milkweed & teasel

Le Post Prime

2012-01-13T10:14:00.000-08:00

Amelia and Laura - the fabulous women behind Harvest Kitchen Sisters blog - included me as part of their Guest Blogger Series. Can I suggest you check them out, their interesting guest bloggers, and of course you can read a bonus post from me about my year spent in France. As you can imagine, it wasn't exactly a tour de force.

Bugs, Bellies, and Bags

2012-01-11T06:47:00.000-08:00

We've been feeding the freezer over the holiday season. There are only 3 more weeks left to harvest pheasant and partridge, and this winter has been so mild that even the January birds are in good condition, still with a yellow layer of fat to buffer them from a cold snap.

The warm weather hasn't been a blessing all around. The dogs were hit hard with a stomach bug, possibly from bacteria in muddy puddles or cow pats (both are dog delicacies). A harsh winter would normally keep the bacteria in check. The illness only lasts 24 hours per dog, but as one recovered another came down with it. I think it's passed through, so I guess I can rub off the red crosses from above their kennel doors.

I've had bacteria on the brain - figuratively speaking - after a chat with Peggy, who teaches me butchery. Her pigs had a porcine version of IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) and we talked about treating them to restore their gut balance, rather than bombing them with antibiotics. After all, the pigs were healthy otherwise, and drugs are expensive and not without side-effects. It gave me an idea for treating Matilda.

Poor Matilda.

Our orphan lamb, who has survived just about everything in her short life, was not thriving. Most noticeably, she had the 'pot belly' common to bottle-raised lambs. But her belly was bigger than most, and tight as a drum.

Compare and contrast: that's Matilda in the foreground (obviously)

As she's been weaned for awhile, bloat was unlikely. I took her to the vets to talk about an experimental treatment: get her guts moving again, then add a pro-biotic to help re-balance the flora. I went away with metaclopramide injections to kick-start her gut motility, plus a B-vitamin injection (necessary vitamins which won't have been synthesised without a good, working rumen), and followed it with a week's worth of Pro-Rumen, good bacteria in powdered form that I added to water and got her to drink from a syringe.

(FYI - Pro-Rumen is both sticky and smelly. If you get it on your iPod touch screen, it actually coats it enough to stop it responding.)

The treatment is working well, so I related the boring technical details above, in case anyone else can benefit from our experiment. Her belly size has decreased and she's much livelier now. But the thanks has to go to Peggy and her pig expertise for the initial idea.

A commercial shepherd would probably question my approach in treating individual lambs. It's not always cost-efficient and it does effect our profitability. But, I have a deep-seated reason for wanting to save them all, which I'm going to whisper to you now (don't tell anyone..): When Mike and I got caught in the gas explosion, I was wearing a 100% wool sweater. Wool (or more correctly the lanolin) is naturally flame-retardant and protected my whole torso from being badly burned. I sort of feel I owe one to the sheep. In fact, there is a line across the middle of my right hand where the extra-long sleeve stopped, and a v-shape of scarring at my throat, an outline of the sweater's edge, marking how much worse it could have been.

Anyway, sheep traumas over for now, it was back to wild foods for the freezer. Mike, Underkeeper Pete and I have been walking the margins of the estate, to harvest some of the outliers - those birds that never go over the gun line. They find a quiet copse like this one and try to sit out the shooting season -

Mike and Underkeeper Pete survey the landscape

The birds in there are more clever than we thought. We walked through the whole copse and fired at least a box of cartridges. Neither Mike nor I seemed to be able to bring down a single bird. If it wasn't for Spud, our irrepressible Flat-coat, catching a hen pheasant herself, we would have gone home empty-handed. Underkeeper Pete shot one, and his terrier-mix Wigeon caught the other.

Spud, Wigeon, and their bag

So that's Dogs 2 - Keepers 1, then.

We had better luck on the duck ponds later that evening. Pete bagged a mallard and I had this little hen teal -

I shot it, but I would never have found it without Spud. She winded it almost immediately in the thick grass, nowhere near where I thought it had fallen. That's one more for the dogs then.

Mike prefers fishing to shooting and left us for another pond - the trout pond. A local landowner keeps a pond stocked with trout and kindly issued Mike an open invitation to fish. Mike caught a brown trout and a rainbow trout -

The rainbow was stuffed with eggs -

Our flock made short work of that unexpected bounty -

Mike and I even managed a day off to go fishing together. We drove to a fishing lake a few hours away and fly-fished for trout, undeterred by the gale force winds blowing our lines in every direction except towards the fish. Mike lost one, and caught one - both rainbows. Water Bailiff Stu (who happens to be Underkeeper Pete's brother) helps Mike net the trout-

I've started to keep account of how much food we're catching or producing ourselves, inspired by Tamar at 'Starving Off the Land' charting her own year in calories. I'll keep a running list of ours in the sidebar of the blog, for all to see. If our shooting doesn't improve, it could be a short list and a hungry winter. Perhaps some kind soul will send us a care package - I'm partial to Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, but we're set for trout, thanks.

The 'Post' Post

2011-12-23T03:28:00.000-08:00

Disparate worlds collide in my mailbox.

I say 'mailbox' (or post box as it's called in England) but it's really just a recycled metal bread bin sat outside our back door. (Its replacement - the bin without the rust holes - is full of bread flour in my kitchen.) The bin is big enough to hold lots of post and keep it dry, useful in an unpredictably wet climate. The postman drops everything in the old bread bin, except when Dakota is laid in the back porch with the door open blocking his path. Then he knows my sitting room window is usually open, and he puts it through the window, straight onto my my kitchen table conveniently located beneath.

Post box with hungry chickens

Kind of twee, isn't it? Often the post is too. There are letters from seed merchants bragging about great new developments in crops for pheasants, crops with names like 'Hold-em' and 'Easy Keep'. There are invites to clay pigeon competitions for charity, and small packages of vaccine and ear tags from the vets. All in a day's post for the country-dwelling small farmer.

That's why I look forward to my weekly delivery of The New Yorker. It looks mis-placed and aloof, sitting on top of Mike's subscription to Modern Gamekeeping (an oxymoron). What is that kind of magazine doing in the bread bin post box of a non-New Yorker? Mike calls the magazine my "secret shame" and no visitor to our house has ever leafed through it out of interest. The Shooting Times is well-thumbed by our guests though.

This week's New Yorker came with our local fox hunting supporters' club magazine. We're not technically supporters, but when we bought Teasel Farm it came with a legal stipulation that the local hunt be allowed to ride across the land during the hunt season. I think we got off lightly; friends of mine bought a house that came with an historic right allowing anyone in the village to pick asparagus from their garden, if they chose to grow it. By law. Again, kind of twee, in an inconvenient sort of way for the homeowners.

So, because we ~~legally~~ graciously host some of a day's fox hunting, we get the magazine. It's not a magazine like the New Yorker is a magazine. There's no on-line version. It's not available to download on your iPad. There are no staff writers, only local farmers and fox hunters who probably got tipsy at the local pub and when their defenses were down foolishly agreed to write a small piece. That's how most things get negotiated around here, at the pub after a few pints. The trick is picking your moment: drunk enough to be amenable, not so drunk they forget what they've agreed to. It's a fine line.

I read both magazines back to back. Now I'm up to date with what's on at Tanglewood and the dates of the next horse trials. I know what to have if I ever find myself at The Dutch restaurant in SoHo (order the smoked chicken, skip the eggplant dip) and how to make fruitcake that will stand up to the rigours of being in your pocket and bounced about by a horse all day. (It involves boiling dried fruit and spices with sugar, and binding the gruesome-sounding result with 5 eggs.) Even the "mayo-heavy" eggplant dip at the Dutch sounded pretty good in comparison.

There was an excellent article in The New Yorker by Adam Gopnik, whose reputation I know well, contrasted with an equally excellent article in the hunt magazine by Dan, who used to be my next door neighbour. I know Dan and his lovely family well, though not as well as I know their old pony Gem. Gem was getting a bit strong and mischievous for their young daughter, and I offered my help. Not because I am a gifted rider, but in the hopes that my 140lbs would slow down his smallish 12hh frame, or at least tire him out. It worked for the most part, that exception being the time he bucked me off, face first, into a pile of logs. I only have to look at the prominent red scar on the left side of my face where he broke my cheekbone to remember that pony. I rode him anyway, even with blood trickling down onto my jodhpurs.

So far Adam Gopnik hasn't contacted me about re-training any of his animals.

As opposite as the world of a major metropolitan city seems from that of a local rural county, I'm surprised at the occasional crossover that happens between the two. A local filmmaker had her short film shown at the Tribeca Film Festival. A couple months ago I read a story on the 'Talk of the Town' section of the New Yorker about the opening of a sandwich shop, and the discussion was between Lord S - our boss - and his youngest son.

I don't know ~~much~~ anything about jazz music, but I have been to some performances. Most of it sounded discordant, arrhythmic. At first. After getting accustomed to the music, a song or three into the show I could hear the harmony, or at least discern patterns. It wasn't as random as it initially sounded. There are the odd joins, the connections between notes.

I often suffer from 'A Foot In Each Camp' syndrome. I'm not English, though I've lived here 16 years. I'm American, though I've missed out on our shared culture for the past decade-and-a-half. (This was very evident to me with the recent 9/11 anniversary. I was living in France at the time of the attack and my connection to the attack was filtered through the French media, and week-old papers from the UK. I never shared the visceral experience of being terrorised.)

I suffer from the syndrome on those days when I can't hear the harmony, or ally things that seem so opposite. When I can't have a conversation with someone about Simon Johnson's proposal to regulate banks, or the new David Sedaris book, or make joking references to well-known SNL skits because it's not part of the cultural dialogue in my neighbourhood.

Other days I can find the connection and recognise a pattern, almost always through humour. Contradictory moments and activities put in relationship to each other make me smile: sitting on the tailgate of the truck reading a book on my Kindle while swatting away a chicken which keeps trying to drink the tea out of my cup. Turning up to our favourite French restaurant in a fancy frock and a filthy Land Rover. Writing this blog post while keeping one eye out the window at the pheasants stealing wheat from our chicken feeders.

I either embrace the contradictions and find the common thread that weaves it all together, or I struggle with internal contradictions and fight the differences, and hear only dissonance.

Or maybe I just need to stop over-thinking it all and let Mike get the mail from now on.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

2011-12-08T08:42:00.000-08:00

Pheasant shooting continues apace. Our regular schedule is Friday - Saturday - Monday, with the odd Tuesday thrown in to keep us off the streets. With Christmas approaching like an oncoming train, I could use some time on the streets to do a bit of shopping. Instead, I headed into the woods to collect greenery for decorating. I hoped that arranging a few swags and putting up a tree would inspire me, girding my loins with holiday spirit enough to brave the shops.

Quincy accompanied me to collect ivy and holly with bright red berries, and pine cones which she indeed helped to collect, retrieving a few to add to the bucket.

The long vines of ivy leaves now adorn the banister and the deer antlers in our hall.

I had lots of ivy leftover, so I took it to the sheep this morning as a treat. I also wanted to show them the hat I'd finished knitting for myself, from their own wool, with my own hands. Sheep don't show the requisite amount of enthusiasm for my skills, but they appreciated the ivy breakfast.

I stopped at the chiller on my way from the sheep field. The game dealer hasn't been yet and there were lots of pheasants with long tail feathers.

I plucked a few handfuls and used them to decorate a wreath, and in a display over the wood stove.

The pheasant haul is a result of two big days' shooting this past weekend. On the Friday shoot, I got to meet the singer Bryan Ferry. I happened to be stood in a river when Mike introduced us. Mike said I blushed like a school girl. On Saturday, I got a burly kiss from the Crown Prince of Somewhereorother for finding his favourite alpine hat which he'd left behind on a log.

I cut our Christmas tree yesterday, from the plantation of trees Mike uses as pheasant cover. Pip came along for the ride. She's recovering from Tuesday's shoot day where she worked hard in the beating line, finding pheasants and shooing them over the waiting gun line. Pip filled in for Spud, who is out of action for another ten days after tearing open her chest on barbed wire. Spud has a three inch line of Frankenstein-like stitches to show off to her mates.

I've got the tree up and decorated -

Tree cutting and trimming is less festive when you fit it in between trips to the abattoir to collect cow stomachs. The dogs don't care about the tree but they're Joy to the World about tripe for dinner -

That's me, modelling my new hat while cutting up tripe. I'm wearing long animal examination gloves, to keep the smell off my hands and sleeves. Folks, I don't think it gets any more festive than this.

So I foraged, and decorated, and finished knitting my hat, and dyed the hat I knit for Mike's present, and cut up tripe, and fed our neighbour's chickens, and treated some of our own chickens for scaly leg, and got fires lit in both wood stoves. Our own dinner of lamb stew is simmering in a crock pot, and later I'll make a venison stew for tomorrow's shoot day lunch. Seems I haven't found time to get to the shops after all.

Zen and the Art of Park Deer

2011-11-28T10:58:00.000-08:00

Ian, our work experience lad, has been practicing the art of gralloching deer as part of his college course, just down the road from us at a large deer park. I need practice too so, being a pushy foreigner, I called the deer manager and asked if I could come along with the college course for a day. He said show up and ask the tutor. So this morning I was stood in the yard of the deer park at 8 a.m. in my rubber overalls, waiting to beg the tutor to let me stay and learn. He kindly agreed.

This deer park has herds of fallow, sika, and red deer, and a few rare Père David's deer, so I got the opportunity to handle different animals, a change from my regular (smaller) roe deer. Park deer are akin to livestock: well-fed and well-managed to create big animals. Compared to the wild deer I've shot, the deer that rely on foraging and fighting to survive, there was monstrous amount of subcutaneous fat and cavity fat on the park deer. And some impressive antlers.

Deer in parks are treated as a walking larder, and appropriate animals are culled to order. Today Richard the deer manager shot twenty deer in total for us to prepare. Richard shot them in groups of up to seven animals, and we took it in turns to pick them up from where they fell. Working in pairs, we wrestled them into a box on the back of a tractor and the driver took us all back to the larder.

Once at the larder, we unloaded each deer and took the legs off below the knees, then cut a slit in the back legs to fit a gambrel - a metal rod that spreads the legs and creates a central point for hanging the deer so its head is pointing downwards. The deer has to have its innards removed quickly, within about half an hour, or the gas build-up in the stomach starts to expand and would eventually rupture, contaminating the carcase and rendering it inedible. Compare the deer in the foreground to the two behind -

Serious trapped wind.

I gralloched a fallow (above), a sika, and a large red - all females - over the course of the morning, alongside other students and their deer. It was a grisly, greasy mess, and I had to breathe through my mouth to stomach so many gut smells in a confined room -

In the field when you shoot a single animal, there's a puddle of congealed blood and a small package of guts, and lots of fresh air. When finished, you clean your hands and knife on wet grass. This was a venison abattoir, with antiseptic wash and separate buckets for kidneys and hearts. The deer carcases kept coming in from the field, and were lining up on the rail as fast as we could attend to them.

The worst part was cleaning the tripe - the deer stomach. Richard feeds them to his dogs. Once removed from the deer we had to cut the stomachs open and empty out their partially digested, grassy contents. The smell was unholy, like bad compost and bile. I turned them inside out, and pressure-washed them off. I did quite a few for the students who couldn't, well, stomach the job.

I also took my turn emptying the 'gralloch' (it's both a verb and a noun - the process of removing the guts, and the guts proper) into the dead pit on the far edge of the estate. It gave me a chance to tour the deer park from the back of the tractor, and take a few photos of the deer that escaped the cull -

That's a small herd of sika deer. I'm afraid that's the best picture I could manage while hanging on in a box on the back of a tractor bouncing over fields, trying not to fall out backwards, or worse - fall forwards into 90 gallons of deer guts.

We finished all the deer by 1pm and, after pressure-washing myself, I stopped for a cup of thermos coffee and a peanut butter sandwich. Masticating always makes me thoughtful (maybe cows are philosophers too?) and I remembered a passage in Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about analysis being like a knife that cuts all experience, and kills in the process. Once something is known, he says, its value as art or its beauty is diminished.

But Pirsig claims that something new, with potential to be art, is created in the process. Gralloching the deer, my knife was both literal and metaphorical, dissecting a natural, beautiful creature that I saw from the back of that tractor into its no-longer-functioning organs and muscles. I didn't feel like I'd created anything beautiful out of the gore and death until I looked in the chiller and saw the potential -

And then the art -

This rebirth took the form of dry cured bacon, parma hams, and salamis. Believe me it is an artform, not wrought only by a skilled butcher but by the helpful bacterias and environmental conditions that have to be in harmony to create the charcuterie.

I left feeling more peaceful about what I'd unmade - then helped to make - today.

I came home to a hot meal, which thankfully didn't include venison or innards of any kind, and Mike offered to help me with the final post-deer gralloching job: checking me over for ticks. We get Lyme's Disease in England too.

The romance of being married to a gamekeeper never stops.

Tomorrow it's back to the pheasants - we're aiming (no pun intended) to shoot 125 birds with our guests. The working dogs will get a special breakfast, what I earned today: a tripe and a kidney each. They love it, but I'll stick to the salami, thanks all the same.

Easy Sunday Morning

2011-11-20T05:16:00.000-08:00

It's perfect Sunday morning weather: grey, foggy, a bit of drizzle on the windows. I don't need much of an excuse to drink a pot of coffee and read. The weather is a sign.

Still, livestock has no respect for my lazy tendencies. Eudora is limping so after coffee and a few chapters, I checked the sheep and caught her up to trim her feet and jab her with an anti-inflammatory. I'm not sure what god has against sheep, but he's cursed them with every disease going, and the propensity for having only three working limbs at one time. The lambs have stopped dying - for now - though Matilda had a bad case of bloat that kept me up one night on lamb watch. She pulled though but I weaned her the next day. She's got to make her own way in the field now, with an evening meal of lamb nuts and barley of course.

The weather hasn't turned cold yet; in fact it's been so mild that I'm still finding ticks on the dogs, a week before Thanksgiving. Most of the dogs were still in their beds this morning, with their noses poked up their bottoms, when I brought them breakfast. We've been shooting most days, though it's illegal to shoot on a Sunday so all are guaranteed a day of rest. On the last drive yesterday, I watched Spud excavate a little sleeping nest for herself and lay down to nap, while waiting for the action to start. She's getting experienced enough to know to take a rest when she can get it.

I'm also learning to maximise my time. On shoot days, there's a lot of time stood waiting for guns to get ready and birds to move, so I now keep a small knitting project in my coat pocket. I'm knitting Mike's Christmas present: a hat knit from our own sheeps' wool -

Still life with 3/4ths of a hat and footrot spray

Living in my coat pocket means there are a few feathers that have accidentally been knitted in with the wool, but I can extract those later, or leave them in and tell him they're part of the design. Poultry chic. I'm working on a pair of socks too, but those are my evening project, as they take more concentration than a knit 2, purl 2 hat.

Shooting season means means a glut of meat. The dogs are eating so much now to hold their weight that I ran out of dog food. So did underkeeper Pete. I'll breast off a load of pheasants from yesterday and cook them up with rice and oil - that can double as our dinner, as well as the dogs'. I know it's shooting season when I open up the fridge and find pairs of legs poking out between the butter and the bacon -

Giving Quincy her breakfast this morning, I noticed spots of blood in her bed. Quincy is having her first season, which means she's no longer a puppy. It also means all the loose, male dogs in the neighborhood will be pining outside our kennels for the next fortnight. I'll have to protect her maidenhood during our training sessions in the field. Quincy is doing so well. She's passed her Gun dog Puppy certificate and is moving up a grade.

Quincy and her partridge dummy

She's just shy of a year old now, born Christmas week 2010. She is going to be a happy, talented little worker. She'll take Pip's place next year. Pip was always going to have an early retirement with her dodgy hips. I'll take Pip and Quincy out together, so Quincy can gain a bit of confidence following a more experienced dog. So far, all Pip has taught Quincy is how to make a dent in the couch.

Speaking of making a dent in the couch, Christmas movies have started on TV and I have a crop of dried beans to shell for next year's spring planting. I don't feel guilty watching TV if my hands are busy shelling beans or knitting. I love schmaltzy Christmas films because of the themes of hope and redemption. It's the same thing I feel when I think about the vegetable garden. I can visualise a whole crop in a tiny seed. I plant all my hopes that a successful harvest will come to fruition, even though I know there are bound to be some failures.

I hope your Sunday is equally as restful - accompanied by the sound of snoring dogs, and next year's seeds.

6pm last night, two tired workers.

A bird in the hand

2011-11-08T08:02:00.000-08:00

November is a prime sport shooting month. We're shooting pheasant and partridge three times a week on the estate. I work three dogs per day, in rotation, so each one gets enough exercise balanced out with enough down-time to recoup physically and mentally. On non-shooting days, the dogs nap in their kennels or enjoy a knuckle bone each from the butcher's.

