Bugs, Bellies, and Bags

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 affect 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.

What you sow

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.

Autumn bounty-ish

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?

Strange Fruit

I have stumbled across a crop of medlars.

I say 'stumbled' like it was part of some grand adventure. Really, the tree is just at the entrance of my sheep paddock, in the garden of a currently empty cottage on the estate. The medlar fruits are odd-looking but in an ornamental way. They are the colour of pears, the shape of an apple, but with a small star-shaped bottom end.

The tree is heaving with fruit. There could be two reasons for this: 1) no one else has found it yet or 2) everyone else knows it's there but have already tried medlar and have no desire to repeat the experience. Medlar recipes commonly appear in Victorian cookbooks - which is usually a warning sign - but not so in modern cookbooks. I fear the medlar might be an historical food which, once people were no longer forced to preserve and eat it, was allowed to disappear from the culinary landscape.

Many large estate gardens still have a medlar or a quince tree hiding in the ranks of their apple orchard, but it's more for tradition's sake than anything else. As head gardener, I offered quinces, medlars, and mulberries to the kitchen but was met with a "Good god, I'd cook and serve the floormats first!" look by most of the chefs.

But, I made mulberry jelly and that was pretty tasty, so I have faith that something can be done with a small harvest of medlars. I'm no chef, but when in doubt I have two tricks up my sleeve:

1) Partner it with apples and make a chutney or jam. Apple & medlar jelly. That sounds respectable.

2) Turn it into a liquer. Vodka and sugar could make grass clippings into something I'd drink.

I'm at a disadvantage because I don't know what medlars taste like. Are they pear-like? Sweet? Dry? Do they give off the faint aroma of wet socks? Until I've tried them once, I can't concoct recipes enhanced with spices or other ingredients to bring out the medlar's full potential (however limited).

The one thing I do know about medlars is they need to be bletted. Bletting is the action of frost on fruit, causing the water to expand in the cells and break down the flesh. The fruit is bletted when it's brown and soft. Even after last night's frost the medlars are still yellow and hard. I might have to wait until November and a good run of frosty nights before I harvest the little darlings. Maybe that's why the tree is still covered in fruit. Maybe everyone else is waiting until the medlars are bletted to claim the coveted prize.

I did collect a small harvest of calendula flowers and autumn rasperries from the abandoned garden, rather than see them go to waste -

While I cut the flowers, the lambs engaged in their own harvest the other side of the fence -

All four are doing well. They're hanging around together in a little wooly gang, leaping about and returning to their respective mothers only when their bellies are empty. I know how they feel.

Learning Curves and Hedge Funds

I always thought of spring as the busiest season. Trees bursting into bud, seeds needing to go in, baby animals being born and all that. I'm changing my vote to autumn. The harvest waits for no man, pheasant season is in full cry, and if you're short-sighted, you've added lambing to your calendar. Spring is the start of months of good weather. Autumn is the culmination and as the temperatures drop, and the nights draw in you can feel the door closing on you, even though there's still so much to be done.

That's my excuse for going more than two weeks without getting on line. Blame nature.

It's a matter of priorities: animals first, and all other chores are optional. Anything that can be left has been left. Horse tack is cluttering the living room (the formal one, obviously). The dogs are sleeping on piles of horse blankets that need mending before the cold weather comes in. The kitchen counters are littered with concoctions, innoculations, medications and potions that no one's found time to put away. I've tried to clear one area for cooking but if you eat dinner, you take your chance that there might be a touch of worming medication or antibiotics in it. (Mike's not scooching his bottom along the carpet so either way it's not doing any harm.)

We're also impeded by minor ailments. Mike has an infected hand, and I have tendonitis. I'm supposed to wear a splint and rest it for the next 4-6 weeks but there's no chance of that. Resting does not fall in the priority pile and will have to wait until winter.

