Easy Sunday Morning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quincy and her partridge dummy

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

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

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

6pm last night, two tired workers.

A bird in the hand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From baaaad to worse

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

Less Blackberry, More blackboard-y

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

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

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

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

Very 'Silence of the Lambs' indeed

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

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

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

Foster lamb in its 'cloaking device'

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

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

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

Socktoberfest

I've just finished knitting my very first sock!

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

Souped-up chickens for chicken soup

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

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

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

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

Shortly followed by its twin, a little ewe lamb.

They are so gooey when they're born

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eating humble tarte

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.