I'm equal parts proud and amazed at the stamina and drive of working dogs, most of which is bred into them. Training simply directs their natural instinct towards something that, hopefully, benefits both dog and handler. I thought a short video might show this better than a wordy description from me.

Here, Spud, Dulcie, and Pip are searching for a wounded partridge. I know it came down in these woods, but I can't see where. However, their noses are perfect for finding lost birds in thick cover. The 'Get On' command means go forward. The 'Get in!' command means hit the cover and have a look - something none of these dogs need much encouragement to do. Spaniels especially are happiest rootling around in the bushes.

Spud's delivery isn't perfect but she makes up for it with her work ethic. She never leaves anything un-picked and always returns to me with every treasure. And that's a red-legged partridge for the bag.

Lest you think we're into shooting and completely over the sheep dramas - how does a maggot-infested scrotum sound? The lamb didn't like it much either. The foster ram was laying down too often and starting to walk with a stiff-legged gait. I caught him up and when I turned him over, saw that the castration ring wasn't doing its job properly, and there was a hole in his groin teeming with maggots and infection.

As an aside, I think it goes without saying that you should never read this blog when you are eating.

My recent ~~failures~~ experiences in lambing left me well-prepared. I removed the maggots one at a time with a pair of pliers, worked surgical scrub into the wound, and gave a heavy dose of strep antibiotic injected into the lamb's breast muscle (IM works faster than under the skin). I phoned our friend Terry the vet who happened to be on call that night. I drove the lamb to his house and, while I held the lamb on the workbench in his shed, he surgically severed the spermatic cords to finish the job, gave lamb a shot of painkiller, and praised my administered dose and method of antibiotics. A small but much-needed salve to my ego.

Two days on and foster lamb looks great. He's getting more nimble and therefore harder for me to catch him to finish his course of injections. That's where I'm headed now, right after I put our partridges in the oven for dinner.

From baaaad to worse

2011-11-03T01:27:00.000-07:00

There's a chalkboard in my kitchen where I make notes to remind myself of things that I tell myself I will remember, but never do. Which is everything. I limit this board to notes about the farm: outputs like eggs sold per month, and bales of hay used, and also inputs such as medications given. One look at the board reveals the state of things. A full board is a bad sign -

Less Blackberry, More blackboard-y

Another wave of disease has ripped through this year's crop of lambs: coccidiosis. It's a parasite that attacks the intestinal tract. The first you know about it is a weak animal usually with diarrhea. Megalamb was the first lamb to show symptoms and the only one to succumb to its effects. Because I have a great vet, and I happened to recognise the distinct smell associated with coccidiosis from dealing with infected pheasants, we identified the wretched single-celled culprits immediately (he used a microscope - more scientific than my sense of smell). We treated all the lambs and 72 hours later, they're still alive. Except Megalamb, who is now Megadeath.

Now we are seven. That's a lambing percentage about 85%. This is an appalling result. Last year was a 200%. (True, there were only two ewes lambing then.)

With lambs, our total flock numbers 19. I moved mothers and lambs from the maternity paddock to fresh grazing. The ewes walked quietly into their trailer. The lambs had to travel separately from ewes, in the back of the Land Rover, to prevent being inadvertently squashed in transit. The lambs are now fast-moving and very wriggly, and I had to catch and load them one at a time. I have no photos of the process because I had no help, either to take pictures or manhandle sheep. Shoot season is in full swing so Mike, who I usually press-gang into helping, has problems of his own to manage. I fear lambing will be a tiring, lonely time of year.

I made a little video yesterday when I did my morning check and feed of the sheep, so you can see how the flock is getting on. I have a few more ear tags to put in, and the lambs need a course of vaccine soon, but now my focus must shift to game: pheasant and partridge shoots on the estate, and culling deer. There is staff to feed, and dogs to work, and deer to put in the larder (or money in the bank). The blog topics will shift accordingly, and I promise to update more regularly, with photos.

Very 'Silence of the Lambs' indeed

2011-10-15T07:37:00.000-07:00

Lambing season finished, not with a bang but with a whimper. Between last night's checks, L845 gave birth but struggled with her single large ram lamb. When we found them, the lamb had died and the poor ewe was spent. She couldn't stand, though she was trying desperately with her remaining energy to reach the lamb to clean it. It was heart-breaking.

We left her with her dead lamb in the paddock overnight. It sounds macabre but we were hoping to find a orphan this morning for her to foster, and we needed to keep up the maternal bond. The closest spare day-old lamb was in the next county, about half an hour away. It was a small triplet ram, which would do better if it didn't have two siblings to compete with. Perfect.

By the time I got back with the foster lamb, Mike and our local shepherd had carried out the grizzly task of removing the dead lamb's hide, and we fit it over the foster lamb. The extra layer is making the lamb walk stiff-legged and I expect it's heavy on its tiny body. L845 accepted it with very little encouragement on our part. In fact she looked relieved. The foster lamb suckled right away, no questions asked. They're penned together and it's going as well as we could have hoped, for now anyway.

Foster lamb in its 'cloaking device'

As the foster lamb is accepted, I can cut away part of its extra coat every day, starting with the tail end, then the flanks, and finally the rest can go. Then I need to worry about fly strike again. A lamb in a carrion suit must be irresistible to flies.

Even though lambing is finished now, I'll still have night checks to do: making sure mum and adopted lamb are bonding, and ensuring that Matilda is coping on her own as a member of the flock. I put her in the paddock yesterday and she's playing happily with the other lambs.

I gained a lot of experience lambing this year. Fingers crossed that I don't have to put it into practice again next year. Now I'm off to pursue more genteel activities: taking Quincy for a walk to collect this year's sweet chestnut harvest. Skinning a chestnut is much less traumatic.

Socktoberfest

2011-10-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

I've just finished knitting my very first sock!

It's a knee-length shooting sock in Superba wool (colour: 'Santa Fe'), for you yarn nerds. Pip is thoroughly underwhelmed by my achievement, but I'm proud. Socks are an advanced knitting project and I am not an advanced knitter. Yet, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. In fact, it was kind of addictive - which is good because I have to start all over again and knit one exactly like this one before I can wear them.

Souped-up chickens for chicken soup

2011-10-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

I'll get to the chickens in a minute, but first a lambing update. Ewe 2844 gave birth to a single ewe last Thursday -

It was as big as the week-old twins and so earned the unfortunate name 'Megalamb'. This does allow me to make Transformers jokes like "Hey, we could name the next ram lamb 'Optimus Prime Cuts'!" I mean, that's funny, right? Mike just stares blankly at me.

According to my diary, yesterday was the end of lambing and the start of my good night's sleep. The sheep didn't get the memo, and there were two ewes still to lamb: L845 and L817.

At sunrise this morning, I found L817 cleaning a newly laid ram lamb -

Shortly followed by its twin, a little ewe lamb.

They are so gooey when they're born

I had to help a bit as the ewe lamb was trying to come out all four feet at the same time. Once the baby's nose and front feet were readjusted, she slid out like water from a hose. I went back to drinking my cup of coffee and left mum to clean up. Just one more ewe to lamb - hurry up L845!

Matilda is doing very well, if her milk belly is any indication. She's looks like she's going to make it now, so she's been given her sheep bling, the ear tags with my flock number and her unique number. Matilda is Ewe 0008. Typically, I wasn't paying attention when I was tagging and I put hers in upside down and the weight has pulled her ears downward. Now she's pot-bellied and lop-eared.

But this is supposed to be about meat chickens, half of which went into the chiller today. 12 down, 14 to go. Mike wouldn't let me kill 13, as he thought it was unlucky. I couldn't think of anything less lucky than being killed so I'm not sure about his logic.

Anyway, a post by Kate at Living the Frugal Life made me think about chickens' place in a mixed farm. Here we have two kinds of meat chickens: fast-growing hybrids and Buff Orpington cockerels. We buy in the hybrids as day-old chicks twice a year, and the Buffs are a by-product of hatching replacement hens.

We calculated that the hybrids eat nearly a kilo of pellet per day per bird, at a cost of £1 per week each. They metabolise the food effectively and grow quickly. Hybrids produce lots of breast meat. We killed the cockerels today, averaging around 9 lbs of meat each. Essentially the hybrid is a chicken crop which we feed processed, high protein food, and harvest at 14 weeks.

A big hybrid meat chicken. Their brothers went to KFC.

The buff cockerels are completely free-range, and make good use of it. They consume wheat which is grown on the estate, at about one quarter of the rate the hybrids consume pellet. Buffs scavenge and eat table scraps, windfall fruits, insects and wild food; they are more adventurous eaters than the hybrids. A buff cockerel puts on meat in his legs and he won't be killed before at least 28 weeks old, though can be left longer. These cockerels only kill out about 4 lbs each.

A selection of our free range poultry - the Buffs are, well, the buff-coloured ones

With the cost of pellet food doubled in the past 12 months, each hybrid cost us £10 to produce, £5 more than last year. In fact, Farming Today ran a programme on a similar topic, claiming that it will be difficult to buy organic chickens because the cost of the food to raise them has meant tiny profit margins, putting growers out of business.

A hybrid would be no use as part of an integrated mixed farm. It won't turn over soil, eat pests, or grow big on food it finds for itself. When a farmer's wife kept a few chickens outside the back door, she wouldn't have wanted the hybrid. A dual purpose would mean a regular supply of eggs and the occasional roast chicken.This may be why chicken was once a special meat for the holiday table.

There is no such thing as cheap meat. It seems you have two choices: grow slow at low cost or grow fast like a crop on expensive inputs. The slow bird isn't going to ensure a vast supply, not like people consume chicken nowadays. But a good dual-purpose bird still has its place on the farm eating pest insects, spreading manure by scratching, and fertilising as it goes with its own nitrogen-rich droppings.

We eat a hybrid chicken a week, and it makes three meals plus stock. But, we save the buff cockerel roasts for special occasions.

Eating humble tarte

2011-10-05T07:41:00.000-07:00

The only compliment I can give myself in the kitchen is that I'm a competent, if plain, home cook. By that I mean that I can open the refrigerator and look at a random selection of unpromising ingredients, usually a few days' worth of leftovers, and assemble them into a somewhat more promising pie or stew. On a good night the result is delicious enough that it all gets eaten, and the remainder doesn't go back into the fridge and get re-entered into the dinner lottery.

I admire chefs, those food alchemists-cum-artists who seem single-minded in their pursuit for the lightest sauces, or flakiest pastry, or (what I really admire) an unexpected presentation. I read cookbooks knowing that I'll never make most of the recipes, although I would love to eat them. We've tried for a year to get reservations at Heston Blumenthal's restaurant, and Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons . Unfortunately, we have no social clout to procure a table, and we can't dial the 'phone fast enough when the last spots are thrown open to the dining proletariat.

Mike loves good food, but is content with a regular diet of toast and roast dinners. He never reads cookbooks, and the only meal he can make aside from browning bread or meat is spaghetti. His portion size reflects the size of whatever pan he can lay his hands on first, so sometimes it's an appetizer portion, other times it's enough to feed whatever small country is currently in food crisis.

Mike has a bad history with chefs. When Marco Pierre White shot here, Mike asked Marco when he cooks, how does he keep the beans from sliding off the toast and into the toaster. "Oh F*%k off, Mike" was Marco's response. I told Mike that not everyone appreciates his offhand humour. (In Marco's defense, he was a charming and generous guest, and a champion shot.)

The next time Mike ran into another TV chef was out fishing. Terry, our vet and Mike share the same passion for fishing and practical jokes. Let's just say that somehow the chef got the impression that Mike was judging the prestigious international dog show class that the chef's clumber spaniel was entered in. Technically that gaff was Terry's fault, but I know Mike's hoping the chef doesn't come as a guest one day and recognise him.

So, when I read the guest list for Monday and saw Michel Roux, renowned patissier and Michelin-starred chef was coming, I felt excitement, then dread. I begged Mike to rein in his sense of humour. The Le Gavroche cookbook is a staple in my kitchen. If Mike irritated Monsieur Roux I would never be able to crack that book's spine again without feeling humiliation. I would be doomed to a life of dry toast and roast.

Mike behaved impeccably. He introduced me to Mr. Roux who was almost painfully charming in that way that older Frenchmen are. We had a conversation about cooking (how he can, and I can't) and I could feel myself blushing, trying not to sound sycophantic. Mike stood me behind Mr. Roux to pick up on the last drive. I had Spud the flatcoat picking up for me.

Have I ever mentioned that, as a breed, flatcoats have a propensity for burping? Really loudly?

BRUUUPPP! Before the drive started so Mr Roux didn't have his ear defenders in yet (not that I'm sure those would have saved us). He said nothing, but I saw him sneak a look out of the corner of his eye back to me. Oh God. Do I tell him it was the dog? And who's going to believe that, when 90% of the wind passed in this world gets blamed on the family dog. I just looked at Spud, sighed, and accepted the meal that the universe dished out to me.

Even after that, Michel Roux took my address and promised to send me a copy of his new pastry cookbook, so I could work on my technique. Such a gentleman. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I'd had such a long day in the field, I would be dishing up dinner from our local takeaway. And we'd probably be eating it straight from the plastic container it came in.

Lambing updates

2011-09-27T05:45:00.000-07:00

We had another delivery this morning -

Ewe 2836 gave birth to a ram lamb and a ewe lamb. It was my first "assist" as the ram lamb's head was blocking the way out. I helped because I could see he was cyanotic, his little blue tongue poking out the side of his mouth and his front feet tucked under his chin. His sister popped out behind a few minutes later, no complications.

Phew.

The newly named Matilda (Thank you, Hazel!) is doing much better. Eudora eventually rejected her (the smell of the fly strike chemical masked Matilda's smell and Eudora didn't recognise her) but she is adapting to life as an orphan lamb. It's just one more hardship for her to endure. I spent yesterday teaching Matilda to take a bottle. I'm not sure there was much instruction on my part, just perseverance and begging. She's starting to get the hang of it and at 12 midnight last night, for the first time in her life, she finally had a full belly of milk.

I had to wait til she peed so she'd stand still for a photo. Excuse thumbs.

Double phew.

Even Ewe 0004 with pneumonia is on the mend. I know this because she was hard to catch this morning, especially as I forgot my sheep bait - a bucket with a few handfuls of barley in it, to lure them in and distract them while I jab, prod, or shear.

And that squab? I let him out of his coop four days later, rested from whatever illness or trauma befell him.

Like the spell of warm weather that's arrived, I'm going to enjoy the respite while it lasts. At dinner recently, I asked my friend Annette how long she's been keeping sheep. "Twenty-seven years", she said. I asked her if she ever had a really bad year. "Oh God yes! Many. But I remember we had one year when everything went to plan, no complications." So, according to her experience, the odds of having a carefree lambing season are in the region of 26 to 1. Against.

I know already this isn't going to be my year, but that just means I have that one to look forward to, someday.

6.57 AM

2011-09-25T23:07:00.000-07:00

I've only been up for an hour and so far I've been peed on (sheep), spattered the floor with milk replacement, stood in a wet cow pat wearing only croc sandals (the holes only filter out the big chunks) and a patch of stinging nettles, but...little lamb is now back with her mother and sister!

The lamb recovered slowly overnight, through nothing I've done I assure you. That lamb is determined to live. I really wanted her to get a chance to see that, once you make it past the cold weather and blow fly attacks, life can be a pleasant experience grazing pasture and sitting in the sun.

She's in no way out of the woods. She's small and everything bad will try and take advantage of her weakened state. I'll stay vigilant and keep you posted. There's indian summer weather headed for us this week, which will benefit her and the other newborn lambs - if they ever hurry up and come out.

Hoping for a happy ending

2011-09-25T10:07:00.000-07:00

I turned 42 today. I've celebrated by cleaning the kennels, treating sick sheep, monitoring ewes for signs of labour, and grappling with a teetering mountain of ironing. I intended to have a relaxing day but caring for a flock of sheep is sure way to prevent that.

Mike says the same goes for his pheasants which have kept him busy today, topping up medicated water and watching for any improvement. It's the weather you see: warm, moist, and changeable. Perfect for the proliferation of bacteria and other nasties, as well as maggots.

You probably see where this is going.

Ewe 0004, one of the hand-reared orphans, went down yesterday with lethargy and trembling. I popped her in the back of the Land Rover and made straight for the vets. She has a high fever, possibly pneumonia. Weather-related stress says the vets, he's seen lots of it lately. Ewe 0004 is on a daily course of penicillin.

More worrying is Eudora's smaller lamb. Only a few days old and she's already been brought back from the brink of a hypothermic death. Today I noticed she wasn't thriving. A quick check over revealed maggots hatching on her and burrowing into her skin. I removed as many as I could by hand with a tiny lice comb but I knew she needed further treatment. I called a local shepherd to see if he had something suitable.

He didn't. He sprayed her with a chemical which her sent her into instant shock. By the time we drove her home the few miles home she had convulsed and stopped breathing. Her heart stopped. I revived her with CPR and got her back not once but four times, from the edge of the brink of death this time.

In desperation I put her in the shower and washed the wretched blue spray off her skin. It made my fingers tingle, so heaven knows what it did to her poor backside. I toweled her off and put her back under the heat lamp. I hope her system can fight off the effects of the fly strike spray. I don't know if it can. She's still trembling and she's too weak to stand or suckle.

The vet meds book says that product should not be used on lambs this young or small, and certainly not in the dose that was applied to her. I'm heartbroken watching this poor little lamb, a creature in my care, suffer. I nursed her mother Eudora through a terrible illness last year. She survived and went on to produce these two beautiful ewe lambs. The least I can do is not kill them with my ignorance.

It's never like this on 'All Creatures Great and Small'.

6.01 am

2011-09-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

It's not quite daylight yet, though I can hear the roosters in the village doing their round robin - uh, chicken - crows. I'm relieved to report that both lambs are well.

Eudora laid up in the middle of the field with the babies pressed tight into her. She was there when I checked at 11pm and seemingly every hour after that. All the other ewes were scattered about, as if on sentry duty. In fact during one check I saw two older ewes stood up and watching the perimeter. Maybe sheep have their own security system in-built by nature. Just in case, I slept with the window open so I could hear any problems, and the gun was near me so I could deal with a problem swiftly. Everyone needs backup.

Everyone also needs sleep, though I was happy to give up mine to ensure the day-old lambs got theirs. I'm going to have a cup of tea and knit while the sun comes up, and wait to see what other deliveries the stork might have in store today.

I will leave you with one more video, some cute to go with your morning tea or coffee - lamb taking her first steps yesterday.

Eudora's first lambs

2011-09-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

Eudora gave birth to two ewe lambs late this morning -

I would like to say it went smoothly but this is Eudora. She mothered the first lamb easily, but the second, slightly smaller, lamb couldn't keep up with Mother and big sister. I spotted the first signs of hypothermia which quickly went downhill.

I rushed to the vets for a drenching tube and more colostrum, and of course instructions for how to tube a tiny lamb only a few hours old. There's only one hole for the feeding tube to go into but the road splits, so to speak. If I got it wrong, I would be pumping her lungs full of thick, sticky colostrum. By a miraculous fluke I managed to give the lamb a tummyful.

I rigged up a lamb warming box by putting a hot water bottle on the bottom of my recycling bin, covering that with straw, inserting lamb, topping with more straw, and placing her in front of the wood burner. I stoked the wood burner, and stripped down to my t-shirt while the lamb got up to room temperature. She recovered quickly.

A neighbor said if I removed her for treatment the mother wouldn't take her back. I ignored his sage advice, preferring to give it a try rather than face the prospect of another orphan lamb to bottle feed. Eudora happily took the now warm and full lamb back into the fold.

I've been obsessively watching them, looking for signs of relapse or rejection. I was so worried about constantly disturbing them that I sat at the bottom of my drive with a pair of binoculars to observe from a distance. This was fine, until a school bus full of children drove by. Now I'm the crazy sheep lady with binoculars.

I'm still concerned the little lamb isn't getting enough food so I'll mix her up a bottle of sheep formula before bed as a supplement feed. I can see her suckling but she looks smaller than her sister. This could be normal but I'm not used to looking at lambs and I can't recognise what normal is yet. The extra feed is insurance.

I tried to pen Eudora and lambs in for the night behind an electric wire to deter foxes, but Eudora was having none of it. This is not ideal. Mike and I will be getting up a lot in the night, and my rifle is by my bed. I hope that both Eudora and I still have two lambs by morning.

Squab!

2011-09-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

The oak trees have had bumper crops of acorns this year, which means one thing: dopey woodpigeons.

