where I unpacked my car, repacked it, slept one night in my own bed and set off the next morning for Cornwall! I just don't seem able to settle down!

From the sublime to the ridiculous! Goose, hen, bantam and quail eggs

Spring in the valley

Sunset over the valley

I have just spent two weeks in another of my favourite places – a few miles from Oswestry and a couple of miles into Powys. It's been nearly a year since I was last there and I was keen to see what had changed in the garden since my last visit.

Jeni came with me to spend a long weekend with Dawn and Tony, with whom she gets on really well. We set off from Somerset just after 10.00 on a morning that saw the first (and last?) snow fall of the winter here, and the journey was interspersed with flurries of sleet and rain. We broke our journey at lunchtime at the Bellmans Cross Inn at Shatterford just north of Kidderminster, where I had lunched twice before. On both previous visits I had been, more or less, the sole diner but when we called in this time we were lucky to get a table! Despite the fact that there was only one person waiting at table, assisted by the French chef, Dominique, we were served remarkably quickly. I have to say the chips that accompanied our panini were the best chips I have ever had, anywhere! Fully fortified we continued on our way and arrived at Moelfre at about 4pm, where we were given a great welcome.

The next morning we woke to a light dusting of snow, but it soon melted allowing us to do a bit of work in the greenhouses and garden, although this was limited by the sodden ground from weeks of rain, but on the Sunday there was slightly more snow which took longer to melt, so Jeni and I worked in one of the cabins painting the walls and window frames so that it was ready for the first let of the season, just after Easter. (If you fancy a tranquil, 'glamping' experience check out wyldwoodsretreat.co.uk ). Sadly, Jeni had to go home on the Monday, so I took her to the station at Gobowen, just outside Oswestry and saw her off on the train, before returning to Moelfre.

Early on Thursday morning, amid a flurry of last minute activity, Dawn and Tony left for Brittany and I was left alone with just Jasper (the Miniature Schnauzer) and Missy (the cat) for company.

The silence was profound. It was so quiet that the silence seemed to push in on me and I was aware of the sound of the blood pulsing through my head. If it hadn't been for the birdsong I could imagine that I'd just been struck stone deaf! As last year, there are no sheep in the immediate vicinity at the moment, although I could hear ewes bleating for lambs and vice versa, away down the valley towards the little village of Moelfre, and the eerie sound of a donkey braying, but here there were just the birds.

A cheeky squirrel waits his turn on the feeders

His friend cleans up underneath the feeders

I began to compare the situation at home with the situation here and realsied that 'rush hour' started at about the same time – 5.30am! At home it is the gradual build up of traffic on the A37, rushing past to Bristol and Bath; here it is the noisy explosion of the jackdaws as they throw themselves into the sky like a black Roman Candle firework, before turning en masse and heading off east down the valley for a day of feeding in the fields. They are shortly followed by traffic going in the opposite direction – a formation of about ten Canada geese who honk their way west up the valley from their safe overnight haven on Moelfre Lake. From then on it's just the constant to-ing and fro-ing of the birds on the feeders. Dawn has a feeding station just outside the window where there are two peanut feeders, a fat ball feeder, a seed feeder and a niger seed feeder. At first I couldn't understand why I was having to refill both peanut feeders and the seed feeder every two days until I got up a bit earlier one morning and, on looking out of my bedroom window, saw two squirrels eating seeds and then counted at least six jays visiting the peanut feeders! For the rest of the day, it was a constant fast food takeaway for dozens of blue-, coal-, great- and long-tailed-tits, nuthatches, goldfinches, chaffinches, robins, blackbirds and the resident woodpecker. I also spotted a siskin and a marsh tit (I think). The majority of the birds visiting were blue tits and they would usually feed quite happily with the coal tits, who were very shy, and the long-tailed tits, but they all deferred to the great tits when they turned up. Most of the birds retreated to a safe distance when the woodpecker came to feed, although the long-tailed tits were cheeky enough to feed from the other side of the feeder, but everything retreated when the nuthatch turned up! They are quite aggressive birds and will chase everything away, including the woodpecker.

As dusk creeps into the base of the valley and gradually climbs up the steep valley sides, the little birds stop feeding and disappear to their overnight roosts but, in the sky overhead an amazing phenomenon happens – the jackdaws come home. It didn't happen every night, and some evenings were more spectacular than others, but they start to appear from all points of the compass, in small groups that gradually join together and wheel above the night-darkened valley in an intricate swirling ballet – hundreds of them! It is like a starling murmuration but they are much bigger birds and they call continuously as they dance in the darkening sky. The collective noun for jackdaws is a 'clattering' but that seems to imply something chaotic, whereas this looks like a well-choreographed and well-rehearsed piece of dance. (I managed to capture a video of part of this, it is about six minutes long and can be found on YouTube ref: https://youtu.be/VLcLLjFhPpU ) and then, at some hidden signal, they fall out of the sky into their roost and peace returns to the valley for another night. Spine-tingling stuff!

