The 'Post' Post

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

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.

Eating humble tarte

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.

Really Slow Food

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.

Mike & the Princess

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.

Mooo-vie Night

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

US vs UK

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.

Getting Vetted

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.

Snow Business

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!

Harvesting the Christmas Tree

There's a small plantation of Christmas tree conifers on the estate. Mike planted them as cover for the pheasants, but neither he nor the pheasants will miss one little tree. I put my chainsaw in the truck and Dakota came along for the ride.

We took the back road that goes through one of the tenant farmers' farm. They kindly let me raid their straw barn when the horses needed to be stabled and had no bedding. I stopped in on the way - milking time, so I knew someone would be in the parlour - to say thanks, and pay for the straw and another bag of barley to feed the sheep.

The back road leads to a track, which leads to a field. The trees are on the far side. The sheep were unperturbed to be sharing their field with the truck.
 

The trees are just the other side of the artichokes - another crop grown for pheasant cover.

Dakota amuses herself following the pheasants' scent while I head off to pick a tree.

There's a pretty good tree in here -

See it yet?

A quick swipe from the chainsaw and it was ready to come home with me. I crossed my fingers that it would fit in the truck.

Almost perfect. But the dog and the saw had to share the back seat on the way home -

Turn the sparse side towards the wall so no one sees it, add a few home made ornaments, some lights, and hey presto -

Ready when you are, Santa.