Green acorns contain high levels of pyrogallol. Don't ask me what that is, I'm not a chemist. What I do know is that the pyrogallol is poisonous to pigeons (as well as horses, and probably a variety of other birds and mammals.) Young pigeons seem most susceptible, possibly because they're small and still developing. They have less body mass relative to an adult. And young pigeons are still learning the 'food' vs. 'not food' life lesson. Too many acorns is definitely 'not food' for pigeons.

I found this young squab in the middle of the road, staggering about, and too disoriented to escape my slow, lumbering approach.

He still has baby fluff, and you can see all the feather casings he's shedding onto my plaid shirt. He's not yet grown into his beak so he's quite young. I've put him in a spare broody coop overnight to protect him from hungry foxes and village cats. He may live, he may not (my record for rehabilitating baby birds has been 0 for 3 this year). If he doesn't, we'll do a post-mortem and see if, in fact, he has a cropful of acorn shells.

I hope he's simply recovered enough to fly away, and smart enough to head for the barley fields instead of the woods for his breakfast.

What you sow

2011-09-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

Do you remember the story of the Little Red Hen? Apparently it's a Russian morality tale, but I'm only acquainted with the illustrated Golden Book version from my childhood. You know the story: hen finds a grain of wheat and asks the other animals in the farmyard if they would like to help her plant and tend the wheat, harvest the grains and bake them into bread. The other animals, all being workshy, decline until it comes to eating the bread. The hen tells them they didn't help so no bread for them.

Even as a child I found the hen a bit sanctimonious. As an adult with my own seeds to tend, I find out that I'm both hen and lazy farm animals. Now that it's harvest time, I'm reaping the rewards where I put in the work, and suffering deficiencies where I put in hours in front of the TV.

We've started harvesting our game. Our first partridge shoot was last Thursday and we put 219 birds in the game dealer's larder. None of the dogs are fit enough to work a whole day in Indian summer temperatures. Dulcie, who was sidelined last year with a ligament repair, is back on good form. Determined to prove her worth, she overheated and had to be revived with a sugary treat but I'm glad to report no other injuries.

More roe deer need to find their way into my freezer - or 'Ice Camp' as Kate calls it, a term we've taken to our hearts. Feeding the horses on dark one night, I saw two bucks in the orchard. They were in range and standing side on, in front of a perfect backstop. Had I brought the rifle we wouldn't be having this conversation, and the shoot staff wouldn't be having carrot and coriander soup for lunch Monday instead of venison casserole.

I am harvesting a bumper crop of carrots. And beans. I've pickled both. They make nearly healthy accompaniments on nights when I'm too lazy to cook extra vegetable side dishes. In England, 'Meat and Two Veg' is the national meal. Sometimes in our house it's just meat, leftover fried potato, and pickled vegetables.

I was overjoyed with my onions, and I spent yesterday engrossed in my favorite harvest activity: plaiting the storage onions. Space is limited so they're going to be stored in the same place they dried: the spare bedroom. It isn't really a bedroom. as there's no bed in it, and in spring I use the room for incubating and hatching chickens. Onions are hygienic by comparison. But heavy. I hung the plaits on the curtain pole, eyeing up the ever-increasing bend, wondering if the pole would hold up.

It didn't. The pole pulled out of the wall sometime around 2a.m. but it's come to rest on top of the bookshelf, so my onions are still hanging in there. The whole balancing act can stay that way until we've eaten enough to lighten the load, then I'll screw it back in the wall.

A lot of the onions have already found their way into some batches of apple chutney. Apples are a big part of the harvest right now. I can't take credit for the bounty, I just try and make good use of it. We go through chutney like drinking water and however much I make it's never enough.

Pickled beans and six jars of chutney

It's the same with jam, although I had some trouble with mould in last year's supply. Instead of re-using jars, as is tradition in England, I ordered some Ball jars with the sealable lids to see if that would solve the problem. I just put up two jars of blackberry-apple-elderberry jelly, and heard the satisfying plink of the vacuum seal. I hope to reap the rewards of good canning practice.

I feel somewhat less rewarded that the sum total of my morning's work picking blackberries resulted in two meagre jars' worth of jelly. Even after I bulked it out with apples. I can't resist the lure of free, ripe, (did I mention free?) berries in the hedgerows - I collected buckets of elderberries, a basket of sloes, Tupperware tubs full of blackberries. My fingers are permanently stained during the month of September. Also a good time not to lend me any books unless you want them returned with purple fingerprints on the pages (My sincere apologies, Colette - only page 210, I promise).

Quincy came with me for her first blackberry picking outing. It's strange to think that she's only been on this earth for ten months. She's learned so much in that short space of time. Having paid the price for training shortcuts with other dogs, I am putting the hours into her. The commands I plant now, I will harvest when Quincy starts her first season in the shooting field.

Quincy doesn't worry about personal space

Oh! I just heard the second jar go plink. If it sets midway between liquid ooze and ballistic gel, it's a winner.

Since my lamentable start to the lambing season, I have been checking the ewes regularly enough to be a nuisance to them. I make up for it by picking a few apples which are out of their reach, and tossing them each a treat.

Sharing the fruits of the harvest

Like they need to be fatter, I know. Looking at their bellies, I have a terrible feeling that there are going to be more singles than twins this year. Had I made sure their nutrition was right before I put them to the ram, I would be cropping twins. I will add that to my ever-growing list of lessons learned. A big single lamb can mean a difficult birth, so now I have to be extra-vigilant.

It's not a huge harvest but I have enough to keep all of us, including our little red hens, fed through the winter.

Poor little lamb

2011-09-11T08:51:00.000-07:00

The first lamb of the year came today - a week early and stillborn. A little ewe lamb.

This is not an auspicious start.

Mike has gone to see a neighboring farmer who's lambing out of season, like us, to see if he has any orphans I can foster on the mother. It's a grisly process that involves skinning the dead lamb and wrapping the orphan in the skin. The mother recognises the scent of her own lamb, and adopts the imposter. Like so many things, it sounds simple when you read about it in a book. But when Nature (with a capital 'N') and maternal hormones are involved, it's never so straightforward.

Worse, I'm not sure what's caused it. There are all sorts of bacterias that can cause late-term abortion in sheep. Or it could have just been a weak lamb, one of those things. I hope it's the latter as that's not contagious, and likely to affect an otherwise healthy flock.

I hope I have better news to report in the next post. I'll start my night checks from now on, in case I'm in for more troubled deliveries.

Damn.

Autumn bounty-ish

2011-09-05T11:02:00.000-07:00

The season is changing. BBC news tells me that September 1st is the official start of autumn, but I have more reliable sources. The horses are shedding their summer coats. Plums and apples are ripe; the dessert menu in our house now features crumbles, a stodgy autumn pudding. I’ve harvested sloes, elderberries, and field mushrooms from the hedgerows.

I've dug up my onion crop from the garden and moved the haul to the spare bedroom to dry, a la Tom and Barbara Good. It works great but it's making the house smell like feet for some reason. I’ve dug up the small potato crop to store, but that just goes into a wicker potato hopper in the pantry.

Outside I can hear the clunk-clunk rhythm of a baler, baling up barley straw. I’ve split and stored half of our winter wood. Small talk with neighbors turns to who’s already put their wood stoves or Rayburns on this season.

The washing machine filter logs the changing season too. In summer it catches plastic S-hooks, the kind that are integral to holding nets over the pens that protect young pheasant poults. In autumn, the filter is full of spent .22 and .17 rounds from rifles now protecting more mature pheasant poults from predators.

September 1st is also the start of partridge and duck hunting season. I was invited on opening night to shoot ducks on a flight pond. I missed all five that I fired at, a poor showing even by my low standards. My companions brought down 5 between them.

Pete, Ian, and a selection of happy dogs

One mallard was ringed as part of the British Trust for Ornithology scheme. I reported the number to their website, and I’m looking forward to reading the migration report they promised to send me. When asked, I admitted that the bird was alive and well, until we interfered, and that said subject was going to be eaten. I’m not sure how the BTO will use that bit of data.

Spud the flat-coated retriever opened the season for me as my peg dog on the duck shoot. It was her first time as a peg dog, and retrieving duck. She was patient and interested and, though I gave her nothing to retrieve, she recovered a wounded duck for one of the other guns that we wouldn’t have found without her.

Autumn means a change to working rations for the dogs, which need to start building up reserves for a long season. A once-over from the vets is useful too. Our friend and trusted vet was supposed to stop by on his way to the office to give all of shoot’s dogs their kennel cough treatment (A house call is easier than having 15 rowdy dogs in his waiting room.) It was fortunate that he had to cancel as Brandy - one of underkeeper Pete's spaniels - went off on a personal hunt, and only just returned home for a late lunch. We'll try again tomorrow, and hope all dogs are present and accounted for.

I've moved the sheep to their maternity paddock across the street, where I can see them from my bedroom window. Man alive, are they pregnant. They're huge.

The first one is due as early as the 18th September; Eudora is bagging up already (i.e. her teats are filling with milk). I hope the ewes will all have easy births. If not I'll have to put my hands in the mothers, and move heads and legs around so babies can come out noses and front feet first. The ewes can get on with the business of pushing then.

I had to vaccinate all the sheep again, their annual top-up. And mine as, of course, I jabbed myself by accident. Again. This time I only caught the empty needle before I jabbed a sheep with it, so I'm not counting this one.

As I was cleaning up the spent needles I must have dropped one. Out of the corner of my eye I could see one of the chickens running, with its head poked out in front, the way a chicken does when it's found a worm or mouse and the other chickens are in hot pursuit to rob it. Instead of a worm, it was a needle. The chicken must have seen me drop it and assumed it was more of the delicious stuff I usually drop for them (Sometimes, I throw toast crusts out of my bedroom window and shout 'Manna from Heaven!' at them.) I got it back, but only by exchanging it for the last digestive biscuit in my cookie jar.

I came home from picking blackberries with Mike and found a letter had arrived from the British Wool Marketing Board. They bought my wool and enclosed a cheque for the princely sum of:

63p. And to think, it only cost me £30 to shear them. At this rate I could be bankrupt by next Tuesday. We might be living on what we can hunt and gather. Oh wait, I missed all those ducks. Blackberry jam on toast, anyone?

Eaters and Layers

2011-08-21T09:01:00.000-07:00

We've had a big chicken delivery: 14 ex-caged layers (our rescues) and 30 plump white meat chicks.

We'll keep five of the layers for ourselves and have found willing pet chicken homes for the rest. They will live out a free-range retirement with our horse vet, a local biker, and Mike's former home help nurse (we owe her a lot more than a few chickens, believe me.)

The brown hens show chicken behaviours after only a few hours, preening, scratching and sunning themselves; they're robust and adaptable. And they still have a couple years' worth of eggs to lay. Homes are easy to come by when we hear of farms exchanging their stock for fresh, commercially-viable birds.

The meat chicks came from our friend the KFC supplier. He dropped them off for us at our local gun shop / clay shooting ground. Where else can you get ammo and livestock all in the same place?

The meat chicks are physically stout, but emotionally and constitutionally feeble. They need coddling and delicate handling. They're the Laura Fairlies of the poultry world (apologies - I just finished listening to The Woman in White)

Yet, while I stood watching them, one or two have laid out in the sun, pecked the grass and half-heartedly scratched up some soil. Perhaps I'm too disparaging.

We're pushed for space, chicken-wise. I was going to use the sheep trailer as a mobile chicken house until I realised that the vent at the top was more than wide enough to let a fox in. The quail have downsized for a few days into a small pen, and the meat chickens have their ample aviary.

And we'll have chicken in the freezer again!

First Casualty of the Season

2011-08-19T04:59:00.000-07:00

It was Lily versus wasp nest. And it was bad.

Mike has been taking Lily and Pip to chase the youngest pheasants back home every morning. The pheasants wander from their wooded safety to chase the sun and warm their backs, which is fine, except they forget to stop wandering. Being disturbed by the dogs helps the birds define the edge of their boundary; they don't like to be bothered any more than we do when we're enjoying good weather.

The dogs were working away when Pip appeared from a bracken-covered hillside being chased by a few wasps. I guess they were dogging the dogs, reminding them where their boundaries should be. Mike heard Lily screaming and said she emerged blanketed in wasps. He met her halfway and wiped as many wasps off her as he could, getting stung himself.

When they returned home, Mike was carrying Lily. They were both already swollen and lumpy. Mike called the vets while I proceeded to remove yet more wasps from Lily, and check her over. Inside her mouth was stung and swelling. I was worried her airway would close.

We got her to the vets, and they put her on a drip of antibiotics, painkillers, and fluid. Poor dog - when she heard the clippers start up to shave her leg for the drip, she thought she was under attack again and tried to do a flying dismount from the examination table.

The vets kept her for observation this morning, but the triage was in time. I picked her up and she was well enough to hop into the Land Rover to accompany me on my now well-behind morning chore round, checking lambs, pregnant ewes, horses. She mooched about while I collected more field mushrooms.

I'm not saying she's not milking it for attention and maybe an egg in her breakfast bowl -

But I'm sure glad she's alright. And I'll put dog antihistamine in both trucks, just in case.

Phew.

Oh, and Mike's fine too.

But I'm told that bird sh*t is lucky

2011-08-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

It's buck season now, the Glorious Twelfth has marked the opening of grouse season, and our own shoot team has had its annual barbecue and clay shoot. We get together before the season starts to talk dog, guns, and disappointment in our respective vegetable gardens (there have been tragic losses during this cold summer). We exchange cakes, jams, and even homemade hooch.

This is how my voyage of self-discovery started. With a gift bottle of alcohol.

One (OK, three) glasses that evening and my inhibitions yielded. I got straight on the Internet to fulfil my apparent heart's desire. Do you know what I did?

I booked myself on a welding course.

I did the equivalent of drunk-dialling an adult education centre. Who knew my yearning to weld was so strong? I'm not sure if I think this is sad, or a sign that my life is so replete that all I crave are some skills to stick two pieces of metal together.

The course was full, probably with sober participants, so there was no room for me. However, it seems that our work experience student Ian is competent welder. He stays with us most weekends and gains 'keepering experience working alongside Mike. On hearing my story (after he stopped laughing), he offered to bring over his arc welder and teach me the basics.

Have I mentioned that Ian is 17 years old? These farm-raised kids have serious skill sets.

We found a spot in the yard away from anything we could burn down or blow up. Ian gave me a quick demo - rod goes in here, tighten, touch rod to metal, weld. And it is that easy when you get the hang of it. Which I didn't. At least not right away.

I started by making what Ian called 'bird shit' welds -

It's a result of moving the rod too fast and too far away to properly heat the two bits of metal until they 'weld' together - a rookie mistake. It's a weak weld and wouldn't hold up to the kind of abuse it would get on a farm or pheasant shoot.

Besides technique, there are safety tips to learn. Firstly, assume everything is hot. Inner core, centre of the earth hot. Secondly, sparks. Nothing to panic about, unless one happens to go down your boot. Then you'll be dancing the funky chicken and the running man at the same time, trying to get your boot off.

Occasionally I could smell burning and later noticed tiny holes in my sweatshirt. Wear old clothes. And safety glasses. I forgot to put them on when I cleaned the slag from my weld, and a small piece landed on my left eyelid. It was hot enough to blister the skin. It's scabbed over now, but sore. It would have been serious if it went in my eye. I'll take that as a shot across my bows from karma.

That's a lot to learn in a first lesson.

With more practice I got used to looking through the dark screen of the welding helmet and a better feel for the materials. In moments of clarity, I produced an inch or two of good strong weld -

Ian gave me 'the nod', which around here means 'It's acceptable'. It's the closest thing to praise in Dorset. It means I'm ready to take on a simple project. And I have just the thing -

courtesy www.dpi.nsw.gov.au

A wool packing frame. It holds the bag so I can pack my newly shorn fleeces ready for sale to the Wool Board. Even if my newbie welds aren't perfect, they will be strong enough to hold up a bag of wool.

We've been busy with other projects that I'm equally inexperienced with. Our hay has been cut and baled -

It was nearly two months later than last year but it's a reasonable crop. The grass benefited from a dose of fertiliser in the Spring.

We also managed to dig out a yard at the entrance of our hay field, lay a hardcore base, and crane the horse shelters into place -

The shelters can double as lambing sheds for the next few years, until the flock outgrows two small buildings. The sheep and their lambs can graze fresh shoots following on behind the cut hay, and overwinter in the field.

The horses are still living in their summer residence, which they share with a nest of swallow chicks. I know the chicks are still there by looking at Alan's back -

Bird shit. Those baby swallows wouldn't be any good at welding either.

Cogknitive Therapy

2011-08-06T12:38:00.000-07:00

Occasionally all the death gets to me. I'm not complaining. The result is one nearly-full freezer, including a deer, one and a half lambs, and bunnies collected on various evenings spent in the back of the truck with a shotgun. But I know when I pick up a gun with a sigh and a heavy heart that it's time to change tack. Thankfully there's always something around here that needs attention, and I'm easily distracted.

I sheared our sheep at Easter and still hadn't done anything with the fleece. I was never going to spin all of it, but the British Wool Board buys fleece from farmers. I'm kind of a farmer, so I called and registered my flock. "How many?" the lady on the phone asked me. "Uh, Eight. No Twelve. I mean 12 sheep, 8 fleeces." She let out a little cough-like laugh. Whether that was because of my tiny flock or because I can't seem to count, I'm not sure.

The fleeces were decent quality, but fleeces live on sheep, and sheep live outside. My sheep have been scratching themselves on painted sheds and living in a hay field. I gathered up my creosote-stained fleeces, gummed up with grass seed, and put them - along with a groveling note promising to buck up my act next year - in the bag supplied. I sewed it up with bailing twine as instructed and dropped it in to our local feed merchant. I'm not waiting for a cheque, I'll just be glad if they don't call and scold me.

I've spun one of my Dorset fleeces together with one of the Romney fleeces from my shearing course, and the yarn is soft. And you can have it in the colour of your choice, as long as it's white.

Hanging wet with a weight, to set the twist

I also knitted a tea cozy.

I can't explain that one. I didn't need a tea cozy. I drink copious amounts of tea, but quickly. My tea never has time to get uncomfortable. I did read a clinical psychology dissertation from Antioch University arguing that knitting reduces stress. I'm going with that. There's a Facebook page called 'I knit so I won't kill people'. Maybe I should start one called 'I knit as a salve to my animal-killing day job.'

Besides knitting, it's the start of preserving season. Also therapeutic. So far, only some carrots have died to make relish. Preserving coincides with the Agricultural Show season. This year I’m eschewing the local village show and moving up a league. I’ve entered the Melplash Show. A slightly-larger-village village show. I'm entering the bread making and the brownie making competitions. I've already been practicing both.

Grandma Gould's Carrot Relish and two loaves of wholemeal bread, proofing

I've entered my elderflower cordial, and sloe gin too. Both are tasty, but perhaps a bit more homemade than the judges would like. I mean, how much sediment and cloudiness is permitted? The rules aren't clear. Neither is my sloe gin.

I couldn't enter any chutney as we've eaten it all. I hope to have enough eggs to enter in the Farm Produce class, but the chickens have decided to moult en masse which means egg production will be way down. Those hens not moulting are broody, or laying in the hedgerow. If I follow the dogs and I'm quick I can sometimes find a nest, but the quality of those eggs could be dubious. They don't lay them with a date stamp.

The show and five classes has cost me the princely sum of £3.50 to enter. The only thing I have to lose is my dignity and some self-esteem (what's left after my call to the Wool Board anyway). If that happens, I always have my knitting.

Does anyone need their tea cozied?

And now for something completely different

2011-07-25T10:28:00.000-07:00

If last week was all about death, then this week is all about sex. Sex and birth. I suppose you can't have one without the other.

Most of my recent conversations with Mike involve which animals are pregnant, and which animals ought to be pregnant. The ewes are looking like they swallowed a football sideways and the pointy ends are lodged in their midsections. Eudora in particular. (Who else, right?) Their due dates start less than two months from now.

The 'which animals ought to be pregnant' discussion centres around the spaniels. Dulcie, Jazzie, and most especially Podge are in season. Podge is ready N.O.W. When I fed her this morning all she wanted was a cuddle, then she cocked her tail over her back and fixed me with a mad, hormonal stare. Poor thing. She's not made the cut for motherhood, at least not now, because she's our main 'dogging in' dog - chasing young pheasants home every morning and night until they remember where they live. Podge has got a heavy work load until mid-September. We can't afford to have her sidelined.

We have wanted a pup from Dulcie, a dog Mike bred from his own 30 year-old line of springers. She's getting older but after missing last year's shoot season recovering from a ligament repair, I worried it wouldn't be fair for her to miss another season of what she loves best. However, if the dog visits her next week, she could have pups and still be fit for November 1st, and the majority of the winter. It will be Dulcie's first litter, and mine. I've never bred a litter, I've only had secondhand dogs up to now.