The weather improved dramatically during the week that I was there on my own and I managed to do some gardening and paint the front of the larger lodge. I'd taken a lot of things to do if I was stuck indoors – knitting wool and needles, crochet hooks, my peg loom and a couple of books, but I hardly needed any of them. Because everything was so sodden and slippery in the garden, Tony and I hadn't even discussed the vegetable plot so, after I'd done my annual tidy up of the potting shed (which took a fraction of the time it normally takes – perhaps my influence is rubbing off, although it's more likely that Tony has been occupied on hard landscaping and building projects of late!), I started weeding the raised beds at the bottom of the plot and just worked my way uphill. I discovered that, if I put my old gardening jacket on the ground, Jasper would happily sit on it for hours while I weeded, without fussing or wanting to wander off. In the end I only managed to weed four of the beds (there were another five or six to go) as I overdid it and made my back ache too much to continue – obviously not as fit as I thought I was. I did however, manage to have a good bonfire, although there are still loads of fallen twigs and small branches to be collected around the garden after the winter storms.

At the end of my week of house-sitting, I reluctantly packed my car and left Moelfre, with the hope that I get to return at least once more this year, and headed south. The day, which had started out beautifully sunny at Moelfre, quickly deteriorated into a sullen grey, and my decision to come back a slightly different, and potentially more scenic, route began to seem like a bad one as any view of the Shropshire hills was blanked out by low cloud and mist. For most of the journey down the A49 towards Ludlow and Leominster, I was behind two lorries and the steady 50mph proved very tiring. I'd planned to drive cross-country to Gloucester and then blast down the M5 to just south of Bristol before making my way back across the Mendips to home, but I was so tired by the time I reached Gloucester that I stopped in a lay-by and rang my Mum in Cheltenham to see if she was in. My intention was to stop for a couple of hours, have a cup of tea and a chat and then continue on my way, but Mum persuaded me to stay overnight and continue my journey the next morning. I didn't need much persuading, as my back and shoulder ached quite badly by then.

So, next morning, after a good night's sleep, I set off across the Cotswolds once more, retracing the route that I'd used a few weeks ago. When I got to the small crossroads where the two wall-builders had been busy, I just had to stop and take a photo of the (almost) finished wall – it is a work of art, and will probably last for another hundred years. The icing on the cake, as it were, was that, as I came up the hill past Dyrham Park, I was thrilled to see that my report of the demise of the Tollgate Tearooms was premature – it has just been undergoing a revamp! There is a new, more upmarket sign outside which still shows the old teapot, so I really must stop there at some point and have tea!

The rebuilt Cotswold stone wall

A Natural Break

Part of the new office suite

I have finally come to a natural break in my decorating marathon! Since the beginning of January I have been, more or less, fully employed painting and decorating at the new suite of offices in Wells. I've actually really enjoyed the challenge, although I have found it quite exhausting on some days where I seemed to be bending, stretching and climbing step ladders for six hours! I have managed to find solutions to most of the problems that cropped up, including some creative filler work to repair some architrave around a door frame and also to mimic some textured wallpaper that had been torn but couldn't be removed due to the nature of the substrate (in the stairwell). I can't have done too bad a job as I have been offered the contract to paint and decorate the new flat that will eventually be created at the rear of the offices, so that will keep me busy later in the year. As the weather has generally been so wet, it has meant that I have been gainfully employed when I couldn't do any gardening, paid or otherwise, and did not have to sit at home wondering what to do! As they say: a win-win situation.

The scaffold planks formed a false floor for me to paint off

The stairwell - from mustard coloured darkness to bright white! 

At the weekend I drove one of my favourite routes, at any time of the year – from The Mendips to The Cotswolds. It was a beautiful, crisp morning with high clouds and a hazy sun when I set out along the A37 up onto the Mendips and across the plateau through Farrington Gurney, Hallatrow and Marksbury before dropping down through Corston to Bath. The fields for the most part were bare and winter-stripped but at Ston Easton there was a flock of sheep with a few early lambs gambolling about in the sunshine, and clumps of snowdrops in some of the hedgerows.