The animals are getting their fair share of ailments and meds too. Alan's lame with nothing more serious than sore hind leg, we hope. £100 worth of horse aspirin has made him comfortable and me a lot poorer. He's off work until next week at least, which rests both our injuries. I made him a pair of long reins for driving out of old horse blanket straps and some rope, and we had one trial run before injury set in. On the up side, Alan responded well to long lines and didn't mind them tangled around his feet or slapping him on his sides. I think he got the hang of it quicker than I did.

So a quick update then. As promised, a picture of the last surprise lamb delivered last night -

He's a good size, and strong. We had a 200% birth rate which is great not only because we get double the product (more lambs) but it also means I was getting the nutrition right. A ewe with reserves can bring off twins. I'm flying by the seat of my pants with the whole lambing routine, learning as I go with ample opportunity for mistakes. I have a good mentor - Dickie - who talks me down when I start to panic and has checked over my lambs and pronounced them excellent.

The moms have done the hard work, but there are still nursemaid jobs for me to do such as iodining the navel to prevent infection -

"Hey! What the..?"

With Dickie's help I'm ringing all the tails, and testicles on the rams. The older two are done already and fully recovered. 

I moved the first ewe and lambs into the garden where I could pen them together to bond and keep the lambs safe from the fox. In hindsight it was a bit overkill and extra work. The second ewe I've penned in her field with a strand of electric fence to deter foxes and it seems to be working.

It's sweet having the garden lambs but I have learned that a) sheep shit a LOT and b) lambs are just as destructive sleeping in your flower beds as chickens are scratching them up. On the plus side, the ewe has been selectively feeding on the lawn and what I class as weeds she sees as a tasty snack. So essentially she's weeding and feeding the garden, which saves me a job.

And speaking of sheep shit, there's another job I learned to do today -

Two undergrad degrees and a master's has led me here...

We've had a late burst of growth in the grass, and sometimes it can affect a sheep's digestive system. I worried that even now flies might be laying eggs, and a shitty sheep's arse is prime real estate if you're a fly. I never bathed a sheep before and not knowing what to use I made an educated guess: Woolite. I figured if it works on sweaters, which is just wool off a sheep, it should work when it's still attached to the sheep. I cut out the worst bits with kitchen shears. Prevention is better than cure.

My father visited this week and was immediately press-ganged into helping me split and stack wood for our newly built log store -

And cut the hedges -

I knew there was a view out there somewhere

And the rest of the time I've been working on the shoot. Or cleaning up after shoot days. The dogs catch up any wounded game, like this partridge which only had a few pellets in the leg. I plucked it and added it to a curry - my contribution at our harvest supper. The wings I've used on one of Spud's training dummies.

I think we're finding the rhythm of the autumn season now and maybe we're due a bit of balance. The lambing's gone well, and there are preserves in the pantry. I felt in balance yesterday when I walked to the post box with paid bills and on the way back found a few nests of eggs which the chickens had made in the hedgerow. Goods out - goods in. When I think of managing a hedge fund, I think of finding eggs and harvesting blackberries. Walking up a hedgerow with a dog is usually good for a bird or two for the pot. I'll never get rich or fat on my returns but I'm pretty happy with the exchange.

Will Work for Food

The kitchen window

I've been conquering the pile of fruits I collected from Lord and Lady's garden (plums) and public parks (crabapples) as well as from my own greenhouse (tomatoes). I'm processing them into preserves and sauces.

While waiting for some plums to stew, I happened to read an interesting passage in Temple Grandin's book Animals Make Us Human (p282). It pertains to the enrichment of captive animals' environments in zoos:

"They are not pets or farm animals; they're wild animals and they're built to go out and find food. Many, many studies have found that captive animals will choose to work for food instead of just having it handed to them. Wild animals don't want a free lunch.

The reason they like working for food is that it feels good. That's because in all of the studies 'working' actually means SEEKING. The animal has to forage...or manipulate a puzzle...They let the animal hunt.

Another great thing about using food as enrichment is that animals never get bored with food. Animals habituate very quickly to everything else, but they stay interested in food and will work for it even when they are not hungry."