Until then I have the orphan lambs still to care for, and a few hens guarding clutches of eggs. I've tried putting quail eggs under a bantam hen, but I'm not sure if they'll hatch. The hen's had some commitment issues and she seems to lose track of the eggs when she gets off the nest, remembering to cover only a few or half when she sits down to brood after a wander over to the feeder.

I came home from work to find this baby in a Tupperware pot, in hay, in my sink-

I think it's a baby bullfinch chick. It's got a worm stuck to it so I think Mike tried unsuccessfully to feed it. My mother taught me the hamburger trick for feeding found fledglings. I must have brought home dozens as a child, though few survived the trauma and my own inept but well-meaning childish love.

I have ground venison in the fridge and the chick eagerly choked down a few good-sized strands. I've put it in a basket with a light for warmth. Its best chance for survival is if I can find a nest with similar sized chicks in it and add it to the brood. Mike claims birds can't count and a gaping mouth is enough of a trigger to get fed, no matter who your real momma is. It works on me too, not just with birds, but with the boys who work with Mike. I can't resist a hungry creature whether it's got feathers or camo trousers.

If I can't find a nest, I'll keep feeding it and hope it survives in spite of my inept but well-meaning childish love.

Pottering

2011-07-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

Mike and I managed to take half a day off yesterday. A whole six hours. We squandered it watching the last in the Harry Potter series of films. In the middle of the day. I even had a glass of wine at lunch, which felt very badass. OK, it was Pizza Hut's house wine, but it was the best (and absolute worst) glass of wine I've had in forever. The food just tasted manufactured and unsophisticated, but a waitress brought it to me and no one interrupted our lunch. At home, the phone and the door would be going at the same time. We both left our mobile phones at home. There was a lot of giggling.

Before we set off for the big town and multiplex cinema, I made an effort to tidy myself up. I slapped on some cover-the-grey dye, and while that was working its magic (Griseum Obscura!) I had time to mix up cement and patch the holes in the kennels where Quincy has excavated loose concrete. Mike built more release pens for his pheasants, but found clean jeans - no holes, no blood - for trip to town. Our rare trips to town are the only time that there isn't a dog in the truck with us, either curled up on the floor, spaniel-style or sprawled out on the seats, lab-style.

We're not so rural that mixing with crowds should be unnerving, but it is. There is so much noise from people and traffic that I feel disoriented. There are TV screens everywhere, and music and sound. In the movie theatre, the sound was turned up so loud, even with my impaired hearing it hurt my ears. I think it was to drown out the sounds of other patrons eating popcorn and rustling wrappers.

At home I can hear a flock of house sparrows noisily invade a shrub near the bird feeder. I can hear a green woodpecker call. I can hear wind rustling leaves, which is altogether more comforting that candy wrappers. I can hear the dog snoring. When the cockerels start crowing I know it's after 5pm. There's so much going on, so why is it less of an assault on my nerves than sound and light in town?

I got home with enough light to spare that I went deer stalking. Maurading deer are still eating the cider orchard. A couple of hours sitting quietly yielded a yearling for the larder -

Mike talked me through a better gralloching technique too -

It's going to be a short cold summer and I'm taking stock of my vegetable harvest. The carrots are going to be plentiful -

And the apple crop too -

However, my tomatoes and sweetcorn could really use an Engorgio spell.

Midpoints

2011-07-19T03:08:00.000-07:00

It's mid-summer in England according to the calendar, if not the weather outside. The apple tree has finished its June drop, letting go of some of its fruits early, for the good of the many still left to feed and ripen. The hard green sacrifical apples carpet the lawn, and the living room. The retrievers pick one up on every trip out the the garden, and bring it in to play with later. I find them under chairs, on chairs, I step on them rolling around the tile floor in the kitchen.

The rest of the garden is combatting cold and windy weather, for another week at least. I'm wearing wool and fleece instead of t-shirts and shorts. We're eating stews and stodgy puddings, so many that I'm now forced to combat my middle-aged spread.

My sister suggested a diet she found successful, a sort of Atkins 2.0. I'm halfway through it already. The only problem is I don't own a set of scales so I could weigh myself to see if the diet was working. Well, I haven't got a set of human scales, but I do have a weigh crate for sheep.

Usually when I weigh the lambs I'm looking for the dial to move up. In this case I'm hoping it goes the other way. It works fine, though I learned two things about myself: I'm already cull ewe weight, and if I had worms, I require a 12ml drench.

If I had worms I probably wouldn't be so well-covered in the first place.

Speaking of well-covered, I've butchered the ram lambs. They were obviously converting their grass diet well and there was a lot of excess fat which I cooked up for the dogs. I'm supposed to eat a lot of fat and meat on this diet. I don't think that's going to be a problem.

The Mystery of Barbara - Revealed!

2011-07-12T13:43:00.000-07:00

This week has been all about death and poop - not mine, I assure you. I warn you now that there is no happy ending, so feel free to skip the visuals, or ignore this post altogether and make up your own happy ending.

I posted recently about Barbara, our missing (presumed dead) silkie hen. She hasn't been home in over a week. Because of all the fox activity and her propensity to go broody in fox-accessible places, I assumed she had simply been a late-night vulpine snack. But, I hadn't found any feathers which was unusual - considering she was a white chicken - as any traces of her would stand out.

This week we found Barbara. She went broody just behind the house, tucked up in a bale of straw. The same bale of straw which the lambs used as a day bed. The lambs must have piled on top of her to have a nap, and either crushed or suffocated her while she sat on her nest.

Poor Barbara - you can just see her head

I suppose chicken smothered in Lamb could be a recipe. Chicken smothered by lamb is only a recipe for disaster. Barbara went to the Big Sleep because of some small sheep.

Wanted for crimes against poultry

My murderous lambs have now graduated from their bijou back garden pen to the acre-sized paddock at the bottom of the driveway. They have been weaned at the same time, and they are objecting about it loudly and at all hours of the day and night. Between a kennelful of dogs, crowing cockerels and now protesting lambs, we are officially the worst neighbours ever. I will try and atone with gifts - a joint of lamb or venison for each household (eggs and jam for the vegetarians), and ten Hail Marys for good measure.

The paddock was vacant after a trip with the boys to the abattoir, or "Summer Camp" as I've renamed it. I loaded them into the trailer easily and we were on the road by 6.30am. I'm only the driver now, Mike unloads and gets them settled in. I don't get out of the truck. There were no tears this time, but that could have just been the Valium I took before we set off, as extra insurance. Don't tell Mike, he thinks I'm a stouthearted farmer now.

Actually, the carcases look really good this time. Not so much excess fat, but still well-covered, and each killed out at 33kgs -

Now I just have to find time to butcher one hundred kilos of lamb by Saturday.

Eunice didn't go the Summer Camp with her brothers. She's rejoined the Ewe's co-operative on the laying field, turning grass into new lambs and sheep shit. Eunice is only producing the latter this year, as she won't see the ram until next spring. But there was a problem with the poop: scours. The ram lambs were fine but three of the ewes, including Eunice, had very messy bottoms.

Being newly stouthearted and immune to poop, I collected samples for the vets then scrubbed their wool clean to prevent flies laying their eggs on the dirty wool. I've spared you (and my pride) photos of the undertaking.

The vet sent the sample to their labs and the worm count was horrifying. My worming program hasn't been working. The lab made a special call to the vets rather than wait for the results to arrive by post, that's how bad it is. The sheep - or more specifically, their worms - are resistant to the wormers I used. I had to crate each sheep and give her an injection. Fly maggots are trying to eat them from the outside, and worms are trying to devour them from the inside. And I'm trying to save them so at some point I can devour their offspring.

In comparison, being squashed in straw doesn't seem like such a bad way to go.

Lucky Escape

2011-07-01T23:15:00.000-07:00

I shot this in a hen house at 2.30 this morning -

It's only one of this year's cubs, but already old enough to be out by itself doing a bit of opportunistic hunting, honing its skills.

The house it broke into had a Buff Orpington hen and her brood of chicks inside - my flock replacements for next year. I heard the hen screaming, which is enough to wake me out of a sound sleep.

My heart sank when I saw the edge of the chicken wire lifted away, and a pile up of chicks in the corner. The hen was still screaming. She sounded frightened and angry at the same time. At least she was alive, as were some of the chicks.

The fox saw me and panicked. By this time Mike had handed me a .17 rifle and I dispatched the cub while it tried to dig its way back out. I had to wait until morning to see which birds had been injured.

I'm thrilled to report that, so far, there are no broken wings or legs, and all the chicks look alert if a little ruffled by their ordeal. There is a light dusting of feathers on the house floor, but most of them come from the mother who's sporting a rather bare neck.

The cub tried to supersize his meal and it backfired on him. It's a lesson he won't get a second chance to learn.

Sheep-for-brains

2011-06-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

It's a confusing time of year for me. And busy. Confusing and busy. During the day I'm checking lambs, sheep, horses, and pheasant poults, trying to keep them alive and healthy. But in the evenings, I'm out with a gun doing my best to take down vermin, and harvest wild animals for the freezer. I'm a competing member of the food chain, fighting foxes to save my chickens (one took Barbara the Weather Chicken!) and stalking deer to save us from going hungry.

I should say harvesting wild animals for the freezers, plural, as we have two - both of which are only a quarter full. We've nearly eaten all our home grown chickens, lots of venison, most of last year's game birds, plus half a pig I got from Peggy in exchange for helping her in the butchery.

Summer shouldn't be the hungry season, but the main crops of vegetables aren't ready to harvest yet. After a hot dry spring, we're being subjected to a cold grey summer. My hardy root vegetables like potatoes, parsnips and carrots are stalwart growers. My squash, french beans, and sweetcorn are sulking in their rows.

Last winter's lambs are going to the abattoir next week. I have one ram lamb destined for our freezer and the other two are sold to neighbours. I just got my all-clear from Trading Standards to sell our lamb and chickens direct (Milkweed Farm Meat) so I can now supply any surplus meat to local families and businesses. I'm a quasi-CSA of one.

Assuming I have any meat to sell by next week. I have had to bring a pair of wire cutters on my sheep checking rounds. One of the ram lambs keeps getting his fat head wedged in the wire fencing. I've found him stuck fast, dejected and hungry, for the last three mornings in a row. Did he learn his lesson this morning?

Winning at grazing

Nope. Apparently the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence. At least until you eat everything in reach, get stuck, and have to wait for someone to cut the wire and free your head.

Eunice keeps him company, or stands there and mocks him, I'm not sure which.

It's become a daily thing with him. Even the neighbors have started helping to free him when they find him before I do.

I also lost my first sheep since starting the flock. The smallest orphan lamb died in his first week, probably from urolithiasis. I was very upset at the loss, though sheep farmers tell me that rearing all one's orphans successfully is rare. The other four are past the crucial two week period and I'm hopeful for them.

Though the youngest lambs aren't gifted with brains either. There are 5 teats on the bucket but the lambs insist on fighting over two. They have a system worked out, something between a time-share and a dance routine:

Lest you think it's just the sheep, the stupidity is contagious and crossing species. I broke my small toe falling over the vacuum cleaner. It means I've had to walk with a stick for a few days, but chores wait for no man.

Chore number one: an order for freshly shot rabbits. Mike drove the truck; Underkeeper Pete and I stood in the back (me balancing on my good foot) Within an hour we shot a dozen rabbits (and two foxes for good measure).

Freshly shot rabbit on a bed of wet pheasant pellets, with a garnish of empty cartridge cases, served in a flatbed truck

The order came from a British Army officer taking his cadets on a Survival Training Weekend. I understand each cadet gets given a dead, un-gutted rabbit and told not to starve before being left overnight in the woods. I feel sorry for the cadets. If this is their first time catching a whiff of rabbit guts, they may lose their appetites completely.

Chore number two: load up the ram and return him to Mr. Baker, which we did without mishap or injury. For a change. Ram L815 had an easy-going temperament, which I hope he passes on to his offspring. All our sheep are covered, and due to lamb in September. I'm told the ram is getting a week off, before being delivered to another farm for two more months of libidinous activity.

Chore number three: Clear stragglers out of the laying pens. The pheasants we penned in order to collect their eggs were released a few weeks ago. There are always a few that make their way back, and once inside can never remember how to get out.

We don't want them to starve, or be killed by predators (who also find their way into the pens) so I put the dogs to work. They check each pen, and catch any pheasants hiding behind laying shelters, or tucked up in corners. I have to pick the soft-mouthed dogs, or there wouldn't be anything worth releasing by the time the dogs retrieved it. Here's Pip and Spud in action:

That's Ian, our wonderful work experience lad, helping out. There were 36 of these pens to be checked, and with two energetic retrievers, it didn't take us long.

Chores four and five are still outstanding: Take Alan to the vets for an x-ray of his feet, and harvest some of the deer that are eating a newly planted cider orchard, one tree at a time. I will leave those for the next post, which I promise will be less rambling.

I wish I could teach one of the dogs to retrieve my train of thought.

Really Slow Food

2011-06-10T13:36:00.000-07:00

There's been a thread running through my recent reading material addressing the consumption of food: essentially, how people make food choices in ways that add meaning to their lives. The Slow Food Movement, which began in Italy, is one such approach. The movement aims to preserve local culinary traditions and produce, by celebrating the process of preparing and eating food.

I can get behind any movement that encourages drinking wine in a Mediterranean climate. And I support the principle of preserving diversity and local wisdom. However, the movement is drifting towards the aspirational lifestyle. It's in danger of creating a stereotype - the cucina paisan, where a rosy-cheeked daughter of the soil, up to her elbows in flour and a sense of well-being, provides nourishing food for loved ones.

The reality is not quite like that. Providing food for loved ones can feel like a Sisyphean task - no sooner is one meal is cooked and eaten then it's time to start preparing the next one. The reality is less aspirational, and rarely ends with a luxurious dinner party in an olive grove. On a good night, it might end with us eating on the slightly chicken poop-y picnic table under the apple tree, wearing two extra sweaters to combat the fresco part of our al fresco dining.

So I'm championing a new movement, based on my experience cooking in the country. I'm calling it Really Slow Food. I want to recognise our abilities as hunters, stock persons, foragers and growers, and to quantify our skills and our hours in the field as a valid part of eating. Our time in the kitchen is the final stage of a journey to turn raw ingredients into something ready to cook.

Sadly, real life gets in the way of all aspirations. I've included my own personal struggle with the interruptions of daily life that impede my ability to get a meal on the table. Please feel free to add your own in the comments section.

Some aspects of Really Slow Food:

1) Most of the ingredients are still in their original form

Often, the main part of our meal is still hanging un-butchered in the chiller, or un-harvested in the ground. It might take me an hour to butcher an entire roe deer, so I can have some of the leg meat for tonight's stew.

2) Sometimes, I have to wait for the ingredients to be ready

During my last cake-baking session I ran out of eggs and had to wait until my hens laid two more, so I could finish what I started. As much as I would love some french beans to go with a fish pie, they aren't ready to pick yet.

The garden is growing, but only a few salad crops are ready

3) When the ingredients are ready, I have to fend off the wildlife to get them

That cherry tree in the foreground of the photo? Every year the blackbirds beat me to the ripe fruit. This year, I'm going to make mesh sleeves for individual branches to keep the birds away. It will take me some time to make the sleeves and the fruit is getting ripe quickly. I estimate that I have a week to get the job done, or my pies will be cherry-less.

4) I'm preparing food for more than one species at every mealtime

There are lots of mouths to feed. The lambs need milk four times a day. The working dogs need extra feeds and table scraps, which I cook alongside our own meals. I have a bowl for chickens' food and a bowl for compost; both get filled as I peel vegetables and pick over carcases, or find I have pastry left over from making a pie.

What really slows down my cooking is the general benign chaos of my life. Here are a few examples from the past week. There are the physical impediments, like dogs wrestling -

Lily and Quincy

Every dog owner knows that dogs prefer to wrestle where they can be most inconvenient to you. Every dog knows that wrestling in the kitchen means a chance to pick up any food that drops on the floor. If you're a labrador, everything is edible.

There are also interruptions, mostly from visitors coming to the door. It's a small village and everyone knows your schedule, more or less. Anyone who knows me knows that I get a lot of my cooking done on my days off, so they can find me in my kitchen. Underkeeper Pete brings me interesting things he catches in his traps -

So besides dogs wrestling, there's now a dead weasel in the kitchen. Hygiene is apparently an optional part of the Really Slow Food movement.

The dead stuff usually stays outside, and I go look at it there. Ian, our work experience student, proudly showed off the first fox he shot. Pete stopped by for a second opinion on what killed a pregnant fallow doe he found -

Probably a pair of running dogs. Something has killed alpaca cria nearby and it's possibly the same culprits. (I expect there will be heated exchanges and recriminations at the next village hall meeting).

Not everything the boys bring me is dead. Sometimes just very close to it, like this kit -

Mike found it in the road with no obvious injuries, just cold and unresponsive. I gave it some warm milk with a syringe, and put it out back in a box of lint next to the dryer. The dryer was on and the shed was warm. The kit recovered within half an hour but I burned a batch of scones, distracted by my impromptu vet duties.

Sometimes it's slow food because I have to make it twice. I had just made a bowl of pasta for lunch when the estate office rang. There was an injured deer in the gardens, could someone please come down and "deal with it". I left my lunch on the sideboard, picked up a gun, and met Mike in the garden. It was a ten minute job, which was long enough for the dogs to help themselves to my lunch.

Finally, there are what I call Random Acts of Husband. These are unpredictable but inevitable events, most often involving expenditure and/or a trip to the emergency room. Thankfully last week it was the former. "Hey honey - Come out and see what I just bought!" -

An old Land Rover. I took it for a test drive while a joint of venison was roasting in the oven. It handles like a supermarket shopping trolley, but it pulls like a team of oxen. Perfect for towing trailers. And, as far as mid-life crises go, it was cheaper than a Porsche or a mistress (Mike says he can't fit his fishing rods in a Porsche. I said the same probably applies to a mistress). The license plate was oddly appropriate too -

This isn't a lifestyle anyone would aspire to, but I wouldn't change these interruptions for anything. They enrich my time in the kitchen. They are the umami of my day.

When my cooking and baking were done, and I earned a reprieve from the kitchen, I sat outside by the vegetable patch with a cup of tea and willed the plants to grow faster. I heard a chirruping racket coming from the starling nest under the eaves of the house. Every few minutes, a starling parent arrived with a beakful of whatnot, eliciting a riot of noise from hungry chicks. One parent would leave empty, and the other would arrive full. The chicks never seemed sated.

I think I know how those starling parents feel.

The Angry Pheasant

2011-05-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

The Stork's visit

2011-05-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

Ten buff orpington chicks hatched in the incubator. I fostered 2 under the pekin hen -

And 8 chicks under a buff hen -

It seems an unfair division, but it's a size issue. The buff has more junk in her feathery trunk, good for keeping chicks warm. Both broods are thriving.

The stork had a delivery for me too -

Five orphan lambs, three girls and two boys. The ewe lambs (big ears) are mule x Texel, a commercial meat breed who will join my flock of Dorsets. The rams (black noses) are Charolais x, and will live in my freezer eventually. For now, I'm caught up in the cute factor.

The stork should be visiting us again sometime in September, if these coloured bottoms are any indication -

There were four green bottoms (and, somewhat disturbing, one green forehead) before I changed the raddle harness crayon. The ewes cycle every seventeen days, so changing the colour lets me know which were covered earliest, and helps me work out more accurate due dates.

There is one very red bottom already, and two yet to be covered properly. When every sheep looks like a christmas ornament, the ram can go back home for a well-deserved rest.

The Blue Seal Club

2011-05-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

For the past two seasons I've had to get a contract shearer in to shear my small flock of sheep, because I don't have the skills or machinery required. What I have got is a can-do attitude and access to the Internet, where I found the British Wool Marketing Board website. The BWMB sponsors shearing courses and if you're a farmer (the government says we qualify) the cost is minimal. I had visions of shearing my own sheep this time next year.

Two days on a course has corrected my vision.

This was not a shearing course for hobby farmers with backyard flocks - a group I'm firmly a member of. The course was set up to train the would-be professional shearer. To pass this first level and earn my Blue Seal, I had to prove I could set up and maintain the equipment, and shear to a memorised pattern of cuts called the Bowen technique:

courtesy of shearingworld.com

Along with seven other students, I set about learning a complicated dance of arm movements and foot placement with an unwilling partner that wriggled, kicked, and pooped on me. All while wielding a set of sharp oscillating blades. The aim was to get the wool off efficiently, in saleable condition, leaving you and the sheep with as few bleeding cuts as possible.