At Bath, I climbed back up onto the Cotswolds by way of Lansdown Hill and then looped my way across to the A46 near Dyrham Park. I was saddened to see that the old Toll House Tearooms, a marker on my journey for so many years, has closed and the little hanging teapot sign has been removed. Many's the time I promised myself that I would stop and have a cuppa and I never did, perhaps that was the problem – too few people actually did succumb to the temptation of that gently swinging sign promising all sorts of delicious goodies within.

Passing over the motorway I continued on my way, halting briefly at the traffic lights at the junction in Old Sodbury next to the Cross Hands Hotel. It was here that, one dreadful winter's evening, the Queen and Prince Philip, returning from some official engagement were advised that it was too dangerous to continue and spent the night in this hostelry – imagine the flurry that caused in this lovely old inn! Not far from there I drove through a small hamlet called Petty France and thence on to Dunkirk! I have searched for the origins of these French-sounding names but cannot find any definitive answer, although there is the possibility that some French Huguenot weavers settled here and that is where the names derive from. By now I was up on top of the Cotswold Plateau, so different in aspect to the Mendip Plateau that I had left behind. Here there are large, mainly arable fields enclosed by Cotswold stone walls, and clumps of trees, usually denoting a settlement of some kind as they were probably planted as windbreaks against the south-westerly winds which must scour across this upland region. The winter wheat is growing well, due to the mild, wet winter and even the grasslands look greener than normal at this time of the year.

Having passed through Westonbirt, with the wonderful Arboretum on my left, I dropped down into the small hamlet of Doughton where there is an unremarkable wall, gates and lodge house which forms the understated entrance to Prince Charles' Highgrove House, from where it is just a short hop to the beautiful Cotswold town of Tetbury with its soaring church spire dominating the landscape. At this point, I normally head off towards Cirencester on the main road but, as it was such a beautiful day I decided to go 'off piste' and set off along a series of narrow lanes which really immersed me in rural Cotswold scenery. My decision paid off as it wasn't long before I saw more snowdrops and a beautiful clump of early yellow primroses sheltering in the lee of a wall. Along the banks in the tiny village of Winstone were bright daffodils nodding their heads in the breeze and, at one crossroads, there were two men rebuilding an ancient drystone wall. They had taken down the old wall and were busy reusing the stone but, because they were turning the stones in a different orientation, the original butter-yellow of the Cotswold stone was showing, like the newly-revealed skin when a snake sloughs off its old one. It won't take long before the elements weather these newly-exposed faces back to a more mellow yellow-grey that will fit in with the rest of the wall. I gave the workers a cheery wave as I continued on my way, finally passing through Elkstone (and narrowly avoiding two pretty red-legged partridges that were fussing about in the road), down into Cowley, past the Green Dragon pub and back onto the main Cheltenham to Cirencester road near my beloved grain silos (referred to in a previous blog) and down the long hill into Cheltenham.

I just love that drive – there is always something new or interesting to see, whatever the time of year – I even saw a kestrel hovering over the verge at one point. This bird, that used to be such a common sight, has become much less so over the last ten to twenty years, but I fancy that I am seeing more of them again now, so perhaps they are staging a comeback?

Talking of birds of prey, Jeni and I went on an Owl Prowl on Monday evening, with the local wildlife group. We met in a car park on top of the Mendips next to a heavily wooded area and were guided on our Prowl by Chris Sperring MBE, who is an expert on our native hawks and owls. We had hoped to attract the very rare Long-eared Owl which was known to be in the area last year but, sadly there was no sign of them. The pair that were on Mendip last year did not breed so it is possible that one or both of the pair have died. Unfortunately, due to a number of factors, most of our native owls are in serious decline, even the Tawny who has been rock-steady for decades. Chris attributes the decline mainly to lack of food and this is caused by lack of suitable habitat for their chief food – mice and voles. Apparently, we, as a nation, are just too keen to manage and 'tidy' our woodlands and field edges (and our gardens, too) so that there is not enough long, tussocky grass in which the voles and mice can live.

Having failed to attract an answer from a Long-eared Owl, Chris swapped species and tried calling for Tawny Owls. This was more successful, with at least five different birds responding, but all at some distance away. To try and get them to come closer, Chris did an Oscar-winning performance of a dying woodmouse – it took several minutes to 'die', by which time Jeni and I had got the giggles! I'm pretty certain that the owls had sussed out that it was 'that nice Mr Sperring' calling to them and they refused to come any closer, but it was a lovely walk in the dark wood, especially when the cloud cover suddenly disappeared revealing a full moon and a myriad of stars!

As a postscript to that little story – I woke at about 5.30 the other morning to hear our resident Tawny Owl, calling in the trees just outside my house, but at least I now know that it was a male calling and will be able to identify the female if she ever calls back!