I think this behavioural assessment applies to people as well. Anyone reading this who grows their own vegetables, forages for mushrooms, goes fishing or hunts does so because it enriches his or her life somehow. It may explain why someone goes to the trouble of preserving found fruits instead of just buying a pot at the grocery store.

Personally, I derive pleasure and contentment from the act of harvesting the food (even when I'm not hungry) and from preserving it. So far this week I've made 4 apple cakes, 11 jars of jelly, and two family-sized servings of plum sauce (excellent with venison). The happiness was in the labor.

And what's more appropriate for Labor Day?

Of ponies and puffballs

I'm desperate for the weather to turn autumnal so I can wear sweaters and eat more fattening food (which will then be concealed by said sweaters). Wild food and hedgerow fruits are starting to ripen, a good sign that autumn's coming. I've started harvesting a few things already.

Actually, I think the term harvest only applies if I've grown it myself. Otherwise I think it's foraging. Free spoils. Like finding a great chair on the curbside with a 'free' sign on it.

There's been a good show of fungi. We found a much-coveted prize: the giant puffball.

I think puffballs are coveted because of their size and ephemeral nature, and not their amazing flavor. It was palatable, although the texture is somehwere between a marshmallow and a nerf ball. I managed a few slices fried in butter and garlic on toast, but composted the rest. Next time I see one in a field, I might pretend that I didn't.

The pony paddock is awash in field mushrooms, which I pick as button size. They're your workaday mushrooms, nothing fancy like a shiitake or oyster, but they sure can bulk out a curry or an omelette. We've been eating those on an almost daily basis, while stocks last as they say.

All my harvests get collected in a horse feed bucket - is that in any way hygienic?

I guess the nature of foraging is the gamble. After you're sure it's not poisonous, then it's all personal preference. Having a good repertoire of cooking skills and appropriate recipes probably stacks the deck in your favor. A puffball in the hands of a decent chef who knows how to work with its nerfball-like qualities might have made all the difference. Where even a amateur like me can  muster up a passable chicken and field mushroom casserole.

I caught the crabapple crop just right this year. Crabapple jelly is a staple in our pantry and I have a bucketful of fruit to process. My favorite variety is Malus 'Dartmouth' and the one tree I know of is some 20 miles away in a public garden. Foraging for these apples verges on stealing, though I only pick up the windfalls. I tell myself that I'm simply clearing them up for the gardening staff. That will also be my defense in court.

Still life with crabapples and puffball in horse bucket

In England, foraging for windfall apples has a particular name: scrumping. Many young children have had a slap 'round the ear, or incurred the wrath of an angry gardener for scrumping apples. Even the windfalls are used in cidermaking. Bruising, clods of mud, and the odd worm count as 'natural flavorings' in a bottle of cider.

I thought I would collect a few hazelnuts this year too, as I enjoyed the foraged sweet chestnuts last year. I envision rich chocolate hazelnut puddings (wearing sweaters means I can eat as many as I want). I thought I would do double duty: take the horses for a ride and pick nuts as I went. On horseback I could reach the higher branches. I put some panniers on Alan and expected to come back from our ride with both sides full. I was congratulating myself on my efficiency and genius.

I didn't know horses like hazelnuts too, or that they're quicker than me at finding them.

One for me...six for you...

When I stopped at a tree to pick the nuts, Alan and Kitty joined in. For every one I found and picked, they ate a branch with several clusters on it. I only managed a few meagre handfuls in total. They ate their fill. Equine ingrates.

The hazelnuts will be around for a bit longer so my dreams of puddings and muffin tops aren't wholly lost. To improve my chances, I won't be taking the horses with me next time. But I'll still have to do battle with the squirrels and my money's on them. I'll accept my fate. As long as I don't have to live on puffballs.

No pigs, just potholders

I was hoping to have some pictures of wild pigs or fallow deer, and a great hunting story for this post. Sorry - no luck. I sat in a high seat in a field where there are alot of pig workings (dug up turf, footprints). I sat there for a couple of hours and saw nothing. I gave up when my fingers were too cold to take the magazine out of the rifle, and my toes were numb.