We practiced on a commercial flock of Romneys, a large breed with a heavy fleece. The staple length is phenomenal. Compare a length of fiber from Romney sheep with my own Dorset's -

Dorset (l) and Romney (r)

The farm has a purpose-built shearing area with 4 stations -

The dogs run sheep into holding pens behind each station -

hardworking Huntaway x Kelpie sheep dogs - suitable for big flocks and long work days

The shearer catches her sheep, drags it out through the pen door, shears it -

then pokes it into a pop hole with a slide, where it drops down under the pens and ends up back in the yard. Our group finished these ewes the first day -

And bagged this much wool, to be graded and sold -

Minus the two fleeces I was given for hand spinning!

A good contract shearer can shear up to 300 sheep in a day. How many did I manage to shear the first day? Five. Five sheep. I am sixty times slower than a commercial shearer. I wasn't much quicker the second day, but I sheared nine and my technique improved. I remembered most of the dance steps.

And terms. There's a whole language involved in shearing. Hand pieces, cutters, combs. Elbows, heels. Worm drives and pin drives. "Firing a blow" means taking one pass with your clippers over the sheep. The fewer blows you use to "clean a sheep" (remove the wool), the quicker you are. Ten extra blows per sheep x 300 sheep per day = 3,000 unnecessary and tiring arm movements. Multiplied by a shearing season = a limited career as a shearer, or at the very least an operation to repair the tendon in your wrist.

There is a uniform that comes with the job too: reinforced trousers able to withstand punishment from hooves and horns, and special moccasins -

I looked like a Middle-earth Hobbit shearer. By the end of the day, I smelled like it too. I didn't have the trousers so I had to make do with jeans, old ones I'd repaired by patching the crotch and knees with an old t-shirt and Copydex glue (Tremendously successful! Email me for details.)

All the students were struggling with their own shortcomings: some had problems remembering the foot placement, others couldn't hold the sheep securely. I had to concentrate on keeping my cutting edge on the sheep to prevent second cuts. My neighbor was just the opposite. He cut too deeply, and twice I saw blood squirt out of his sheep. At one point there was so much blood that I wasn't sure if he was shearing it or sacrificing it to his god.

Because it's a commercial farm, we got experience with a variety of sheep: plain (i.e. thin) ones, fat ones, young ones, ones with scabs and injuries. When taking a break between sheep, I got a chance to stitch up a cut (my neighbor's "squirter"), using dental floss and a curved needle. I learned how to invert a prolapse and stitch that up too.

The tutor taught me another method of catching a sheep with minimal effort, and how to tie the legs to the head to immobilise a sheep if, for example, you're out in a field and need to stitch in a prolapse without a second pair of hands. It was a valuable lesson in general and emergency sheep care. You can't over value the gift of someone else's years of experience.

My own two-day experience taught me that I could shear my own flock over a period of a couple days if I invested in the machine. More importantly, it taught me that I don't want to. I will continue to get a contract shearer in, but I'll do a few alongside him, enough to enjoy the process.

I earned my Blue Seal badge. And I'm going to take the course again next year, to improve on my knowledge. I might even go for the Bronze Seal. But if you want my help shearing your flock, I think I'm washing my hair that day.

Mike & the Princess

2011-05-14T23:48:00.000-07:00

I blogged recently about our visit from Princess Anne and thought I would share the photos of Mike meeting the Princess Royal -

Mike enjoyed their brief chat about hunting and shooting, as she is a keen sporting lady.

I'm on a sheep shearing course this weekend, and promise to share what I learn with any would-be DIY sheep shearers. Lesson one: Are you crazy?!? Get a contractor in to shear them.

Conjugal Rites

2011-05-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

I didn't get an invite to the royal wedding. Perhaps it got lost in the mail. Maybe a corgi ate it. It was probably a blessing as all the hat shops have been sold out for months, and I have sheep jobs to get on with. The grass is good, the lambs have been weaned and the ewes have been sheared. It was time to get the ram.

Meet L815 -

He's on loan to me and my flock for the next six weeks. He's a young ram, as yet unproven. To make sure he's at least trying to cover the ewes, I decided to fit him with a raddle harness.

Working out which buckle goes in which hole

Mr. Baker helped me fit it. It went on a lot tighter than I would have thought. Mr. Baker reminded me that if the ram's doing his job with the requisite amount of enthusiasm, the weight will drop off him. So we tightened all the buckles, and put a green chalk in the raddle.

Checking the position of the chalk, to ensure it's not interfering with his breathing or rubbing on the breastbone

I also bought another ewe as I can't make the annual sale next Tuesday (pheasant duties). Meet N1125-

Polled Dorset ewes are not pretty. They look even more coarse and ignoble with their wool off. More Anne of Cleves than Kate Middleton. Perhaps the ram will see it differently.

I admit I was slightly apprehensive about handling a ram. This animal has an armor-plated skull and the testosterone levels of a sailor on shore leave. I just need to keep my wits about me while he's part of the flock.

I unloaded him into the field with "his" ewes. The ladies made straight for him and the new ewe, and everyone had a sniff of everyone else. Both groups commingled easily.

There was no wedding ceremony but the ewes were about to have their honeymoon night. I didn't need the paparazzi to tell me how it went - that's what the raddle harness is for.

There was one ewe with a green bottom this morning: Eudora. Apparently, as far as sheep go, Eudora is easy. I'm sure the others will succumb to Prince L815's charms soon enough.

I weaned the lambs later than usual, and one of the two mothers still had a lot of milk. Besides the worry that she might come into season late, I was concerned that the pressure on her udder was uncomfortable for her, and could lead to mastitis. I caught her up at feeding time, and milked a small amount from her.

I'd never milked a sheep before. It wasn't difficult, except that I had to keep a death grip on her hind leg with my free hand, to prevent her running back to the rest of the flock. I saved the milk in a clean jug to try it for myself. I drink raw milk regularly, and I've tried store bought sheep's milk. How bad could it be?

I tried it in a cup of tea -

It tasted sheepy, but not unpleasant. It doesn't have the same body as cow's milk, and it was slightly sweeter. I think I'll leave the sheep's milk to the lambs. And, if all goes well, the next crop of heirs should be born this September to my seven ewes.

That gives me plenty of time to get a hat for the occasion.

Shear hard work

2011-04-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

All the talk in the feed store is weather-related. Stop a farmer on his quad bike or her tractor and it's "Hello. Lovely weather. We're going to pay for it later, mind." I haven't figured out if they think that uninterrupted sunshine is running up some karmic meteorological debt, and forces of nature are waiting to punish us by raining on our summer barbecues from now until September to restore the balance.

Perhaps it's a more practical cost; no rain means the grass or maize won't grow and we'll be short of winter fodder again. All I know is that, for the first time ever, the wild stampede that is spring gardening is already corralled and under control. At least for now.

I'll probably pay for that hubris later, mind.

The early warmth has been less pleasant for the sheep, who are still wearing their winter clothes. I don't usually shear them until May but they looked so uncomfortable, and the ram is coming in the next fortnight. It's not good husbandry to stress the sheep when they're trying to conceive, and as a general rule rolling them about on the shearing board isn't relaxing. For either of us.

I don't loathe shearing, but it's hot, heavy work. To say I'm an inexperienced shearer is an understatement. Steve, the farmer who came to shear with me today, has sheared a thousand sheep in his time, and he claims to be an amateur. I couldn't do it without guidance yet.

Learning is made more difficult by my choice of sheep. Polled Dorsets are notorious fidgets. Five minutes on its back and the sheep is thrashing wildly. If you've ever been kicked by a sheep you'll know they're stronger than they look, with the precision aim of a crotch-seeking missile. A skilled shearer can get the wool off in five minutes; a trainee is still figuring out the complicated positions - a foot here, a knee there - vital to holding on to your sheep long enough to get the clippers over it. I didn't loose a sheep this time, though at one point I was pinned under one, laying flat to avoid kicking back legs, and holding one of its ears in each hand, in a desperate bid to prevent its escape.

That may explain why I have sheep shit on the back of my head.

It was bone-tiring, but it was a good learning process. I learned that ewe lambs are less patient than older sheep. I learned that it saves your back if you pen them close to where you plan to shear them, rather than catching and dragging each sheep from the far end of the barn, where it's trying to hide from you. I learned wearing sneakers gives you better grip and contact than hiking boots. I learned that if you pen the sheep overnight away from grass, they get rid of all their poo before you shear them, and less ends up in your hair.

I managed to shear Eunice by myself

I've also learned that the local agricultural college runs a three-day sheep shearing course, so I've put my name on the list. And I'm going to practice on a few of Steve and Peggy's sheep, a quiet and less woolly variety.

The fleeces, ready to be cleaned and spun.

All the ewes have been sheared. The ram lambs will go on shortly, in their wool.

I loaded all the lambs in the sheep trailer, and moved them to the paddock across the road. It's the same paddock where they were born, only six months ago. They have each other for company and don't seem distressed by the weaning process. I can see them from my bedroom window, which makes checking on them a breeze. I can also hear them through the bedroom window calling for their dinner.

Which reminds me, I have a small lamb roast in the oven. No relation.

Human training

2011-04-20T13:02:00.000-07:00

As the days get longer, so does my list of chores. I've just put the last of the chickens to bed (the ones that think they're night owls), and I've come inside to have a well-deserved cup of tea, and to finish the book I've been reading about dog training.

The dogs have all eaten their dinners and Pip the early bird heads off to bed - my bed - as she's chewing her last mouthful. I've just got the last four pages to read, and I'm about to settle down in my chair. Then I hear Pip slide off the bed, and her claws click on the wood floor.

She comes back down the stairs and puts her head around the door. She doesn't come those last few steps into the room, as she's an energy conservationist (her own, that is). Her head is moving back and forth, a ripple effect caused by a gently wagging tail as the motion moves up her body. And she stares at me.

Oh yeah. I forgot to put the electric blanket on. Pip won't go to bed if it's not pre-warmed first, by blanket or a human body.

So I get up and go put the blanket on for her. A dog with a perfectly serviceable fur coat. A dog who has just given me a slightly disappointed look because of my careless oversight regarding her comfort.

I hope the last four pages of this book cover what to do when your dog knows you're a sucker.

Spring chickens. And quail.

2011-04-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

Spring is nearly here, the signs are everywhere. The blossom is falling off the blackthorn trees, and the bluebells are flowering. Vixens have gone to ground to have their cubs. I saw my first swallow this morning, picking insects out of the air. I picked my own insects: the first tick of the season off of Quincy.

Well, technically a tick is an arachnid, but why split hairs.

The weather has been so favorable, from a gardener's perspective, that for the first time ever I'm caught up with my sowing and planting. That's my ~~slapdash~~ comprehensive garden plan for this year, scrawled on the back of an envelope -

And you can put your seed packets and notes inside the envelope so you don't lose them. Genius.

I'm using a four-plot rotation system, and companion planting. The garden is dug, manured, fed, and sown with everything but the late-season and tender plants. I've even remembered to put down enviromesh to prevent a repeat of last year's carrot root fly problem -

I was so on top of things, that I broke out the lawn chairs and cooked dinner in the chiminea - grilled mackerel and pheasant burgers, the gamekeeper version of surf & turf.

You'll have to allow me this moment of almost-smug success. It didn't last long, as you'll see.

Spring sap's not just rising in the plants. The cockerels - pheasant, chicken, and quail - have colored up and are beginning to vie for female attention. And fight. Cockerels love to fight. Even our heavyweight Buff Orpington cockerel was sporting a bruised eye, closed and puffy from a fight with featherweight Lloyd the pekin cockerel, a third the Buff's size. I'm not even sure how Lloyd reached that high.

But the quail seem to be the pugilists of the poultry world. The aviary has turned into Madison Square Garden. The weaker males have bloodied heads, and the females are missing the feathers from the back of their necks from frequent male attention. I knew it was time to put some quail in the freezer.

The sad truth of farm life is fewer males are needed than females. One ram can serve fifty ewes, a pheasant cockerel can easily hold ten hens. If a male isn't good enough for breeding stock, then he's only good enough for the freezer. If you're a male born on a farm, it's either the stud or the abbatoir for you: heaven or hell, so to speak.

When I sexed the quail, I had three hens and eight cocks, which explains all the fighting. I kept one cock for breeding and the rest I've started to process.

In case any reader is interesting in vent sexing quail - and who wouldn't be? - it's very easy to do. Start by turning your quail on its back, and gently push the tail up to expose the vent. If a small ball of foam comes out, it's a boy -

Once plucked, you can see that, just above the vent, the male has a swollen bottom -

It only swells during breeding season, and the foam is only produced at this time too. However, I find that vent sexing is a more definitive method for sexing quail than colour.

I processed three quail this morning, saving the feathers for a local fly fisherman. Apparently they make good fly-tying material. Spud and Lily kept me company through the laborious task of plucking. The skin on quail is very thin and tears easily when plucking. The finished birds couldn't have looked worse if I'd let the dogs chew the feathers off.

Well, I processed two birds and all was going well. I hung them on the back of the truck where they would be out of reach of dogs playing in the garden. I had just dispatched the third when my spidey senses started tingling. Where was Quincy?

Behind the shed eating a bag of rat poison she excavated from a hole, that's where.

She came out with the empty bag on her head.

I didn't waste any time. I removed the bag from her head, bundled her into the truck, and drove straight to the vets, which is thankfully only ten minutes away.

I forgot the dead, plucked quail were still hanging from the rear of the truck until I was halfway through the centre of town and looked in my rearview mirror. There they were - swinging left, then right as I navigated the turns to the vets - completely naked except for their feathered heads.

(I'd put the just-dispatched bird I was holding when I caught Quincy into the nearest recepticle, which happened to be the metal bin we use as a mail box. I came home and found the mail left on top of the dead bird. Thank goodness for country post men, nothing phases them.)

Quincy got the same treatment that Spud got when she ate the poisoned rat. All signs for recovery look good as we got the poison out quickly. With some gentle persuasion from his wife (i.e. I showed him the vet's bill), Mike has agreed to go back to trapping the rats, at least until Quincy gets older.

Quincy found the bag because of her exceptional gun dog nose. I know her scenting ability is already well-developed, even if her judgement isn't.

Finished quail

Quincy - on the couch and on the mend

Mooo-vie Night

2011-04-05T07:34:00.000-07:00

We have a cup that sits on our bookshelf, and we fill it with any loose change from our pockets or money from selling eggs. It's our 'entertainment fund'. Our entertainment consists of two things: 1) buying bird seed so we can attract little birds into our garden and watch them while we do the dishes, and 2) going to the movies.

I'm not a great movie-goer, mainly because sitting in a dark, warm theatre immediately causes me to fall asleep. I rarely make it through a whole movie, and Mike has to tell me how it ends. I've seen 3/4ths of lots of films.

After we bought a bag of birdseed, there was enough money left over for me to go see a movie with some ladies from the village - Helen the dairy farmer, and Jilly and Lynn my riding partners. We went to see Tamara Drewe because it had been filmed around here. The director used some farms and houses of people we knew. Tamara's cottage is our friend Colin the gamekeeper's house.

Yes, we paid to watch a film of places we see every day.

In my defense, if I fell asleep, I figured I wouldn't be missing out. And I knew how it ended, as I had followed the original serialised comic when it first appeared in The Guardian newspaper. In the end, I managed to stay awake for the whole film.

The highlight of the film, for me, was sitting next to Helen. In the final scene, a herd of black and white cows came stampeding down a hill. Helen whispered to me, "I recognise those cows. Those are Bernard's cows!" Bernard is a farmer a few villages away who keeps Holstein-Friesian dairy cattle, the same type of cattle kept by every commercial dairy in this area. Helen actually recognised individual cattle in someone else's herd. In a film. Running down a hill.

It amazes me what people know.

image from allposters.com

Oh, deer...

2011-04-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

It's a busy time of year for us. I probably say that a lot, but it's true this time, honest. The weather is warming up and the mud is drying up. Milkweed has been harrowed to flatten out hoof prints. Early vegetables seeds are sprouting in the greenhouse, and the magnolia is in bloom -

The chickens love eating the fallen blossoms when I first let them out in the morning. It seems an odd choice for breakfast. I would like to think that the chickens know what they need to eat to lay the best eggs, but I've seen them eating Styrofoam so the jury's out on chicken logic.

I've finished netting over my expanded vegetable patch -

I'm nearly finished manuring and digging the two new beds now. A continuous fortnight of good weather has helped. I had to stop digging after I went to a Zumba class. The class looked like fun and I figured I could use the cardio to balance out my muscle bulk from activities like flipping sheep and digging. My sciatic nerve didn't agree and now I can't sit down without causing a shooting pain up my leg. I'm writing this post standing up at the kitchen counter, and my onions are definitely going to get planted late this year.

The upside of not sitting down is that lots of little jobs are getting done, where I would normally flop down in front of the television and squander that time watching re-runs of 'Columbo'. The dogs get extra long walks, and I even found time to slap a coat of fresh paint on the cupboards in the kitchen, which is also my temporary study until I get better.

The quail have started laying and I have to hunt for their well-camouflaged eggs hidden in the deep straw bedding -

quail egg compared to chicken egg

Susan is broody. I replaced her clutch with five Buff Orpington eggs -

I don't mind hatching a few more dual purpose chickens. A few days ago my neighbor Simon asked me to dispatch Trevor, his Buff Orpington cockerel. He brought round a bit of the cooked bird for us to try last night. There wasn't a huge amount of breast meat but the legs were large and the bird was very tasty. A bit gamey even. Simon says that was probably a reflection of Trevor's personality. I won't mind so much now if a few boys hatch out in Susan's brood.

The pheasants have started laying in their pens, and we began collecting the eggs this week. There are 32 pens, each pen holds 65 hens and 8 cocks. I'll save you the math: 2,080 laying hen, 256 breeding cocks. The pens stretch the length of the field -

My sheep are currently grazing the grass on the laying field, and they follow me from pen to pen, watching me put eggs in a basket.

I think that the egg basket resembles a feed bucket, if you're a sheep.

Quincy is growing like a spring weed. Lily the chocolate lab has been an energetic and tolerant playmate for Quincy. The more they play together, the more Quincy learns and, more importantly, the less she chews my shoes.

Lily has started spending weekdays at her new home, with her new owner. We all look forward to seeing her back on the weekends. No one more than Spud, who gets stuck with puppy duties when Lily's not here. Spud spends most of her weekends recuperating -

On top of vegetable plots, egg picking, and dog wrestling matches, there are still deer to harvest. Thursday was the end of doe season, and Friday was the start of roe buck season. I still had one more doe to account for, and I went out every night this past week to try and bag her.

A deer ride through the woods - a good starting place

I don't think I've ever had such a dry spell. The first night I saw the back end of one disappear into the covert. The second night out, I saw nothing. Third night, I decided to take the dogs for a walk and didn't carry a gun. Of course, I saw two decent cull animals in range. The fourth night, I found this -

A fresh pile of deer scat, still warm (yes I touched it...) I walked on and hoped to run into the beast, but saw nothing. In desperation, I sat above a deer trail with good views and a good back stop (for the rifle bullet, should I miss). I sat until it got dark and the pain from sitting got the better of me -

You can just make out the path - look through the top centre square

Nothing. No does before the end of the season. I will have to tack that one onto next season's cull plan. I hope I have better luck with roe bucks this week.

I did find something else, something disturbing and unwelcome -

It's a home made ball bearing. I found it under a tree where pheasants roost. Poachers shine a light into treetops, to spot pheasants roosting. They use catapults to fire heavy ball bearings at the pheasants, knocking them off their perch, dead or close to it. No gun shot to give yourself away, and minimal disturbance to all the pheasants which can be noisy when alarmed. Poachers can develop frightening accuracy with a catapult.

We've found other ball bearings in the same area, so we'll be extra vigilant now. I'm happy to stand watch. Anything to avoid sitting down.

Flesh and Bones

2011-03-26T02:02:00.000-07:00

This time last week I dedicated a whole day to all things horse. The farrier came and put on new shoes, the vet came and gave Kitty and Alan their boosters against horse flu, and the dentist came to file their teeth. I gave them a big grooming session as their winter coats are coming out, which is an indisputable sign that spring is here. Kitty's winter coat is never wrong.

I put all the horse sheddings in a bird feeder and the blackbirds plunder it to build their nests. The birds know when it's spring too.

Today it was the sheeps' turn. Their winter grazing on Milkweed is looking tired, and Tractor Dave is coming to roll and feed the grass so it was time to move the sheep. While they're gathered up, it's a good time to worm them and trim their feet, and generally give them a good once over.