The full moon through fir trees on Mendip

Happy (belated) New Year!

Well, here we are into the second month of 2016 and I am only just getting around to writing a blog! The festive season came and went and I had a lovely time with my family, spent at my sister's home in Sheffield. She and her husband love cooking and so we had a lot of gastronomic delights, although I could have done without the horrendous cold that floored me on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day – I haven't had such a humdinger for years! It was unseasonably mild, even in Sheffield, and we managed to get out for a short stroll around the Botanical Gardens, where some plants were already coming into flower, including a ceanothus – a very confused plant, I think. On either side of the entrance gate were two small shrubbery beds with a yellow witchhazel on one side and a red one on the other, both filling the air with their lovely perfume. The Botanical Gardens also boast a series of Victorian glasshouses, like a miniature version of Kew Gardens, and they contained some very interesting plants from around the world.

Between Christmas and the New Year I started a decorating job, at Jeni's place of work (is that classed as nepotism?). They had had the shop next door converted into a new office suite, complete with conference room, photocopier room and a disabled toilet and shower. All of the plasterwork was new and all of the wooden door surrounds and skirting boards, so it has been a long job (and I haven't finished yet!) but it has had the advantage of keeping me warm, dry and, above all, gainfully occupied, during some horribly wet and windy weather! On a couple of drier days I have managed to keep up with my gardening job, but it's no fun weeding in sub-zero temperatures or on heavy clay soil that sticks to my wellies, but it's all grist to the mill.

In an effort to integrate a bit more into village life, I inveigled Jeni into coming with me to the local Burns' Night held in the village hall. It was great fun with the haggis being piped in, in traditional manner, and a wee bit of Rabbie Burns quoted, as well. However, at sometime during the evening, we were persuaded to join the Pylle Pageant in May and have now been cast as a couple of agricultural labourers' wives! The Pageant is to celebrate the coming of the railway to Pylle in 1862 and we have to dress (as far as practicable) in costume of the period that we can either make ourselves or hire. Most of the 'upper classes' will be having proper costume fittings but I think I will be dusting off the old sewing machine and trying to produce a couple of lowly dresses for Jeni and me. It actually sounds as if it will be a fascinating day with displays in the Church and at the Old Rectory, plus my singing group will also be performing.

Part way through January I received an email from my friends and WWOOF hosts down in Cornwall, asking if I could do an unscheduled farm sit to enable them to go to Jo's mother's funeral which would necessitate them being away for a few days. Happy to help out and have a change of scene I duly went down to Launceston on 28^th January. I arrived at lunchtime and then spent the afternoon helping James with the sheep as 'Scanner Man' arrived to see who was expecting what and when. Of the twenty ewes that we selected back at the end of October, nineteen were safely in lamb: most of these are expecting twins with four due to produce singles and two to produce triplets! As I reported, back in November, both the rams used were very keen and covered a lot of the ewes in the first few days and, of course, most of them held to that first service and will be lambing like billy-oh in the first week! Unfortunately, I won't be able to get there until the second week, by which time it will be all over, bar the shouting, and Jo and James will be exhausted! I was very pleased (and relieved) to discover that No 74 is expecting twins, but will definitely have had them by the time I get back in April. While I was standing by the pen, chatting to James and awaiting the arrival of 'Scanner Man', I felt something nuzzling my fingers and looking down was amazed and very touched to find it was No 74, acknowledging my presence in the rather low-key way that she does – it's now nearly four years since my intensive nursing of her, and she still remembers!

The next morning I took James into Launceston to catch a bus to Exeter so that he could catch a train to London and then south to meet up with Jo for the funeral, and I returned to the farm and took up my duties: in the mornings I had to feed the ewes with some pellets – luckily, the amount that they are having at the moment fits into a bucket, which is much easier to dispense from than the sack, and means that I wasn't 'felled' by hungry ewes before I could tip them into the trough. After that I loaded the trailer up with huge armfuls of haylage and drove the quad bike out to feed last year's lambs. It has been so wet that all the fields are at saturation point so that I had to use four-wheel drive to get through the deep mud in the gateway and up the hill to the hay rack. Once they were fed I had the fun job of trying to count them – they are quite nervous so that every time I moved to count a batch on the far side of the hayrack, they would scatter and I would have to start again! When I had established that there really were 51 in the field I headed back to the yard, parked up the quad and trailer and headed off on foot, with the dogs in tow, to check on the rest of the sheep further down the track. The four rams had a hay rack just inside the gate and James had taken down three small bales of hay and put them under a tarpaulin, for me to feed as necessary. Continuing on down the track, we then entered the wood where a side track led down to the small but turbulent stream, which I had to wade across to get to the fields behind the old mill, where the rest of the sheep are overwintering. Again, James had positioned hay by the lower gate, but this time it was a large bale, which I could unpeel and use to top up the hay rack in this field. There were 54 sheep in this group but they were much easier to count as they are all older and have seen it all before, so just carried on eating as I counted. From there it was a long, gradual hill back up to the farm and a welcome cup of coffee.