I did get to test drive my new thermal overalls -

Fetching, no? They are warm and have good-sized pockets for all my gear. Probably because they are men's not women's. Look on Women's Hunting Journal for a more in-depth discussion of women's hunting clothes. While you're there, try and help me convince Terry to design a line of suitable clothing specifically for women hunters - we're an under-recognised niche market!

On the up side of buying men's clothes, we ladies tend to fit in the smaller sizes which are what's usually left in the sales. Hence these were a real bargain.

Though my hunt was unsuccessful, my attempt at learning crochet went better than I expected. My friend Colette brought her yarn and her infinite patience over yesterday, and under her tutelage I was able to make this before I ran out of yarn:

I don't need a new hobby, or an unlimited supply of potholders, but the actions of using a hook instead of knitting needles was incredibly relaxing. Compulsive, even. And cheaper than therapy. All you need is a hook, some scrap yarn, and a good teacher like Colette who exchanges her skills for cake.

If the weather improves this weekend, I'll be building a new high seat and moving the lambs and horses to fresh grass. If this rain keeps up, I plan to work on the jumper I'm knitting. (If I finish it before the end of April, I win £20 from the husband who bet me it would take til Christmas. Sucker!)

In the meantime, if anyone needs new potholders let me know. I can hook you up.

Ten Acres - Now What?

Walking the boundary of Milkweed Farm

Now that Milkweed Farm is officially ours, I've started to worry that I won't be able to manage ten acres. Which is ridiculous because we already have 30 acres and we manage that just fine. But we have tenants for that farm (Mike's started calling it Teasel farm) and they manage it. I just do the paperwork. I can totally do paperwork. But I'm going to farm these ten acres myself. Do I know enough about being a farmer?

It's ours as far as those trees

Well, I know the first principle is that the land you have determines what kind of farm you have. If you fall in love with a steep-sided hill farm, you're going to end up with a flock of sheep, because that's what thrives on a slope. Milkweed farm is flat, and the sward (grass) is good. In fact it's certified organic as the previous owner raised organic grass-fed beef on it. We have lots of options.

The dew pond in the corner of the field - we can extract water from it for livestock

Too many options are confusing. I need to narrow them down in order to find this farm's purpose. When I'm not sure about something, I fall back on what I know: research. Luckily there's a local Agricultural College (my old alma mater ) with a pretty good library. As it's too wet to get on with spring chores I used the opportunity to rummage through their stacks for titles like Fieldcraft and Farmyard, Grassland Smallholding, and The Profitable Hobby Farm.

Maybe it was the change of scenery or the comfort of a library environment, but some thoughts came clear. I know that the farm must pay for itself, and contribute to our overall income - no more fooling around. I know that I want to keep the organic status, at least in principle (the accreditation can be expensive). And I know that I'm going to make some mistakes. It's inevitable.

After a walk around the field this morning, we decided to start with what needs doing - namely fencing, and clearing up some weeds that are encroaching on the field margins. We need to clear this in order to put the fence in, and reclaim around an acre of field that would be going to waste otherwise.

We also had a good look at animal scat and prints. This field is a magnet for deer and wild pigs, which it great news not only for our freezer, but also for our pockets. Harvesting the wild meat will earn a profit, around £50 an animal. And as we are the landowners, any pig or deer I shoot belongs to me - no estate tax, no pigs destined for London markets.

Pig workings in the field

To that end, I popped up to the local gun shop and got a good deal on a new high seat. A high seat is just what it sounds like: a seat about 12' off the ground, tied to a tree. It gives you a good, safe vantage point to shoot from. And as there are no big aerial predators in Britain, deer don't bother to look up in the trees for danger, so it's good camouflage. Two deer to the game dealer will cover the cost of the high seat. We won't be putting livestock here to graze until late in the year, so the wild animals won't be pushed out. I can harvest them all summer.

Can you see the track that the animals have made coming into the field?