With no outbuilding and ten acres for loose sheep to cavort about avoiding capture, I had to fashion a pen and entice them into it. A bucket of barley was enough to get them to ignore the open horse trailer and walk into the pen

I just picked up the trailer from its service, and I was worried that the truck wouldn't pull it when it was full of sheep. The clutch is so bad on the truck that every night I have to reverse up our sloping driveway, because it won't hold in first gear.

After digging the garden yesterday, and wrestling the trailer this morning, fetching all the metal hurdles was tiring. I can feel my wrists and elbows complaining. I worry that my joints are getting worn out. I try to carry more than my upper body strength allows and I think of those bodies from Pompeii. Archaeologists were able to discern slaves' bones from the scarring at the insertions of the muscles. These scars were most prominent on the arms of young girls. And I've got twenty years on them.

God, even my bones are lower class.

By the time I'd caught and treated the first two lambs, I had to surrender. I called Mike and Underkeeper Pete for assistance, and maybe some moral support. My gloves were ripped, I'd broken my makeshift worming syringe, and my hands were shaking from muscle fatigue. When the work gets physically hard, just some company, someone to hand you the can of antibacterial foot spray, takes the pressure off.

With help, I finished the sheep ablutions in an hour. Their feet were desperately overgrown so I've made a note to trim feet more often, my joints be damned.

The truck pulled the loaded trailer. I began to relax a bit and enjoy the few miles between Milkweed and their new field.

No gloves = purple hands. That will take a few days to wear off

I used what was left of my clutch to pull the trailer up the dirt track to the field. The sheep dribbled out and sampled their new forage. My bones are due a day's rest now, or until the sheep shearer comes.

Hayley (our farrier) and I were discussing joints and bones when she visited. Hayley trained for years, and worked as an apprentice blacksmith. Now she has her own business and a mobile forge in the back of her truck. She "hot shoes" horses, heating a basic horseshoe in a forge and shaping it on an anvil to fit the horse's foot exactly.

She's a good fifteen years younger than me but she's already doing her best to conserve her joints. If clients want their horses shod, but the horse doesn't actually need shoes, Hayley tells them she's not prepared to do it. "I only have a certain number of shoes in me. Every pair I fit takes its toll on my body, and I need to work for as long as possible. If they only need a trim, that's what they're going to get."

Outdoor physical work has long been undervalued. There should be a premium paid if you are earning a living at the expense of your body. In most cases, these are jobs that someone else is paying you to do because they are not strong enough to do it, or the work is too hard for them to even contemplate. But there's a stigma associated with people who labor, outside laborers particularly. Hayley labors, but she is a business woman and an artisan. I use my back to grow plants and raise chickens, but I also use my knowledge of soil science, plant biology, and animal husbandry. My brain isn't wearing out, at least not as fast as my skeleton.

Mike is also wearing out, though the accident caused a great leap in his demise, and some side effects. Quincy the puppy is teething and tries to use anything or anyone as a chew toy. I saw the puppy playing on Mike's lap, writhing about and chewing his shirt sleeve. Then I saw blood. Mike doesn't have much feeling in his right arm and he didn't notice the puppy had chewed a hole in his skin. I cleaned it up and it's healing fine. Wearing out on the inside is one thing, being devoured from the outside is another.

US vs UK

2011-03-21T07:45:00.000-07:00

My husband and I enjoy a good debate, about anything really. From whether to butter toast when it's still hot (I'm for, he's against) to the validity of GM food as a solution to world hunger (he's for, I'm against).

The debates can get quite heated because we are diametrically opposed, politically speaking, and it often ends in a draw, with both of us agreeing to disagree. We're respectful of each other's views. For example, I would describe myself as a feminist; Mike is respectful of my feminism because, as he says, he doesn't know what it's like to be a woman. Mike describes himself as a Royalist. I'm respectful of that because I don't know what it's like to be British.

It's not that I'm against British royalty per se. It's just that I don't have a category to fully understand what it is. Not quite celebrity, not quite government. A GMO - Glamorous Monarchic Organisation. In fact, before I moved to England some 15 years ago I only had two images in my head of the British royal family: Charles and Diana on their wedding day and the cartoon image of King George III from the Schoolhouse Rock series.

Fair to say, it wasn't a well-rounded political view point.

I was thinking about this last night while I ironed Mike's good shirt and dug out his clean shooting tweeds. As part of the Estate team, he will be meeting HRH Princess Anne this morning. Her Royal Highness is our visiting dignitary.

If you're reading this and you are an American, you are probably thinking 'Which one is that?' Princess Anne is the Queen's daughter. You might know her as an Olympic Event rider. She wears her hair in a bun. Her daughter Zara is the other British royal wedding scheduled this year. That's all I knew about the Princess Royal. I had to look her up on Wikipedia.

Mike is quietly looking forward to meeting Princess Anne. I'm not a royalist. I think more like Justin Halpern's dad, that it's just one more day I can't wear sweatpants. I can't let the chickens free range either, and I can't go stalking. Secret service don't like to hear rifle shots in the nearby woods.

I shouldn't be so flippant. It's an honor for Mike. Last July, we received an invitation to attend HM The Queen's Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, and we were two of a handful of people presented to Her Majesty. I stood in the middle of Buckingham Palace lawn, in a borrowed hat, having a discussion about grey partridge and labradors with the Queen of England. It was a huge honor though, let's face it, Mike was the welcome guest, I was totally the 'plus one' on that invitation.

The experience reformed my view of royalty. The Queen was the most dignified person I have ever met. She was also educated and witty - she even made a gamekeeping joke. She is obviously really good at her job. That is not a job I would like to do. I'm not a people person, and the thought of spending every day of my life fulfilling social obligations with no hope of retirement would give me apoplexy. I have a lot of respect for the Queen.

So, as I was writing this post, I heard Princess Anne's helicopter coming in to land, in the field just across from our cottage. I put on a clean(ish) coat, went out, and stood to wave to her alongside my neighbors (all six of us). The Princess Royal was just a tiny figure in a white coat.

Don't get me wrong, it's a lovely bit of cultural theatre to watch but I'm not a convert to Monarchy and the associated class system.

I was reading the itinerary for today's visit (I found the puppy chewing on it) and saw that the Princess and her lady-in-waiting were scheduled to have lunch in one room, Lord and Lady were having lunch in a different room, and the Lord Lieutenant (a monarch's personal representative when visiting a county) was having her lunch in a third room. All at the same time. I asked Mike why they weren't all having lunch together. "Protocol I suppose", said Mike. Is the class system so strict that royals can't share a meal with aristocrats, who in turn won't deign to share their table with a civil servant?

Lady S stopped by our cottage yesterday. She wanted Mike to find her some new hens for her garden. On her way out, she took three boxes of eggs and said 'Oh Mike, I haven't got any money for these.' and left. Mike accepts this as a tithe levied by the estate. I see it as taxation without representation. I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one, too.

I won't see Mike until after he's met the Princess Royal. I hope it goes well. I have to get on and dig the new vegetable patch now. As the princess flies over the house, she may catch a glimpse of a lone peasant working the soil, but thinking revolutionary thoughts.

Don't bother visiting us

2011-03-18T02:32:00.000-07:00

There's nowhere for you to sit.

Signed,

The Dogs

Labradorable

2011-03-14T14:38:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone for all the great and funny name suggestions. I will be referring to your list to name our future dogs for years to come. Feeling a bit homesick for New England, I settled on a good Bostonian name: Quincy. I can shorten it to Quince and, with her tiny head and fat puppy bottom, she's the same lumpy shape (as the fruit, not Jack Klugman) -

Quincy is growing by the day and she's already showing working dog tendencies. Beside carrying around a little stuffed pheasant toy, she helps me with the dishes -

Quincy has already worked out that if she climbs in the dishwasher while I'm loading it that she can lick the bowls and mugs on the top shelf above her head. Someone once told me that a labrador only has legs so that it can move its stomach about. I agree that they are easy to feed. Quincy eats everything from leftover oatmeal to daffodil flowers, if I don't keep a close eye on her.

However, Quincy's main job seems to be as a trip hazard. She's ankle high and tries to chew my shoes while I'm still wearing them. I've already got a fat lip from being headbutted by a lamb today (it objected to its injections) but I could do without a concussion to go with it. It's animal abuse, but in reverse. And the animals are winning.

Unless you're a chicken.

The next batch of meat chickens was ready for harvesting. The last batch had a lot of bruising around the breast which we decided was from flapping its wings during the killing process. A poultry killing cone holds the wings into the body, as well as holding the chicken up while it drains of blood. A proper poultry cone is made of stainless steel and costs lots of money, so we decided to make our own.

We upcycled a road cone (pinched from a skip, not the road) which we cut to fit. We banged 3 wooden posts on the ground and the cone sat nicely on top. It didn't even need securing. If you build one, make sure to leave enough room that you can reach in to stun your bird, and that you can fit a bucket underneath to catch what comes out. As always, the rubber dungarees are optional.

I've plucked 8 of the 10 birds already and no sign of bruising. I give the cone a big thumbs up.

It will be hard not to post lots of cute puppy pictures, but I promise that for every picture of Quincy in the dishwasher I will address the balance with pictures of all the less savoury aspects of our life. And if that doesn't put you off, just think of the rubber dungarees.

Pup update

2011-03-11T23:57:00.000-08:00

Mike surprised me with a labrador puppy. I wondered why he kept going on about "wouldn't it be nice to have a little puppy again!" and pointing out all the spring babies - calves, tiny pairs of lambs, baby bunnies, even badger cubs waking us up in the middle of the night with their noisy wrestling matches. I think Mike gets broody.

And, sure, it seems like 8 dogs would be enough already, to fill our lives with love (to paraphrase a TV show theme tune). But it's also a matter of filling our kennels with workers. I rely on Jazz and Dulcie, my hardcore spaniel team, but both girls are middle aged. In a couple of year's time, they won't be able to work 50 days a season. Pip the lab will probably have to slow down around the same time because of her weak hips. Podge the cocker spaniel and Spud will be the main team by then. Replacements always need to be following on behind.

It takes anywhere from 18 months to 3 years to train a dog, depending on its individual levels of maturity and ability. Keepers' dogs have to be the Jack of all Trades dogs, doing every job on the shoot: they hunt up any wounded birds after shoot season, 'dog' birds (i.e. chase them) back home when the birds are first released and begin to wander, then put birds over guns or find and retrieve shot birds for 5 straight months of winter. On days we're not shooting, we often help local shoots that are short handed, so 50 days is a minimum.

Of course, the retirees have a home for life, even after wear and tear means they can't work at all. We owe them that. Nellie is our only completely retired dog, but she likes riding in the truck and pottering around the garden. Pretty much what I will probably like when I'm an old lady. I even give her a cup of tea sometimes, if I'm making one for myself and we're taking a break from the weeding and whatnot.

This new pup probably won't be our only one this year. We will look out for a springer spaniel - the monkey wrench of shooting dogs, capable of every job - by summer. After the chocolate lab goes to her new home. The magic number hovers around 8 dogs.

Of course another puppy following on behind this one means I'm not going to get a night's unbroken sleep until next winter.

I picked out our so-far-still-nameless lab pup from the litter yesterday. I had 3 bitches to pick from and this one was by far the ugliest, made worse by a huge bruise on the bridge of its nose (from putting its face in another dog's food bowl). I wanted to pick one of the others but nameless pup was quieter, sat and looked at me, and kept picking up lengths of straw and carrying them over to me. She was definitely a little work bee...uh, lab. Looks don't count on a shoot day.

I took her straight to the vets for a check over and a jab of anti-inflammatory / antibiotics for her nose. Like most puppies, she was car sick and, on the way to the vets, vomited. Right onto the handbrake. Like a labrador, she proceeded to eat what didn't fall through the gap around the handbrake. So goes it sharing your life with an eight-week old puppy.

She's being crate trained in the house, and her crate is tucked the other side of our kitchen table cum office desk. This is usually Dakota's sleeping spot and she's slightly put out. None of the house dogs are thrilled by the new arrival. They're all upstairs in bed with Mike who was on 4am puppy duties. I raided Mike's old hospital supplies and found absorbent pads which make great puppy bedding.

I will try and think of a name, but I could use suggestions. Anything I can easily shout across a field with minimal embarassment will be considered. I keep calling her Bug, but I should have learned my lesson with the flatcoat. Nicknames end up being recognised by smart dogs, by which time it's too late to fix it. Hence Spud with forever be Spud. Help me save Bug from the same fate!

The Newest Member of the Team

2011-03-11T09:15:00.000-08:00

The Chicken and the Egg

2011-03-10T05:13:00.000-08:00

The 2011 Egg Season is officially open -

I repurposed a broody coop, adding legs and painting a blackboard sign on its front, to make an 'honesty box' for selling eggs at the bottom of our driveway.

The hens are laying with enthusiasm now that the days are getting longer. The don't always cooperate with me by laying them somewhere I can find them before the dogs do. The sheep trailer - currently acting as our hay storage - is their new favorite nest -

Even after the dogs take their cut and I bake a week's worth of cakes, I have a few dozen eggs left to sell. And that's not counting the bantam eggs which I reserve for hatching new stock.

Well, I used to anyway.

The cost of feed has risen significantly, and I can't justify keeping fancy hens for my...well...fancy. Hence, the leftover, un-purposed broody coop. I'll keep my current stock but I won't be raising any more.

I should say that I will attempt to keep my stock. Another deciding factor in giving up the bantams is loose dogs. Not ours, but visitors' dogs. The estate has many walking trails and weekends bring an influx of "townies" (as they're disparagingly known). Most have very well-behaved dogs and, as usual, it's only an handful of miscreants that wreak havoc: killing lambs, chasing deer into fences and mauling them, and of course chickens.

Ours are free-range and sometimes cross the road to scratch in the paddock across the way, or turn over leaf litter on the side of the road. That must be a terrible temptation for even the best behaved dog. But it's the dogs that come tearing into our garden trying to catch the chickens, with no sign of an owner, that are exasperating. In the past few months we've caught 3 separate dogs - all bull terriers, oddly - running around the garden in hot pursuit of their prey, which I've explained to the owners is also our livestock.

I shut the gate to the garden, but short of building more pens and keeping the chickens in permanently I am unable to protect them. One dog attack can decimate the breeding stock for a whole year, by the time you source replacement eggs, hatch them, raise them, and wait for them to reach sexual maturity. Then it's another cycle to produce their offspring for sale.

I'm going to streamline the poultry operation, and keep only meat chickens and hybrid layers. Both are easy to source and replace. Meat chickens are ready to harvest in three months. Generic brown hens start laying earlier and lay for longer, and they seem to be more successful escaping the rogue dogs. Neither succumbs to diseases that readily take down my fancier breeds. Between disease and dogs, it breaks my heart to watch the little bantams die.

I wonder if it's practical reasons like these which cause some of these rare breeds to become rare in the first place.

Communication Breakdown

2011-03-05T05:02:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry that I've been incommunicado for a few weeks. It's not because I've run out of rambling stories to share with you all (heaven forfend!) but rather a complete technological failure this end. Only days after the oven blew, my ancient laptop refused to run the Internet any longer, something about virtual memory being too low. Then Mike accidentally knocked the (equally aged) digital camera onto the floor and it stopped working. I retired them both, but had to find funds to acquire new equipment, and the skills to use them.

The funds were easy. My father felt, after his last visit spent slumming it in front of our 20" TV without a working remote, that we needed a new one. He kindly sent me the money to purchase one with the stipulation that we do so before his next visit. I'm not sure how to break the news to him that I've redistributed those funds. As a small concession, I bought a working remote control for the existing TV. And the new oven has a glass door, so he can always sit and watch the morning's loaf of bread rise.

The skills were harder to find. I stuck with the old machines even though they were limited because I knew the real limitation lay with their user. Aside from a few emails and a blog post now and then, I don't live much of my life online. I haven't got the requisite skills, evidenced by the fact it took me an entire day to set up my new laptop. And it came with the software on it and all my old files already transferred.

The camera was easier. I bought a newer version of the old model figuring I could intuit most of the buttons. What I didn't know is that memory cards are sold separately, like batteries in Christmas toys. Until a card comes via the good folks at Amazon, I can only take and store 3 pictures at a time. I have to download them to the blog post, delete them from the camera, and pop outside to take 3 more.

And it's damn cold here. Winter is holding fast. The wood burner is stoked up and there's soup on the stove. My toes haven't warmed up since we rode the horses from Milkweed to their summer paddock a few days ago. They're not even starting to shed their winter coats yet.

I just finished another cardigan, the first one spun from my own flock's wool -

The grey wool is my left over handspun Jacob from the estate's sheep, but the white wool is pure Dorset. I appreciate that, fashion-wise, pairing it with the rubber dungarees is more akin to Björk dressing for the Oscars. But until spring comes, I'm all about the warmth. The dungarees are windproof and the cardigan is so insulating, I know why the sheep still have frost on their backs when I check them in the morning.

I'm running out of time to get the greenhouse and the garden ready for spring. I pulled down the old panels from around the greenhouse, and put in a rail fence -

It lets more light in, but prevents dogs from accidentally running through a pane of glass when they come bursting out of their kennels for a walk. And I still have somewhere to hang the horse rugs out to dry.

I've harvested the last of the overwintered vegetables, and begun to dig over the soil. I borrowed the RTV and filled the flatbed with horse manure. All the hay and feed bills are a little easier to accept when I consider that I get a crop out of the horses - black gold for the garden. The chickens help me by removing the weed seeds and worms, and spreading the dung -

Technically, that's another crop from the dung: chicken snacks. We just took on another half dozen laying hens, ex-battery chickens from a commercial egg farmer. They're already scavenging like free-range pros.

I still have to find time to double the vegetable patch and to extend the net cover. I only just sent off my seed order yesterday. I need at least another two loads of manure. And half of the meat chickens need dispatching in the next day or two, before they run to fat.

I almost forgot the Hazel update. She's settled in with our friends Matt and Julie who are absolutely thrilled to have her. Hazel has the undivided attention of two young boys, loves being a house pet and gets on well with their old shepherd. In summer, Matt plays cricket for his local team. Players' dogs act as fielders, retrieving the long balls. Hazel was born for that job. She's so well placed now that it's hard to miss her, though of course we do.

With so much to relay after a few weeks away, I'm in danger of my own communication breakdown. I'll save the pheasant update for another time. We're pigeon shooting tonight, taking them as they come in to roost. Armed with my new camera, I can promise you at least 3 photos of that activity for the next blog post.

Reach for the Stairs

2011-02-18T07:50:00.000-08:00

Spud our little flat-coated retriever earned her stripes this season. Only 18 months old and still a baby, she worked as a full member of the dog team. In fact, the work seemed to suit her, giving her a constructive outlet for her considerable energy. I needed her when Dulcie got sidelined with the torn ligament, so Spud got an instant promotion. We had to skip a few training steps, so we're going back to basics now.

You might not think that you need to teach a dog to climb stairs. But sometimes you do.

Spud was crate trained and house-trained until she was a year old, but she never went upstairs. I've started bringing Spud into the house during the day, when I'm at home, to get her used to everyday domestic life. She follows me, or lays down and watches me, or brings me a sock from the laundry basket. But she was vexed by the stairs.

Training a food-oriented dog means you're already half way there. I sacrificed Mike's corned beef (he was saving it for lunch) and placed cut up pieces on stairs, each time encouraging Spud to climb another step.

It took a little time to master turning the corner -

Then it was just the final climb to the top -

I can totally do this..don't think about it...just run at it...eyes on the prize

Where I was waiting with more corned beef, and a huge pat for being so clever and brave.

Of course coming down the stairs was an entirely different concept. I worried if I put treats on the stairs, she would stop to eat them, trip over her own feet and end up in a heap at the bottom.

Mike's trousers were hanging on the bannister, so I borrowed the belt and looped it over her head - partly to encourage her forward and partly to stop her doing a superhero leap to clear all the stairs in a single bound.. After some hesitant straddling, a foot in each corner, she lunged for the bottom. Not the definition of a controlled descent, but she did it.

We did two more trips up and down the stairs, with copious praise and tidbits. The last trip down the stairs she did all by herself without breaking any bones or speed records -

Other things that I have learned from experience to teach a dog early on: having its toe nails clipped, riding in a car, a command to stop barking, no chasing cats or chickens (even if you don't have them yourself), and the vacuum cleaner is nothing to be afraid of. I've added climbing stairs to my list.

Spud was such a quick learner that I still had time to whip up a bowl of soup, and some cheese on toast, before Mike got home for lunch. He agreed that his corned beef went to a good cause.

There are just as many dog stories I could tell you, where we didn't get it quite right. Hazel has been our biggest failure. Smart and well-bred, but reeling from some hard and inconsistent training before we adopted her at four years old. As a pet, she great - obedient, fun-loving, kid-friendly, and very affectionate. As a working dog, she had some very bad habits. And a full day's work invariably ended with Hazel limping on a sore shoulder.