The weather was not too bad while I was there, despite the weather forecast, but most days were damp and windy and not conducive to remaining outside longer than was strictly necessary, but I did manage to do a bit of work in the vegetable garden, weeding and mulching one of the raised beds and starting on another so, hopefully, when I go back in April I will be able to plant some vegetables.

I would have stayed longer but I had to go to a funeral myself on Thursday 4^th so, with a heavy heart I turned homewards and went to the funeral of Frank, my son's godfather, a farmer and definite 'character'! The church at Backwell, just outside Bristol, was packed with his many friends and family, including his newest great-grandchild and the service was as good as these things can be, with a wonderful tribute read by his son and a touching poem, that I had not heard before, read out by his youngest daughter. It seemed, in some ways, such a short time since he was caught feeding Christening cake to a 9-month old David! I was sad that I hadn't been in touch much in the last few years, but hope to renew my friendship with his widow and grown-up children, in the near future.

Well, tomorrow is Monday and, if I am to keep on doing the occasional travelling to justify the continuation of this blog, I must go and paint doors in the morning!

Nostalgia - it ain't what it used to be!

TC Dixie

I think I have finally reached that age where looking back is almost preferable to looking forward. Perhaps it isn't really an age thing at all, but a feeling of uncertainty about what my future holds and what I am actually 'doing with my life'. I feel busy quite a lot of the time and 'useful', particularly when I am on my travels helping other people on their farms and in their gardens, but I'm not really sure what I am actually doing or who I really am. I keep dipping my toe in different patches of water to see if things fit, for example, as I like cooking, I now bake for the local Country Market and have recently joined a local singing group as, many years ago, I used to enjoy belonging to a Choral Society. But I just feel sometimes that I no longer quite fit in to any niche: I've been a wife, twice; I've been a mother, twice, but the marriages ended and the children don't need my every day input any more and I feel like I'm marking time. So it's been quite interesting to have a bit of a nostalgia-fest recently.

As I wrote, back in October, I attended a School Reunion where, not only did I meet up with 'girls' that I was at school with in my teens, but also some 'boys' that I knew from Junior School. It knocked me off kilter for a day or two afterwards as, having your distant past suddenly colliding with your present is a bit unnerving but, on balance, I would say that it was a very positive experience and put me back in touch with people who had been very important during my formative years.

So it was with a degree of trepidation that I agreed to go with Jeni and Dave to their Dad's college reunion, a couple of weekends ago. Ed attended Twickenham College of Technology where he joined the very vibrant music scene and became part of a jazz band called TC Dixie. In fact, he and I met when, one summer when I was at College and working for the holidays in the Lake District, a large group of ex-Twickenham College students, staff and their families arrived for a week's holiday.

Roll forward a couple of years and we were living in Twickenham and TC Dixie had become semi-professional, with gigs in pubs and clubs around London, at weekends. Sometimes I would tag along and act as unofficial roadie, helping to carry in amps, mics and metres of leads from the back of the car (Ed had an estate car so got to carry a lot of the gear!) You get to see venues before the razzamatazz of the event; stale beer and smoke smells, harsh lighting highlighting the stained table tops and scuffed carpets, the peeling paint and general world-weariness of it all and then – transformation! Low lights, milling people, laughter, chat and above it all the vibrant live music filling the place with magic. There was a core of players in TC Dixie that never changed but often there would be a different person who stayed for a while – they had an actor who used to play the drums and Acker Bilk's former trumpet player was a regular for a long time – his rendition of 'Georgia on my Mind' used to make the back of my neck prickle. When we left Twickenham for the West Country in about 1977 this all came to an end and I hadn't seen anyone from that era much since then.