At home, the livestock are thriving but muddy. The lamb pen is more mud than grass, churned up by tiny feet. My calendar says that the duck eggs in the incubator are due to hatch in the next day or two; I candled them and 3 out of 4 were developing. She doesn't know it yet, but Barbara the Silkie hen will be adopting any of the hatchlings. She's broody on a dummy egg, on standby.

The lettuce and mixed greens are growing on in the greenhouse, despite the fact that a family of rats has decided to make a home underneath it. The holes are so large, the greenhouse is in danger of subsidence! I need to start trapping again.

It's dark, all the dogs (and the gamekeeper) are asleep. It's time for me to go to bed too. Maybe I'll just have a look in the Organic Farming and Growing book first.

Eating Crow

Footprints

We're still snowed in and expecting more tonight. The pipes in the bathroom are frozen and the water won't drain from the sink.  Even the shampoo was congealed. Partway through my shower Mike came in and dumped a 5-gallon can in there with me. "The outside tap is frozen. Can you fill that for the horses?" I shivered while I waited for the can to fill up. Parts of me froze and congealed.

The UPS guy dropped off some post-Christmas presents from my family in the US and - oh joy! - they were packed in bubble wrap. I've used it to lag the outside pipes and hopefully prevent more surprise visits in the shower.

Hey - Where's our water?!? And breakfast too if you please.

The prolonged cold weather has been affecting the wild birds. Sadly I've found a few little birds dead in the snow. Their metabolisms are so fast that they live on a knife-edge when food is scarce. They use up their fuel reserves so quickly and have a short time to refuel before they go into irreversible starvation. I try and help by keeping feeders filled with peanuts and mixed seed. A birdy buffet.

Still a few fresh-laid eggs in the shed - thanks ladies

The cold is also bringing birds like woodcock and snipe to congregate around swamps in sheltered areas. Tasty game birds. Mike and I took a walk with a gun and a dog because I love woodcock, and because I found an excellent recipe for wild game tortelli that I wanted to try.

I should have never gone out thinking of the bird as if it was already in the pot. There were lots of woodcock and a few came within shot of me. But I missed them all. I missed a pigeon too. I couldn't have hit a cow in the ass with a banjo today.

In fact the only thing I shot was a crow. From game shooter to vermin controller. Such is the lot of the keeper's wife.

Still, it was a pleasurable walk in a snowy wood with my husband, looking at all the animal tracks and spotting deer laid up on the bracken banks. And Dulcie had a great time flushing birds for me to miss.

Mukluks drying over the wood stove

We have a team shooting tomorrow and Tuesday, weather permitting. We're short-staffed, so I've been press ganged into loading for a Belgian Viscount. He's a kind man, but I always prefer working the dogs over any other shoot day job. Again, the lot of the keeper's wife is to do what's needed, even if it means wearing an ironed shirt and tie.

I accept my lot. But is it wrong to pray for more snow and a tie-free Monday?

The Christmas Tree

Some years ago Mike planted 200 small fir trees as shelter to hold pheasants. He feeds the birds here too (that's what the plastic bins are) so, between food and shelter, he knows where to find birds on a shoot day. We harvest our Christmas tree from this little plantation every year.

The sun finally came out today, after weeks of miserable, unending rain (which I have been complaining about ad nauseum in my blog). Thank god - I was starting to feel like that girl in the closet from the Ray Bradbury story I remember seeing on PBS when I was young. I was inspired to go find our tree today and enjoy the sun while it lasts.

I'm not very spiritual but I always wait for a tree to pick me, one that kind of speaks to me. C'mon I know you all do it too! You want to feel your tree is special. Imbued with the magic of Christmas.

Every year the tree gets a name. This tree is called Bertie. Here's Bertie in situ:

A handsome specimen. Here's me being lazy and using a chainsaw to cut him down (I wanted an excuse to try my new chainsaw helmet - an early gift!):

Anyone who knows me can tell you that that's my best side. We've taken Bertie home and I hope to put him up this evening along with the basket of holly I collected today:

I hope all your Christmas preparations are in hand, and that you have found your own tree. If not, email me - Bertie's got lots of relatives looking for a home for the holidays! I'll lend you my chainsaw.