Friends of ours just happen to be looking for an older spaniel, to keep as a pet and take on walks. Their children are growing up and want a dog the kids can cuddle and play fetch with. And they live on a big estate too. They may take her home with them this weekend.

Hazel - always ready for a game of fetch

I will miss Hazel. I've never given up a dog before. She deserves a pet home.

Hay ewe guys...

2011-02-17T03:41:00.000-08:00

I now know that ten sheep can decimate half a small bale of hay per day-

I'll keep this figure in mind when we cut and store next year's bales.

Haying the sheep is fast becoming my favorite morning chore, despite being knocked about by the flock desperate for their breakfast. I can't get it into their makeshift feeder fast enough.

A twice daily feed means I can get an up-close look at each individual animal, and hopefully catch any nasty sheep ailments early. Secretly, I just think they're cute when they chew the hay. They seem to eat half and wear half.

I think we will have just enough to make it through winter.

Tunnels of Love

2011-02-13T11:32:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday night. Mike and I are spending a romantic pre-Valentine's evening together in front of the fire...making tunnels for pheasant catchers.

I'm using chicken wire to form cone shapes. The tunnels are wide at the entrance and narrow at the exit. They allow the birds into the catcher but prevent them from getting out again.

The dogs soon got bored of watching me, but were happy to stick around and share the heat from the wood burner.

One down, another 19 to go.

The oven is still broken so no cooking for another week at least. Mike's providing Valentine's Day dinner: take away curry for two, and probably another night of making tunnels (No, that's not a euphemism).

It's apropos in a way; the catchers bring together the hens and cock pheasants so, in spring, they can mate and lay eggs which we will hatch and raise as next season's birds. Maybe that's less romance than reproduction. As the hens can't escape, maybe it's more like abduction.

The more I learn about gamekeeping, the more I realise the romance of the rural idyll exists only in books, like romance only exists in books. Real life is tough, but far more rich and rewarding, like real love. The kind that is contented to make tunnels on Valentine's Day and to share one's poppadoms with a labrador.

Getting Vetted

2011-02-09T11:24:00.000-08:00

I don't have kids, but I'm told a large proportion of a mother's (or father's) day is spent driving them places. For small people without jobs, kids need to be a lot of places: school, piano lessons, swim club, doctor's appointments for jabs and check-ups. I guess they're kind of like animals in that last respect.

I was up early yesterday morning driving a couple of our fur kids to their vet appointment. Dakota needed her boosters, and Dulcie needed the vet's OK to get back to work, post-ligament repair. It was all fine until I returned home. I pulled into our drive to find Mike standing there, with Spud on a leash. Mike took her for a walk and Spud managed to eat a rat, which may or may not have been poisoned. I dumped the two dogs off, and stuck Spud in the truck and drove back to the vets. The vet nurses took Spud in the back room to purge her of her prize.

Spud coughed up a huge rat, completely intact, which she must have swallowed whole. The nurses called me and the rest of the staff in to have a look (it was a slow day). Spud got a jab of vitamin K, two boxes of pills to take home, and a dose of antibiotics for the now angry looking bites, possibly rat-related, on her snout. I got a bill and some teasing from the vets. So much for my 'No Vets this Month' plan.

And do you think I managed to keep away from the vets today? If you said Yes, then you're forgetting about these -

No, it's not Eudora this time. That's her on the left and she's back to normal.

Alright, nearly normal. If you don't count the bucket on her head.

This time the poorly sick sheep is Eunice, the little ewe lamb born in October. I noticed her ears were hanging a bit heavy.Weird thing to notice, I know.

Eunice (middle row, right)

I assigned fault to myself, thinking I must have put her ear tags in wrong. I got a closer look last night at feeding time, and noticed her ears and nose were crusty. Really scabby and exuding something undesirable. In fact the only desirable crust on a lamb is when it's coming out of the oven, and she's not destined for that. She needs to remain crust-free at all times. The vet came this morning to administer more jabs.

You're probably thinking surely all the other animals are well. Think again. One of the meat chickens died from pulmonary infection, there's been an outbreak of scaly leg in the big hen house, and my old barbu d'uccle is decidedly peaky. It's Crittergeddon. I'm expecting a plague of locusts to descend. That's fine - as long as they don't want me to take them to the vets.

I almost forgot about Tom/Tomasina, our transsexual Silkie chicken -

Perhaps I should have named her Victor/Victoria

I'm not sure if she's a hen with male characteristics, or a hermaphrodite. I'm not even sure I need to know. S/he's spunky and I like her. And we're an accepting household. If Tom is a hermaphrodite, genetics may condemn him/her to a shorter than normal life. Hermaphrodite pheasants die upon reaching sexual maturity.

It's not just a pox on our animals. It's our major appliances too. The oven died Monday night. Of course, we had invited guests for dinner the following night and defrosted a roast already. I worked out a way to cook it under the grill which was still working, and everyone got fed. The new oven won't arrive for 7-10 days, but there's plenty of gin and coconut macaroons. That's like two of the four food groups, right? Our friendly local pub will feed us too. The worst part is the expense. It's going to cost me ten deer to the game dealers to pay for it. Or two lambs and two deer. Or 500 half dozen eggs. It's a good thing the hens have started laying again.

In fact, I used that lot of eggs to barter a soil test from our agronomist. It's time to spread farmyard manure and I need to know if Milkweed is short of nutrients. I also need to find a farmer wanting to get rid of it, and a contractor to spread it. Contractors don't work for eggs unfortunately.

Otherwise, this time of year I'm enjoying the first snowdrops flowering in the woods -

The dogs are with me. Their job is to clean up any wounded pheasants resulting from the last week of shooting -

We only found a few. I dispatched them and put the breasts in the freezer, ready for when we have a working oven again.

The few hours a day when I'm not at the vets, I'm trying to finish painting the kennels. I can enjoy a gin while slapping on the wood treatment so it's not the worst job. I got news from the estate office that we're expecting a visiting dignitary next month. That means security checks, and a rush to tidy up the garden in case of a drive-by viewing. At least the kennels will look nice.

I hope Spud won't do her party trick with the rat.

Finished!

2011-02-01T13:20:00.000-08:00

I've started my "last day of shooting season" rituals. Consigning the blood-spattered tweeds to the dry cleaning pile, putting the walkie-talkies away in a drawer, and the worn but comfortable shooting socks in the darning pile. It was cleansing, in all senses of the word, to hoover up all stray feathers that have followed the dogs or Mike through the back door (I found one in a kitchen drawer), as well as taking all the towels off of the sofa. The house smells better already.

The end of Spud's first working season. I hope it will be the first of many.

The dogs know it's over. Each got a big knuckle bone from the butcher shop as a thank you for their hard work. I'm writing this post to the accompanying sound of scraping and crunching.

Is that a bone or a lip plate, Pip?

I'm just as happy (if less noisy) drinking my pot of Green Mountain Pumpkin Spice coffee which I've been saving as a reward for this last day of the season. Laurie from Dog Hair in my Coffee sent it to me in a care package, along with The Bucolic Plague (a book, not a disease). Just out of the kindness of her heart. Laurie provided me a damn fine cup of coffee, and I supplied the dog hair.

The woodcock are for a Moroccan Pie, the partridge will be plucked for roasting later.

I'm also processing some of the game hurriedly procured before the season ended. Usually it could hang a day or two longer but the weather's warming up and I don't want to risk it spoiling.

I didn't shoot any of what I'm butchering now. I walked up the hedgerows yesterday with the cocker spaniel and the flat coat. The pair did a bang up job putting the birds over me, and I did a crap job bringing any down, missing 3 pheasants and a woodcock. Mike brought home 2 partridge and another woodcock from his day's shooting, so no one's going to go hungry. The way I was missing everything, I thought we were going to have to eat the flat coat.

One of the young lads who comes beating is completing his Gamekeeping qualification at college. Having been brought up on a dairy farm, he's already used to hard work. His father lets him run a duck shoot on the farm, and he brought me two oven-ready mallards for my larder this morning.
The ducks - I'm making confit with the legs, and crowns are for roasting late

He's only 16 and can't drive a car yet (the driving age being 17 in the UK) but because of arcane agricultural laws he can drive a tractor. So he drives ten miles to our shoot every Saturday in their farm's brand new 3-ton tractor. It makes me smile to see this teenage boy, thinner than a pencil with the wood shaved off, climb out of the cab in his too-big tweeds ready for work. It's funny moments like that I'll miss, now that this season's over.

There's a dinner tonight in the village cafe for all the shoot workers, venison stew washed down with port, homemade sloe gin, and more port. It's rarely a sober affair. Let's just say we're not surprised when we find a Land Rover abandoned in the hedge in our garden, or an underkeeper wrapped in a horse blanket asleep under another vehicle. I have to stay compos mentis so I can prevent our revellers from dying of exposure, or suffering a severe near death-by-pecking experience from the chickens.

Tomorrow it will be the start of the new season, and a new set of worries. Mike won't take the day off, and he'll be up before dawn ready to start building his catchers, to catch up the next season's laying stock. My thoughts will also change from harvesting, to sowing and growing: vegetables and a good crop of grass on Milkweed. I need to improve my soil fertility programme, get contractors to put down a base for the stables/lambing shed at Milkweed, and find a ram to put to my flock of ewes.

Our Cobb meat chickens are growing on well. I like this breed so far.

It's the start of making our smallholding pay and there are some serious obstacles. Our sales tax in England has gone up to 20%. The cost of feed has doubled and is still rising. There's a shortage of hay, and if we have a long winter I'm in danger of running out. I dread another month where the Recently Called list on my mobile reads VET - VET - HORSE VET.

Worst of all diesel is now the equivalent of $9.70 a gallon. I need to pursue a path less dependent on fuel and chemical fertilisers. I will have plenty of time to ponder growing systems while I'm painting the kennels, which is the first job on tomorrow's list.

Feet up time, at least until the morning

Almost there

2011-01-28T12:45:00.000-08:00

There are three more days left of the shooting season. We have 53 shoot days under our belt. I think we are going to make it. Just.

As with every harvest, we're at the mercy of that which we're harvesting. And the weather. And our need for sleep. And of course there are setbacks, illnesses and injuries and such.

Harvest first: the pheasants and partridge have been staying put so we can find them on shoot days. They have flown well, but by the end of January they're canny. If they have avoided being em...harvested, it's because they've found a back door. This month I've watched as many pheasants sneak out of a drive as fly over the gun line, and I've cheered those resourceful little birds. Pretty soon we'll be picking up those hens' eggs and smiling at the cock birds fighting in the middle of the road, oblivious to my oncoming truck.

The weather is more bearable when it's cold, because the mud freezes and the house stays marginally cleaner. There are no rubber trousers hanging from doors waiting to ambush you when you get up at the crack of stupid o'clock to make a cup of tea. However, we confine ourselves to two rooms: the tiny galley kitchen and just slightly-less-tiny front room. The floors are wipeable and the wood stove keeps both rooms warm enough that I only need to wear two layers and long socks indoors. And the stove dries our clothes and keeps the labs up to temperature -

By this time of year we're so tired that we've slipped into a near feral state. The house smells of labrador, and the bathtub has a permanent layer of scum from the spaniels' after-work hosedowns. We just throw dry towels on the couch and let the dogs have the run of the place. Pip has taken my work shirt and a pillow and made a "nest" in her favorite chair -

I just wear what's clean, or whatever a dog isn't sleeping on. I peel off my camo overalls and hang them from the china cupboard in the kitchen, until next time I head out into the cold to hunt or check livestock -

Eudora's still doing great by the way.

The kitchen table is buried under reference books, clean dog towels, cartridges, ear defenders, and clothes that the dogs haven't stolen yet -

We don't need it to eat dinner on. We haven't been shopping for a while and this is pretty much all that's in the fridge -

Condiments, a dessicated lime from Christmas, some questionable eggs I found in the hedge, and animal medication. We've been eating at our local pub, run by Rich and Mary who are two of the nicest people you could ever meet. It's kind of like eating local as we supply them with meat, and even holly to garnish their customers' puddings. And it's far more hygienic than our house. They supply the good cooking and the great conversation. It's a great way to unwind after a shoot day, with the bonus of no dishes to wash up, and they don't mind if we show up in our tweeds, blood spatters, trailing feathers, and all.

Before the shooting season ends, we wanted to make sure that our own freezers were well-stocked. Eventually we would have to go back to cooking our own food. The past three nights, after shoot days, Underkeeper Pete and I have been walking up the hedgerows and copses, looking for game birds.

The first night I shot my first ever teal and Pete shot a woodcock. The second night we missed everything. The third evening we started out earlier (and I remembered my camera) and we shot straight. Well, Pete did anyway. We had 8 pheasants, only one of which was mine -

What I lacked in volume I made up for in variety, bagging a woodcock and a pigeon on a walk through some boggy woodland -

They're hanging now, and will be ready to turn into a game pie (with my one pheasant) by the end of shoot season. I did manage a bit of home curing too, and used the rest of the bacon cure to corn a venison loin -

It turned out better than I expected considering I didn't have a recipe and I wasn't sure if the chemistry would work. It's a bit salty on the ends. I've fried it with eggs for breakfast and used small pieces as rewards for the dogs on shoot days.

Lily the chocolate lab has earned her share of the venison. I brought her along on the past two days' shoots, to accompany the other dogs and see what she made of the noises and smells. Lily has excelled herself. She hunts and retrieves already, with nothing more than instinct to drive her. I think she's happier being a working dog than a pet. I think everything is happier when it has a purpose, people and dogs topping that list.

And I needed her. Jazz is tired, Podge is struggling to hold her weight, Spud has come into season, Pip can only work twice a week max due to her weak hips, and Dulcie is still recovering from her operation. If only I could teach sheep to retrieve.

Comings and Goings

2011-01-14T12:20:00.000-08:00

Eudora has come through her recent illness with remarkable vigour. Although she was loathe to give up the special molasses feed on offer in the Sheep Intensive Care cum Kennel unit, she was missing her flock. Well, I assumed this was the case because of her near constant bleating, a different bleat from her pestering "Is it dinnertime yet?" bleat. This was a louder "Is anybody out there?" bleat. It was time to move her to the Recovery Field with her friends. They could give her the comfort a flock animal needs. So last Sunday, Underkeeper Pete and I wrestled her into the back of the truck, ready to rejoin her group.

Country Roooaaad.....Take me Hoooome...

The last time she made this short trip, she was too ill to stand up, or even open her eyes. Now she could enjoy the ride and the view, which must be interesting compared to the view of the kennel wall she's had for the past fortnight.

I was still nervous about leaving her to her own sheepy competence. I wasn't sure how much sight she had regained and I couldn't exactly ask her "How many fingers am I holding up?" to assess it. Like so much in life, I had to wing it and hope for the best. The other sheep seemed happy to see her again, and brought her back into the fold.

I'm so glad humans just shake hands...

As long as she could see enough to follow the other whitish lumps, and would put her head down and graze, her chances looked pretty good. It was nice to have all ten together in one place. And my sleep-challenged brain was glad to be off the hook for the 2 a.m. feeds.

That's Eudora, front and left

Our friends happened to stop by for a visit with their 2 children, Erin and Aston, just as we were moving Eudora. Never one to miss the opportunity for free child labor, I immediately recruited the kids to act as sheepdogs. They did a great job.

Hey kid....You got any molasses?

It's now Friday, and Eudora has managed well. She's still earning her Queen of Sheepa title. It's I who must walk over to her, and hand feed her a few choice morsels picked out of the flock's feed bucket before the others get a look in. I also give her a kiss on her nose, which she accepts with as much dignity as a sheep being kissed in public can manage. I don't care what the other farmers think, even if she does.

From lamb to pork. After we moved Eudora, I had my home cured bacon to finish. It hung overnight in the fridge to dry, suspended from the most jury-rigged contraption I've ever made: a cooling rack wedged in a groove on one side and held up by a tower of bean tins and margarine tubs.

Blue Peter, eat your heart out.

I don't have a bacon slicer so I sliced the belly by hand. The slices were thick - rustic and hand-hewn if you please - but they looked like bacon.

Home made bacon is nothing like commercially produced bacon. It's hammy, slightly salty, with just enough fat, and the rind crisps up like crackling in the pan. I gave it a trial run in bacon sandwiches - an English tradition - for Mike and Pete, and it was a unanimous thumbs up.

I was riding high from my success with Eudora and my homemade bacon, and excited about the prospect of unbroken sleep. Then I woke up to these -

I forgot that Spence our chicken guy was dropping off some black Cobb chicks for me. Because of their black feather tips they were being bullied in his large commercial unit. He dropped them in as I was getting ready for another shoot day, and I had to find them somewhere warm with food and water, and get them settled before I left for work.

More jury-rigging, this time with a fish box, horse hay for bedding, a desk lamp, and a bread tray tied over the top with baling twine -

I stuck them in the pantry and pushed the couch in front of the door to deter Dakota and her murderous intent while I was out at work. After work, I moved the chicks to safer digs in the whelping kennel behind the house. The chicks are growing well and should be ready for the freezer in about 7 weeks' time. I'll be glad of a break from pheasant by then.

I forgot to mention the dog. And I haven't even got a clever segue into the topic, which is akin to how Lily arrived; it all happened at once, in the middle of all these coming and goings and a very busy week. We had so many commitments that poor Lily has had to settle herself in.

Lily is a 3 year old chocolate labrador. She's been well cared for but made homeless because of a relationship break-up. Lily has a great temperament, and she's made friends with the whole pack, even the old, grumpy ones. She's already enjoying "chase me" games with Spud and Pip.

We're only her foster home and she will be going to her permanent home when I've had a chance to give her a bit of gun dog training. I expect she will be with us for six months or so. Any more than that and I'll get too attached.

Lily has made it known that she prefers the house to the kennel, and has already taken over the prime spot on the sheepskin in front of the wood burner.

That looks pretty settled to me. Of course, that's Pip's favorite sleeping spot but, being a generous soul, Pip has conceded and made other arrangements -

Looks like I'm going to have to sleep in the kennel.

A bit of background

2011-01-12T04:59:00.000-08:00

For those of you reading the blog who aren't members of my family (and I still can't believe you find this engaging enough to come back, but I'm so grateful you do) I think I need to give you a back story. The only reason I'm doing this is because Mike is about to embark on another series of operations, and it seems so crypic to refer to "The Accident" without any explanation. I don't write about it in my blog because 1) we don't want it to define us just because it affects us and 2) I don't really feel much like talking about it. Not with strangers. But you guys are either my family or my friends now, so it seems relevant.

Anyhoo, this short piece was written in September 2009 for a podcast on the theme of 'Make Do and Mend'. I've simply copied it here for the information (and added a few more details about the accident). Please don't feel obligated to comment, I know you know it was horrible and that you're glad we're better now. We are. And I promise, after this recap post, I will get back to stories about the daily lives of countryfolk, working dogs, and our ~~ineptitude~~ learning experiences.

In June 2008, my husband and I were caught in a terrible explosion. A shed full of pheasant chicks filled with gas from a faulty heater. We were airlifted to Swansea Burns Unit in Wales where we spent a horrible year (coincidentally, also our first year of marriage). Though my injuries healed in a few months, my husband was in a coma having taken the full force of the blast. He had suffered over 80% burns - a huge injury. Doctors carried out skin graft operations every few days; as often as his body could cope with the trauma of surgery. I lost count after 11 trips to the OR.

When the worst of the wounds were covered, Mike still had weeks of fighting off life-threatening infections with drugs and even dialysis to support his immune system. Mike was thankfully kept comatose through it all, to spare him the pain of his injuries. Even if he survived the surgeries and the infections, he would have much rehabilitation to do. But the doctors' prognosis was pessimistic to say the least. They use a calculation adding the patient's age with the percentage of burns to give the likelihood against survival. 43 years + 80% burns meant Mike had "over 100% chance of mortality" as it was described to me.

Mike continued to survive in spite of the numbers. He went from surviving hour-to-hour, to day-to-day. Mike was brought out of his coma in September. We lived in the Burns Unit until October, then commuted back and forth from Dorset to Wales which we still do now, though our visits are getting less frequent as he gets better.

The injury called his job into jeopardy. He's a gamekeeper and his job is a very physical one. We weren't sure if he would walk again. He persevered and pushed himself so he was back to work only 2 months after coming out of the coma, only one month after re-learning to walk. His hand movements were still limited and I was his constant helper. A few months later, perhaps after too many sick days, I was made redundant from my job. We were facing the worst recession in decades, I was jobless and Mike was in a weakened state. On top of that, our home is tied to his job.