Roll forward 38 years and you find Jeni and me driving down the A303, up the M3 and into Twickenham where I managed to find the Premier Inn that we'd booked into, without too much difficulty. It shouldn't have been difficult at all as it was located next to our 'local' pub that I perhaps went in half a dozen times when we lived there! It was odd to realise that, although I had lived and worked a stone's throw from here for four or five years, I couldn't remember the area at all! Luckily, Ed and his partner came to pick us up and take us to the venue as it was on the other side of Twickenham and I would never have found my way there. Dave had just arrived from Stevenage when we got there so we all went in together and there they were – the people from my past, older obviously, but still recognisable once the initial strangeness had worn off. The 'gig' kicked off at 2.30 and we were treated to several different performances during the afternoon from the wide-ranging talent that had flourished back in the late Sixties and early Seventies at Twickenham College. Some of those present had gone on to become professional musicians and were still performing today, others had got back together especially for the concert – there was jazz, rock, electric folk and blues and, at the end of the day, TC Dixie, playing their vibrant Dixieland jazz. I tried to take a couple of videos (which my camera subsequently deleted ,unseen) but I was tapping my foot and singing along with a huge grin on my face so they probably would have been useless anyway! In fact, for their entire performance, I was aware that I was grinning from ear to ear, so much so that my jaw muscles ached afterwards! When you think that these guys (apart from the drummer) were well into their sixties, hadn't performed together for decades (apart from these reunions, which only started about four years ago) and hadn't had the opportunity to rehearse beforehand, the sound they made was incredible and uplifting. What a blast!

But nostalgia hadn't finished with me yet. A couple of days ago, one of the people that I met up with again at the School Reunion, posted a very interesting article on Facebook about the various historical spas that had been located in Cheltenham (my home town, for anyone who doesn't know that and, no, before you ask, I did not go to the Ladies' College!). At the end I went to click the 'Like' button but someone else had beaten me to it – a name I hadn't seen for so many years that I did a double-take. Could it be? It wasn't a particularly unusual name, but it seemed like too much of a coincidence, so I clicked onto his Facebook page and, looking at his photo, I realised that it was definitely him! My biggest childhood buddy, from Junior School.

I'm afraid I shall have to explain a bit about my early life so that you can fully understand why this seemed to be such a momentous occurrence. From the time I was born until I was 6, I lived with my family on one side of Cheltenham and attended the local school. When I was nearly 7, we moved to a larger house to accommodate our growing family (my brother had just been born), but this house was on the other side of Cheltenham. Mum and Dad didn't want to move us from our school as we were doing so well, so we continued to attend. However, this meant that we were separated from most of our friends but, surprisingly, there was a small enclave of other pupils living quite close to us in our new home, who also 'commuted' to school – Nigel being one of them. As being at a different school more or less ostracised us from the local youngsters, we tended to hang around in a group together, and spent hours playing in the old derelict house and grounds across the road from our house, climbing trees, making bows and arrows, that sort of thing, and Nigel, being my age and in my class at school, was my special mate. Once we went our separate ways – he to the Boys' Grammar School and me to the Girls', we seemed to lose contact almost overnight. Why does that happen? When I look back, I lost touch with virtually all of my Junior School friends at the same time, even those who went on to the same school as me(although the policy then was to split up friendship groups and put them in different classes – how cruel was that?).

On a whim, I sent Nigel a 'friend request', failing to fully identify myself and the next day was just about to send a message to explain, when he granted my request – he'd managed to work out who I was, despite the name change. For an hour or so yesterday afternoon, we messaged each other back and forth, exchanging memories mainly but with the firm intention of meeting up in the New Year as he only lives at Taunton with his wife of 41 years (it was their anniversary yesterday) and I think some of his five children live nearby, too! Again, for the whole of the time that we 'chatted' I wore a stupid grin on my face, which continued for most of the day.

I'm sure that most of you are now shaking your heads in dismay that I seem to be a lot happier wallowing about in my past than I am living in my present, and I must admit, that it bothers me too, but I'm hoping that somehow it will help me in the long run to remember who I used to be, so that I can work out who I am now. Well, that's enough of the deep thinking for now – the next blog will probably be after the festive season is over so I shall take this opportunity to wish my loyal reader(s) a very happy time over the coming few weeks and I'll be back (hopefully on top form) in 2016!

Tupping Time!

Late afternoon sunlight on oak trees

On October 26^th I packed up the car and headed off down the A37 and onto the A303 towards Exeter and then on into Cornwall to Launceston. I started off in bright sunshine with high cloud making it a little hazy but, by the time I got to Honiton the grey clouds had gained the day and I had to swap my sunglasses for my ordinary driving glasses. It started to rain a little just past Exeter but, as I rounded the bulking shoulder of Dartmoor, the skies cleared again and I was back into sunshine. It wasn't to last, however, and by the time I got to Launceston the rain looked as if it was set in for the day.

