Eggshausting

This must be the start of my egg pun series. Feel free to contribute your own in the comments section.

Mike and I are both so tired that we've entered the hysteria phase - you know after denial, sadness, anger, eating too many cookies, washing cookies down with wine, and talking to your animals (doing both voices).

One of the incubators is faulty, and it's tripping out the circuits so all the hatchers and incubators go off. That's 20,000 chicks on the line. There is only one person in the UK who repairs these machines and he can't get here for a few days. Mike's only choice is to sleep in the stone barn with the machines, on a cot in my L.L. Bean sleeping bag, and make sure the machines keep running and the eggs stay warm.

What we do for our livestock...

It's not just Mike who has to suffer for his animals; Our flock of sheep is too large to lamb in the small paddock outside our house this year. They will have to lamb at Milkweed. I'm trying to source a small caravan on Ebay that I can sleep in, for pretty much the whole of October. I'll need to borrow that sleeping bag back from Mike.

I'm keeping the home fires burning - both of them, as north winds have brought winter back to England - and managing the non-pheasant related jobs. The tired hysteria has extended to my cooking, and meals appear to be a random amalgam of leftovers: beef stew over nettle pasta last night, fish with wilted spinach and macaroni cheese tonight. I think Mike is afraid to come home because of the food.

Be extra concerned because my job at the cafe started this week. In fact I was late for my first day of work because I had to break up a cock fight between Patches and our newest cockerel, and four hens tried to follow me to work. I had to bribe them back by throwing part of my lunch (a peanut butter, honey, and cinnamon sandwich...) up the driveway and shutting the gate. Chickens appreciate my culinary talents.

There is some good news on the animal front: Alan got a new foot today from the farrier. His infection is gone but it took the outside of his front hoof with it. The farrier used essentially acrylic nails for horses and built up the missing hoof. As a horse carries most of its weight on its front feet, conformation and stability is paramount; badly-shaped feet can lead to leg injuries and back problems. We're going out riding tomorrow morning (weather permitting) to try out Alan's newly fitted saddle and newly made foot.

We'll ride by the hatching barn and give Mike a wake-up call.

Timing is Everything

Parsnips. Some for lunch - roasted - and some for soup - curried

I spent my Sunday morning digging up the last of our overwintered (read forgotten about) parsnips, treating one case of foot rot (sheep) and one case of seedy toe (horse), and helping Mike catch up pheasant hens for transport to a game farmer near London. Yesterday, I felt very envious of people who spend a civilised Sunday morning reading the paper over a kitchen table spread with coffee and croissants.

I'm holding Matilda, who's growing like a weed and keeping up with the other lambs now

We had a spring weather Sunday, which made the work easier, and a team of six to spread the work load. We had about 400 hens to catch, crate, and load on a trailer for their trip to London -

Talking through the Game Plan

To make our task easier, we built smaller 'catching' pens inside that large holding pen. A panel leaned against a corner to make a small A-frame works fine. Then we quietly walked the birds into it. Jasper the catcher demonstrates:

Yes, that's pretty quietly walked in, for a pheasant

Jasper hands the birds out to me, 5 at a time, to put in a crate. Each crate holds 15 hens. And they don't go in without a fight. Just look at Jasper's arms -

The wounds get so bad that the landlady at Jasper's local pub asked him discreetly if he was self-harming. No, it's purely bird-related trauma he assured her.

Once all the hens were crated, we loaded the crates onto a flatbed and put a tarp over the lot -

That's our Land Rover doing the towing. Their own Land Rover suffered a broken drive shaft just 200 yards short of the catching pen. We lent them ours, to get people and birds home safely.

Did I mention that we have to repeat the whole process over again next Sunday? With a repaired drive shaft, of course.

After a break for coffee and home-made cinnamon rolls (a very small thanks to the volunteer helpers), I intended to send our remaining two Buff Orpington cockerels to Ice Camp (a favourite euphemism for the freezer, borrowed from Kate at Living the Frugal Life blog). We were just divvying up the dregs from the coffee pot, minutes away from the Cone of Silence (this term courtesy of Tamar at Starving Off the Land blog). Then the dogs started howling and chickens were sounding the alarm. A neighbour's newly adopted greyhound got loose and was after Patches, our main Buff Orpington cockerel -

Yikes!

Although it looks bad, I'm glad to report that Patches escaped with his life. But not with his tail -

Poor Patches! (And his newly patchy bottom)

Our neighbours are great guys and responsible dog owners. It was a genuine accident. Patches made it through the night, so it looks good for his continued role as Top Cockerel of the flock. But, just in case, we've had to keep his two replacements. They got a stay of execution, at least until spring. Five minutes later, and we might have had a chick-less summer. Time is indeed everything.