'Making do' became our only option. We cut back on everything - turning the heat off and wearing extra jumpers. I logged wood for our woodburner to keep one room warm enough for Mike for his daily dressing changes. Our horses has their shoes taken off and they were turned away to overwinter pasture, to save on food. We ate wild game which clients or I shot from the estate. We ate our own chickens and eggs. We were still too shellshocked to concentrate on reading, or to talk about what just happened, or the future. I knit Christmas presents, the knitting being my own therapy and the gifts just a small token.

'Making do' started us down a road which has become a major part of our daily life, and which has helped to heal us inside. Being self-sufficient gives you a feeling of independence and control. If you can look after yourself, you will be safe. I needed to feel safe.

I began to remember the skills my mother taught us when we were growing up. She came from a rural home in upstate New York where making do and mending was a necessity and a fact of life. Even after she married and moved and had children of her own, she continued to can tomatoes she grew in the garden, and to make preserves. When our neighbor got too old, she pruned his grape vines for him, in exchange for the grapes. She made grape jelly for us and for him. She sewed all our clothes, taking us to pattern stores to pick out patterns we liked. She helped us adapt them to suit our own sense of style, even into our late teen years. She made every Christmas ornament for our tree including the full set of the 12 days of Christmas and the Nutcracker Suite. She re-upholstered our furniture when it got threadbare, and wallpapered the rooms herself to match.

I was surprised how many skills I remembered. I must have picked them up just by standing with her stirring fruit or sitting with her doing my own needlework, like the simple tapestry apple that took me months to finish. I remembered stitches for hemming, blanket stitches, how to sterilise jars, the recipe for sugar cookies. I remembered that I still wear the same apron now that she wore then - a plain white full apron, with a permanent record of stains. The pots and pans I cook with were hers, and part of my childhood. Spoons, a garlic press, a hand-held can opener. A wooden serving bowl carved by her father is the centrepiece of our table, filled with pinecones and rocks and things I collect on my walks. It is my most prized possession. All of these things have followed me across the Atlantic ocean.

I don't just make do with these objects. They have never outlived their purpose. And they connect me to the knowledge of my past, passed down from my mother. From her mother. They make me feel rooted, they give me a history and bring back pleasant memories. They make me feel safe. When I put on my mother's apron, I can make anything. This year I have made dozens of jars of jam and chutney already, from the hedgerow bounty. I wear it when I'm jointing rabbits for the freezer, or cooking meals for friends.

Being more self-sufficient has helped us both to mend. As Mike gets better, I find my creativity returning. I've made a wreath for the front door from seed heads and plants in the hedges. I've re-made his old hospital bathrobe into a coat for the dog, to keep her warm on shoot days. This has cleansed the item of its old negative associations and given it a new happier use. I've been making do with fleeces from the Jacob sheep not wanted by the estate, to practice my spinning and increase my stash. I have enough for an aran weight 2-ply for a new jumper now.

And there's a lot we do without because we don't have a choice. But actually - we don't really miss it. We have been given perspective, and a reminder of what's more important to us. Mike and I pick blackberries, which gives us time together (an excellent 'date night' activity!) and fruit for more jelly. We notice more around us. We forget more about what happened, or maybe we can talk a little bit about it and share our fears a little because we're distracted by fruit, or a pair of nesting hobbys, or a prolific and wild tomato harvest in the greenhouse. Every year I promise to grow the tomatoes on neat cordons but when it comes time to prune, I can't bear the thought of losing even one fruiting truss.

Mom sadly died 20 years ago, at the premature age of 42. The same age I'll be this birthday. I'm still unemployed for now but I think it's going to be OK. And Mike is going to be OK. Though he will never be the same, he is making do. He uses a leatherman because his fingers are too stiff for small work. But he thinks maybe he will start tying flies again, he feels like he wants to. He finds it relaxing, like I find knitting. I will start saving the hairs from my rabbits for tying his flies.

Sheep and Deer and Fox and Dogs

2011-01-04T11:28:00.000-08:00

I got up this morning in anticipation of catching the partial solar eclipse, but instead I was treated to the flat grey fog that England is famous for. I missed the lunar eclipse last week for the same reason. All the grandeur of astronomically significant events scuppered by a low front. I sulked for a bit, until the clouds dropped fat snowflakes. Nothing accumulated, but it made a lovely wintry backdrop for my morning chores.

One of my chores is still handfeeding Eudora. Her sight, or perhaps her neurological impairment, is preventing her feeding properly without help. I'm still hoping this is a temporary set-back, and I've called the vet yet again. To tempt her appetite back, I feed her all her favorites: molasses-flavored water, sugar beet, and barley. Ivy is a good tonic for sheep so on shoot days while I'm supposed to be watching birds overhead, I'm picking young ivy leaves and stuffing my pockets full, to bring back for Eudora.

Even I know I'm a bit of a sucker for spoiling her with treats. Eudora can't be that impaired as she's already learned that if she bleats she gets fed. You could argue that I'm the impaired one, handfeeding a sheep on demand. I'm thinking of re-naming her "Eudora, Queen of Sheepa". I draw the line at building her a throne.

From sheep to pigs: we took delivery of half a pig from Peggy, my butchery teacher. She kindly saved me the belly in one piece, so I could try curing my own bacon.

A side-view of the pork belly in cure

I've used her recipe, and the pork is now submerged in its curing solution, salt, and water. I need to leave it soaking for the next 5 days. It will be ready to hang in the chiller for drying on Sunday, just as the two deer hanging in the chiller now will be ready for me to take out and butcher.

I didn't shoot these two; Dave the stalker shot them for me so I could have a bit of time off over Christmas with Mike. I still need to cull three more roe does from that area by the end of March because I culled a buck there last summer. The roe deer management ratio for our area of England is 2.5 does per buck. I will aim to take an older buck out of the area this coming summer.

Nearly all keepers' wives help on shoot days working the dogs or cooking, and in the off-season we help raise the chicks, but only a few of us stalk deer or help with vermin control. We're a large shoot but have a small staff, so we need all the help we can get: outside stalkers, ferretters to control the rabbits, contractors with tractors to put in crops for the pheasant. And willing wives of course.

To add to the workload this time of year, it's mating season for foxes. Vixens call up dog foxes, who flood in looking for a good time. Underkeeper Pete and Stalker Dave have shot a few, but I'm taking the lazy option:

A fox cage, baited with cat food. It's on duty all night protecting my chickens (I already have to get up at 2 a.m. to feed Eudora). I set it this evening, and almost immediate caught Podge in it. She knows a cage trap means tasty treats, and that we'll eventually come and let her out. Gun dogs are too smart for their own good.

And Mike's just this minute told me we're about to adopt a chocolate labrador! It's a temporary arrangement. One of our clients has been looking for another chocolate lab, and we've been offered a 3 year old bitch that needs a new home. I will settle it in with us, and make sure it has all its basic gun dog training before it goes to its new home.

I'm glad it's a labrador, as they're pretty easy going. Spaniels have more energy than I do. However, between 6 dogs and a self-important ewe taking up all the kennel space, I will have to make room for the new dog in the house.

Thankfully, one of the perks of shoot season is that the shoot guests never finish their wine and kindly give the keeper the extra bottles from their well-stocked cellars. The availability of good wine helps me to cope when my husband tells me he's bringing home another dog.

We've been so busy I've not really had time to think about the New Year or relevent resolutions. We celebrate slightly different holidays, based around the rural calendar. Our holiday period starts Christmas eve and officially ends on Distaff Day, which is this Friday. Traditionally Distaff Day is when women resume their work, picking up the distaff and starting to spin wool I suppose. Typically, men's work doesn't start until Plough Monday, two days later than women's work starts. Read into that what you will.

Anyway, it's only 352 more days til Christmas eve.

Eudora Update

2010-12-31T03:20:00.000-08:00

That's looks like a sheep on the mend, doesn't it?

She's not out of the woods yet. We're less pessimistic, not yet optimistic.

I'm not sure what, if any, neurological problems she might have. Her eyesight isn't fully back yet. But she's holding her head up, twitching her ears, and making baa-ing noises at me. She's responding more like a sheep should. She's grinding her teeth a lot less, so the pain is subsiding. That's good news.

She's not exactly the cleanest sheep after her ordeal.

The vet's coming by tomorrow to check on her progress. I hope he can give us a prognosis that moves us firmly into the optimistic category.

dammit...part deux redux

2010-12-29T09:54:00.000-08:00

We're back to the Listeriosis diagnosis again. Eudora the sheep is exhibiting clinical signs more commonly associated with Listeriosis: unilateral head movements and hypersalivation. I'm hedging my bets and continuing with the B vitamin therapy under vet's orders, just in case.

Listeria is present in the soil and affects <2% of ruminants. If that's the case, Eudora was one of the unlucky few to contract it.

Regardless of the diagnosis, that little sheep is still very sick. We won't know if the therapies are helping for a few days at least. Every day she hangs in there is a result.

To make all our lives easier (and night checks less gruelling), I've moved her to the empty kennel in the garden. I laid her in the back of an open flatbed truck and we made the 2 mile journey home without so much as a twitch from her.

That is a poorly-bad-sick sheep.

Mike and Underkeeper Pete helped me lift 60 kilos of Eudora into the truck. We got talking about the local sheep farmers in the area and their varied approaches to animal husbandry. One farmer is notorious for his laissez faire attitude to his flock, leaving sick or injured sheep to get well naturally or die. Whatever's left goes on to market. I wondered if this approach to producing lamb was more economical, in an effort to explain what otherwise seems cruel or irresponsible.

I thought of Eudora. I've spent the entire profit generated by one meat lamb on her medication so far, with only a 1 in 3 chance of her recovering. But, she could have 10 years of breeding in her. Even a single lamb every year from her would more than balance out this cost. Or she could be predisposed to Listeria and pass this weakness on to her progeny. Or she could live a long life without ever requiring another jab of penicillin. It's a bit of a crapshoot.

I do know that I'm not caring for her out of love, like I would a pet. I feel kindness towards her and I don't want her to suffer, but she's purebred stock and intended for breeding meat lambs. I feel like I have an obligation to do what I can for her, even if I'm going to eat her young.

Not everyone who reads this blog keeps sheep, or chickens or turkeys, but I would guess almost all of you are meat eaters. So here's what I wonder: what is the real price of meat? When you buy meat, would you accept paying more for meat produced from small flocks who consider animal husbandry and welfare a priority? Or do you feel that commercially produced meat raised in facilities which have passed inspection, but on an economy of scale that means you can purchase it much cheaper, is reasonable enough?

Those of you who keep your own livestock, and especially if you despatch and process your own livestock: what caused you to choose to do this? Because it's not easy to care for something and then kill it yourself. And keeping livestock is a bind, a demand on your time with no days off, and it's rarely economically feasible on such a small scale.

Please tell me your stories. I can't explain why I feel that a farmer who lets sheep die still seems wrong, even if it's economically viable. That's the million dollar question.

Now, I'm going out to the kennels to feed my sick sheep her electrolyes and give her a scratch behind the ear.

dammit....part deux

2010-12-29T04:40:00.000-08:00

The vet's been. After examining Eudora, he thinks it might be CCN - cerebrocortical necrosis. Also known as Thiamine deficiency. The rumen has been compromised by too much ingestion of B vitamins, creating a slightly too acidic rumen liquor which destroys the thiamine and in fact depletes stores of thiamine in the body's blood and tissue. Harmful bacteria can also proliferate under these conditions, futher weakening the animal.

In this case it was caused by overfeeding of concentrates. By me.

Has anyone stopped reading this, and dialled the RSPCA?

I feel awful.

I know it takes time and experience to develop enough knowledge to best care for your livestock. The incongruous part is that you need to learn on your animals.

I have a backround in keeping animals, and some diseases or zoonoses are commonplace to us and to them. Worms for example. I can identify an unthrify horse, or a dog losing condition, or a chicken gaping and recognise the signs. Anyone who's been responsible for animals knows what a sick animal looks like: a runny nose or eyes, drooping head, listless - or maybe restless. You may even just know that your animal isn't quite himself. Or herself.

It's the actual diagnoses that take time to learn. Worms are easy, and anthelmitic programs are available. But metabolic disorders? Or how about degenerative diseases that are congenital? If your chicken has a weak heart, you won't know until the necropsy. Lameness in a horse? Forget it. There are so many muscles and suspensory ligaments and tendons that can bow or pull - and that's just in the lower half.

None of this exonerates me for the stupidity of overfeeding my sheep.

I can only hope that the B vitamin injections, and antibiotics, and anti-inflammatories have come soon enough to save Eudora from my mistake. I'll be spending the afternoon drenching her with water and electrolytes, and checking on her through the night. If she survives, she won't hold it against me. Animals are pretty great that way.

dammit...

2010-12-28T10:46:00.000-08:00

Eudora the ewe is sick. Really sick. She tried to tell me that she wasn't well yesterday. She didn't come running for her dinner like the others, and she was a bit...cuddly. Eudora is one of my orphans so she has her cuddly moments, but not usually during feeding time, unless she thinks she can ingratiate herself and get an extra handful of barley.

I thought she was just being sheepy - sort of unwell with something that would clear up as quickly as it had come on. Indigestion from too much grass maybe. I should have trusted my gut.

This evening I found her stood on her own (not a good sign), all four feet planted, her head held low and her neck stiffened. She didn't want to move. In fact, she acted as if she was blind. And she was grinding her teeth, which can be a sign of pain in animals.

I don't have a good working knowledge of sheep diseases yet, though my small flock has been putting me through my paces. I had to extrapolate from what I knew and trust my gut this time. My gut said it's a neurological something. Mike went to find the local shepherd for advice while I waited with Eudora. She ground her teeth and made pathetic bleating noises while I felt helpless, and guilty for not spotting it sooner.

Listeriosis - possibly. The shepherd sent Mike back with a megadose of antibiotic, which is meant to penetrate into the brain. We called Terry our vet for his opinion before I jabbed Eudora. He gave us the same diagnosis. It's definitely something meningio-encephalitic and that puts poor Eudora in the really sick category. I crossed my fingers and emptied half the syringe into each of her thigh muscles. She found some strength to fight me over that.

Mike and I used my jacket as a sling to carry her to the truck and lift her into the flatbed. I've put her in one of the horse stables and made her as comfortable as possible. We'll check on her every few hours to see if there's any improvement, and to make sure she doesn't cast herself or end up on her back. If she makes it through the night, she'll still need another week's worth of antibiotics.

The vet manual gives me a 30% chance of her recovery. I'll take what I can get. I don't want to lose a potential breeding ewe or a friend.

Snow Business

2010-12-21T04:44:00.000-08:00

I know for a lot of you, snow isn't anything to write home about. You measure your snowfall in feet, where we only manage centimeters. You expect snow, it's an inevitable part of winter, along with shoveling your sidewalk and the sound of snowplows clearing your roads at 6am. Not so in the south of England.

Listening to the locals talk, this is the first time in their memory that the snow came so early - November - and that we've had a run of it. I had this conversation with everyone I bumped into at the grocery store; everyone who owned a tractor anyway. That's what they drove to the store because no one plows our roads and grit is rarer than gold nuggets. It's funny to see the car park in the supermarket filled with big tractors instead of soccer mom wagons.

So snow is a big thing for me. It makes me feel less homesick for New England winters, and it's great excuse to ignore the Soil Protection Review that I need to file with the government by 31 December and my taxes which are due a month later. Carpe the frozen diem I say, especially if it gets me out of the house.

I took all the dogs that weren't too old or still recuperating for a long walk around the estate. Yesterday's shoot day was cancelled because of a heavy snow storm and the next shoot day isn't for another week. I thought the dogs deserved a day off, just to run about and enjoy what winter has to offer

I should have known that, for them, it offered just another chance to hunt up birds in the hedges and rough covert -

And find stuff to smell -

And maybe do a bit of sledding (Jazzie's favorite pastime), or chew on the cocker spaniel (Dakota's favorite pastime) -

For me, it was a chance to see what kind of wildlife has been moving around. I found lots of fallow deer slots -

And rabbit prints. This one was loping along, sat down, then loped along again -

Of course there are pheasant prints everywhere -

And where there are pheasants, there are foxes -

The dogs found a patch of deer blood. Underkeeper Pete and Stalker Dave shot a roe deer last night in a farmer's crop. Together they had to carry it back to the yard which is a good mile away. They must have put it down here for a moment, to rest and to readjust their shared load -

As we walked up the track there were drops of blood staining the snow. I know it's Pete and Dave by their footprints. Dave wears Irish Setter boots, which have a distinct tread pattern -

And, although Underkeeper Pete has new boots, I recognise his distinctive footsteps as both his toes turn out when he walks -

Pete knows my tracks too, by the flat-footed print that my mukluks make in the snow.

I can see by fresh quad bike tracks that the farmers have been through already this morning, probably haying and checking their heifers, which are now in the barn for the winter -

Everybody knows your business when it snows.

The dogs had a good time, and tired themselves out for the afternoon. The roads are so quiet that we walked the last couple of miles in the middle of the road, and the only cars we passed were cars that couldn't make it up the icy hills and had been abandoned on the verge.

When I got home, I took the old and recovering dogs out to enjoy the snow at their own pace. I gave Hazel the dummy with the partridge feathers on it, and we played fetch (which she never gets tired of playing) -

Dulcie, who is recovering so well, didn't want to be left out of the retrieving game. Although she should be walking sensibly, I gave in and threw her my glove so she could make a few retrieves -

Like Hazel, she lives and breathes retrieving.

Old Nellie on the other hand, marches to the beat of her own drum. She was happy because she found a half a head of cabbage in the compost pile. She chose to carry that on our walk, and at the end of the walk, eat it. -

To each his own - even if your own is raw cabbage.

A week off from pheasant shooting has only freed me up to go deer stalking. I must harvest some of the deer on my patch. If it's going to be a hard winter, it will benefit all the deer if we remove some of the older or weaker ones now.

And my patch happens to be a pheasant drive too. Too many deer in a drive can spook pheasants and move them out over the guns too quickly. I'm getting a lot of ribbing for the amount of deer that came out of the woods last time we shot that drive.

At least the snow will tell me what's about. Unfortunately, my feet crunching the snow under foot will tell the deer that I'm about too. I bet they can read my tracks a lot better than I can read theirs!

Let it snow

2010-12-18T10:42:00.000-08:00

Another couple of inches of snow fell overnight. We had a shoot day to run today, in spite of the weather. I love the low winter sun and fresh blanket of snow. It's ever quieter than normal while I take care of morning chores. Our little cottage looks like a Christmas card with snow on the roof and smoke coming out of the chimney.

The chickens aren't normally impressed with the snow. Some of them brave the conditions for a morning feed of wheat. The frizzle cockerel leads his troops. We've named him Lloyd Dobbler.

The dogs are big fans of snow. They were keen to get working this morning. They're packed into the back of the truck, waiting for the first drive to start.

We have all shapes and sizes in there - spaniels, retrievers, mongrels and halfbreeds. We even have a couple of the rarer working breeds. In case you've never seen one before, I took a picture of Foyle. Foyle is a working clumber spaniel -

Clumber spaniels fell out of favor as a working dog but became a hit in the show ring. Working clumbers are far less common than their show relatives, and Foyle is a good example of the original working breed. He's heavy-set but steady, and well-trained by his owners.

It was only a very small team of workers today. The treacherous roads kept many at home. We managed well because, really, it's the dogs that do all the work, and we had a truckful of those.

I brought three from our kennel.

The dogs had some difficult terrain to cope with today. The snow-covered woods, bramble patches and fallen bracken make deep, almost impenetrable covert for pheasants to hide in. Almost, but not quite. Nothing is safe from a determined spaniel.

There are six dogs buried in this covert -

I can't see them either but I know they're there because the bushes are moving. At regular intervals one or another dog returns carrying a bird. We picked up 15 pheasants out of this wooded valley.

By "we", I mean them.

The guns enjoyed their day and the fantastic scenery courtesy of Jack Frost. We enjoyed our day too - dogs and workers. The dogs retired to their kennel, under the heat lamp, and I warmed up some leftover duck confit and goose fat to put with their kibble. A treat and a gesture of appreciation.

It was late by the time I got hay and feed to the horses and sheep. I fed them and checked on them by moonlight. Walking out to check the fences, I could see the trails of fox prints criss-crossing Milkweed, mingling with sheep hoof prints. It was silent. I could see the lights from a quad bike across the valley, probably our neighbor Kevin checking on his dairy cattle. I wasn't in a rush to get home, but I had a roast that needed to go in the oven if we wanted to eat before midnight.

The roast is cooking, the chickens are shut in, all the livestock is fed and watered, and I checked on my little canine workers. They're all four sharing one bed, sleeping off the excitement of the day. Tomorrow is a day off for all of us, but there's another shoot day on Monday. The dogs will be rested and ready to go by then, even if I'm not.