I had gone back to help at East Penrest because it was tupping time – the time of year when the rams are put in with the ewes. If you put the rams in on November 5^th, your first lambs should be due on April 1^st. Of course, ewes' gestation periods vary, just like humans, but it is a useful rule of thumb. At this time of year, James gathers all the ewes into a pen and inspects them visually to make his first selection. He then marks the ewes that are not in good enough condition and turns them back out into the field, leaving behind a reduced number from which to choose.

When I arrived, our first job was to take a closer look at these ewes and make a decision about the ones that would ultimately go to the ram. This year, for various reasons, James only wanted to put 20 ewes in lamb, so the selection process was quite involved. He had made a note of all the ear tag numbers and then noted what they had produced last spring, whether they were good mothers, whether they came from a particularly good blood line, etc. Having done this we then stood back and looked to see what caught our eye; we were looking for good height and a long length body, plus all of the previous criteria. It took us most of the morning to choose our 'dream team' of about thirty ewes, and these we then ran into the barn for the next stage of the process.

Once penned in the barn, each ewe was inspected individually by putting her into the turnover crate. (I know that I have explained what this is before but it does no harm to explain again!) The ewe walks into the crate and the gate is closed behind her; shaped metal poles on a frame are then clamped around her to hold her firmly behind her front legs, around her belly and in front of her back legs, and this frame, by means of springs and counterweights lifts her off her feet and turns her upside down. Once in this position, most sheep will then lie still particularly, as James discovered, if you pillow their heads on a bag stuffed with something soft (in this case, baler twine!). When they were restrained in this way, James was able to carry out the final examinations to check the condition of their teeth and their udders. Sheep gain adult incisor teeth, two at a time, from about one year old and you will hear farmers refer to sheep as being 'two tooth' (1-2 years old), 'four tooth'(2-3 years old, 'six tooth'(3-4 years old) or 'full-mouthed' i.e. 8 teeth (4+ years). After the age of four, the teeth gradually fall out and the sheep is described as 'broken-mouthed' and, at this point it can become difficult for sheep to bite off short grass efficiently and they may lose condition – hence the check at tupping time, because you want the ewes to be in the best condition possible for carrying and raising healthy lambs. Udders are checked to make sure that there are no suspicious lumps that may indicate that the ewe has had mastitis and may therefore only have one (or in some cases, neither) teat working. Finally, we gave them a pedicure, trimming back the overgrown horn with shears, to minimise the risk of lameness during their pregnancy. After all this rigorous checking, we finally had our twenty ewes (Number 74 passed with flying colours!).

The next day, using the sheep shears, James dagged the twenty ewes. Dagging is removing the long and dirty wool from an area around the tail and down the back of the back legs, and is useful for two reasons: one is hygiene, when the ram is mating with the ewe and at lambing time, so that infections are minimised, and the other is that long wool around the udder can sometimes confuse a newborn lamb and it finds difficulty in locating the teat.

It was then time to decide which ewe was going to which ram as James was using two this year – Henry, who has been used for the past couple of years and Ian, who was the previous stock ram and has to be used this year because some of Henry's daughters are now old enough to breed. Once the decision was made the ewes were colour-coded – an orange spot on the neck for Ian's gang and a purple spot for Henry's harem. After the equivalent of a sheep trip to the doctor and then the beauty parlour, we turned the twenty ewes out into a fresh field.

Needle-felted No 74!

Jo and James usually try to go away for a few days when I am staying with them and this gives me a welcome boost to my income, as well as allowing them to visit their families in Portsmouth and Kent. This time, they were also going to have a short holiday, so I was left in charge for nearly two weeks. They left on Friday 30^th October, and those of you who have read this far, and paid attention, will realise that that is quite a few days before 5^th November when, traditionally, the rams are put in with the ewes! Not only that but, because there wasn't a lot of grass in the second field, the two lots of ewes were still together in one field.

Knowing that Jess, the sheepdog, won't work for me, I had to devise a cunning plan to capture the ewes and split them into their two groups. When we had put the twenty in the field, we also took out some sheep hurdles and a hay rack, made a pen by the gate into the second field, left the pen open, and placed the hay rack inside so that the sheep would get used to coming into the pen to have hay. Two days before I intended to split the group, I took a few sheep feed pellets out with me, when I checked them and re-filled the hayrack, and put these in the trough at the base of the rack. The second day I did the same so that the ewes were then all quite keen to come to the hayrack at the same time. On the third day, I took out an even bigger bucket of feed and, while they were all jostling for position and fighting over the pellets, I carefully and quietly pulled the hurdles round and joined them together. I now had twenty sheep in a large pen with a hayrack in the middle. In order to split them up I needed to divide the pen in two and also get the hayrack out of the way so, hurdle by hurdle, I had to remove about four or five hurdles from the outer ring, without leaving a gap for the sheep to escape through and also, bypass the hayrack so that it was outside the finished pens. This could have been the trickiest part of the manoeuvre because, if they had got away at that stage, I would never have caught them with the same trick again! (Who says sheep are stupid?) Once both pens were complete it was just a case of manhandling all ten with orange spots into one pen leaving all the purple spots in the other, and then opening the gate into the new field to let them through. Phase one of Operation Tup-in had been successfully completed!