Catching up

On this shoot, we grow our own pheasants every year. This means hatching eggs, which means finding eggs to hatch in the first place. Hunting for wild nests would be 'Needle in a Haystack' territory and wouldn't guarantee the volume we need. (We don't just hatch for ourselves, but provide birds for other local shoots too.) So, we catch up hens and cocks - the mums and dads - and keep them in laying pens for the next four months, in order to collect their eggs.

So how does one catch the hens and cocks? Build a pheasant catcher, of course -

Or in our case, many pheasant catchers. The process is simple: wherever pheasants are feeding out of a bin (like the blue one in the above picture), build a square around it out of four panels, and cover the square with a net. Each panel should have four or so pop holes like this one -

It's just a cone made out of chicken wire, with the wide end on the outside, funnelling pheasants into the catcher. The narrow end is inside, which confuses the pheasants. They can't figure out how to go out the way they came in. And they want to come in because that's where their feed bin is.

We empty the catchers at dawn and dusk, to keep the birds safe from foxes that could break into it. The catchers aren't a fortress; in fact, we make constant running repairs with anything to hand - zip ties, baling twine, hog rings - just to keep escape holes plugged.

That would make even a hardcore bodger cringe. (Eh. I've seen worse, and it won the Turner Prize*)

Anyhoo, the caught birds are put into crates -

Then released into large pens on our laying fields, 60 hens and 8 cocks to a pen -

I know, the laying pens look as shoddy as the catchers, but they're reinforced and ringed by electric fencing, to dissuade predators from digging under or climbing in. There's a low-tech drinker system (gravity-fed, made from a recycled tank and PVC pipes), and feed bins are filled manually, by humping bags of wheat and layers pellet in over your shoulder. Recycled tin A-frames give the hens somewhere to lay away from prying eyes, and a 'time out' area if they're getting too much male attention.

We've filled 21 pens already.

Other catching up - Mike is back home from the hospital now. His operations went very well, and he only stayed in for 5 days to recuperate. He's going to take a break from any more reconstructive surgeries for now and just focus on physiotherapy, which to him means working 7 days a week, and ignoring the pain. (I shout "Arbeit macht frei" at him when he leaves for work in the morning, but he dismisses my sarcasm.)

After 9 years with Mike, Underkeeper Pete has also moved on, to become Keeper Pete and head of his own shoot in Devon. We miss him already, and wish him the best. So, welcome Underkeeper Ian, who has just finished his final year at gamekeeping college. Of course, gamekeeper's wife Jen, is still here. I have to help with the catching up, after all.

*Actually, I'm a big fan of modern art and try to visit the Tate at least once a year.

The White Pheasant

Every year we notice at least one pure white pheasant living wild. This year it survived the entire shoot season, only to die from natural causes during our recent bout of cold weather. We found it stone dead in a hedge, no marks or injuries on it. Pip is "helping" me inspect the carcase:

CSI: Labrador

Every year we hatch a small percentage of white pheasants and very dark pheasants. The white is a form of albinism. The birds don't necessarily have red eyes; it depends on the genetic origin of the albinism . Unfortunately, the mutation seems to decrease its life expectancy. The dark pheasants' plumage is caused by melanism.

White animals are still seen as an anomaly. On an estate like this one with a healthy population of Fallow deer, we are often stopped and told by someone that he or she has see "The White Deer". White fallow are surprisingly common. It's a coat colour and not a form of albinism. I have seen 5 or so white animals in a single herd of wild Fallow, but I never have the heart to tell the visitor that his sighting was anything less than amazing. Or that we prefer not to shoot the white deer because we use those to help us spot the herds of darker fallow that blend better with their woodland surroundings.

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.

Sheep-for-brains

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.

The Angry Pheasant

Oh, deer...

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.

Almost there

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.

Working Dogs are known for their stamina

And here's the exception to that rule. Pip only worked one day this week.

Today is the official start of pheasant season in England, and it's not been an auspicious one. It was cancelled due to inclement weather. The guns were here to shoot partridge, but the rain and winds are so ferocious that it would be unfair to the quarry. Partridge are small birds, and ours have been rained on all night. Thankfully the guns were able to reschedule.

In all the time I've been working on this shoot, I've never known a cancelled day. The only weather that will stop a pheasant is fog or snow. Both will cause a pheasant to lose its bearings in flight, and can result in an exhausted bird falling dead to the ground. Rain is the keepers friend. Pheasants don't wander far in the rain, so you're sure to find them where you put them.

I won't be wandering far from home either. And I can get on with making some apple chutney before the winds knock down what's left on my apple tree. I can't make any blackberry jam as the 1st October is also an inauspicious day for blackberries. According to local lore, the devil spits on them after today (or, if you're from Cornwall, the devil pees on yours.) Though, it would be fun to have jam labelled 'Blackberry & Devil Spit' in the pantry.

Apple Chutney bubbling on the stove