Needle-felted rabbit

For Phase 2 I had to have some assistance. Luckily, a local beef farmer, who also does traditional building work, had been working on the farmhouse roof and had agreed to come on the Friday morning to drive the tractor and help with the rams. To make the rams easier to capture, James has been feeding them a few sheep pellets in a trough in an open pen for some time, so that when I went out at 7.30am it was relatively easy to pen them up and then push out the two boys that I didn't want. Once Nick arrived at 8.00am we just had to load the rams into the transport box on the back of the tractor, put on the two ram harnesses, that hold the coloured crayons for marking the mated ewes, and drive them out to the fields, making sure that the correct ram went in with the correct ewes. Phase 2 was complete! By the next day there were several yellow bottoms in both fields, so lambing should commence on about April 2^nd or 3^rd and, if they all hold to the first service, will be over approximately one week later!!

Jess & Pickle

Apart from this major bit of excitement, my days normally consisted of feeding the chickens and cats, counting all of the sheep and making sure they were OK in the morning and then later on, checking the ewes and lambs again and feeding the dogs, cats and chickens and putting the chickens to bed. A lot of the time the weather was not good so I spent quite a bit of the day indoors doing knitting or needle-felting to pass the time. There was one day when, after I'd done the morning checks, I was already so wet that I decided to stay outdoors and clear debris from the trackside stream as the hedges had just been flailed and there were leaves, sticks and small branches clogging it up. Jess and Pickle, the two dogs, had great fun 'helping' me and at one time, all three of us were paddling about in the stream. It was only when I stopped to go in for lunch that I realised how wet I was! Luckily, my waterproofs are pretty good and the Aga was alight, so it didn't take long to dry out and get warm again.

The Bonfire Party at the church

I had two bonfire experiences while I was there – the first one was my own that I lit on Hallowe'en, when the weather had been dry for a couple of days, there was no wind, and the stars were shining brightly in a clear night sky. It was beautiful and spiritually uplifting and I didn't mind that I was the only one there enjoying it. The second one was the local bonfire and fireworks display on November 5^th on ground adjacent to the church in Lezant. I made an apple and cinnamon tray bake as my contribution to the festivities and there were also other cakes, hot dogs and tea and coffee on offer. It had rained heavily and been very blustery all day but at about 3.30 the wind dropped, the rain stopped and by 5.00pm it was almost perfect weather for a bonfire party. For such a small community, the firework display was really impressive and the bonfire burned well, despite its previous soakings.

Jo and James also organised for me to go to a concert in the church – a Night at the Musicals – which was great fun and covered musical theatre from Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado right through to Les Miserables. I'd been to a concert there five years ago and this was the same husband and wife team, plus another soprano and a pianist. The man, particularly, had a gorgeous voice and normally sings opera but his rendition of 'Summertime' from Porgy and Bess sent shivers up my spine – beautiful. I went with a lady called Sue, who I've met several times before and, when I said that I didn't know the story of Les Miserables, she kindly looked out her DVD for me to watch. I'd forgotten, temporarily, that the elephant in the grounds of the house where I'd worked back in June, was one of two from the film set of Les Miserables, so I got quite a surprise to suddenly see it on the television!

My other social outing, whilst I was there, was a visit to the local WI, again with Sue. I realised that I have attended three of their meetings this year and they are thinking of making me an honorary member!

Jo and James eventually came back and I was relieved to hand back responsibility for all of the animals and resume my normal WWOOFing persona. Another WWOOFer, from Canada, joined me for my last two days there and we spent the time picking apples in the orchard ahead of Storm Barney, and processing them for the freezer. Many of the apples had already been sent off to be made into apple juice, but there were still many more on the trees and lying in the grass. As I passed by the orchard every day, on my way to check the animals, I realised what an important part of the local bird population's diet they formed – I heard and saw flocks of starlings, several jays and what I think were mistle thrushes as well as many blackbirds. The windfalls should keep them going for quite a bit of the winter, I should think.

I'm now home again and trying to adjust to a different rhythm to my days - if it ever stops raining I must go and check my vegetable bed, complete the soft fruit bed and say 'Hello' to my chickens.

Reflections in the pond