The Big Picture in a Small Village

Filming started last week, and the estate is teeming with people in neon yellow vests with radios, and extras in costume drinking coffee out of paper cups. The cast and crew put in 13-hour days, a lot of which appears to be waiting. Artistic merit and red carpet appearances aside, making a film seems to be a tedious process.

I don't see many movies and my tastes are narrow. I only make the effort to go to the cinema for Woody Allen and zombie films (if Woody made a zombie film, I would be his target demographic) and I probably won't see this one until it comes on TV. I did read the book. The first year I moved to Dorset I read all of Thomas Hardy's books. As an American, I appreciated living among the hundred-plus year old villages, churches and buildings that I could read about in his stories. My bank is in the building that belonged to the Mayor of Casterbridge, I can still eat at the Black Bull Hotel, and I regularly walk my dogs on footpaths through all his village settings.

I particularly liked Far from the Madding Crowd for its heroine Bathesheba, bucking convention and becoming a shepherdess to run a farm that she inherits. She's self-reliant both in spirit and financially, and Thomas Hardy makes the bold assertion throughout the novel that her suitors and marriage are the biggest threats to her independence. "Amen, sister." I thought when I read it.

My literary criticism aside, it's been interesting to watch the process of filming this story unfold. Filming is simply a business like any other. It requires huge amounts of infrastructure and coordination, from feeding people to moving people to building backgrounds. I can appreciate the set building from my museum days, as I remember time spent researching, designing, and labouring to create a single museum exhibition, often over a year. The process is a lot quicker with films. A whole village has been erected - complete with cottage, sheepwash, farmyard, thatched grain stores, and church - in under a month.

Grain stores in progress, made from round bales covered in thatch, with plaster mushroom "supports"

Most of these sets have been built in the main courtyard at the big house. Then one day, the 19th century arrived on the back of a lorry-

There must be a props department somewhere, where film companies just order set dressing for the time period required. Horse carts, barrels, wooden sheep hurdles, and woven crates turned up.

There's also a Base Camp for the film staff with a huge tent, motor homes, people carriers, and a double-decker bus being used as a dining hall. It sprung up like a crop of barley in a farmer's field. All the lights are on when I'm on my way to first lambing checks at 4 am. The crew keep farmer's hours.

Our house, far left and the base camp. The dogs are more interested in what the grazing cows left behind overnight.

Sadly, my fifteen minutes of fame passed me by. The actress was game for going into sheep wash herself, albeit with a stuffed sheep, so I wasn't needed to "double". To be fair, it must be easier for editing to make fake sheep seem real than to make me look like a Hollywood size zero in my 20s. The actor was not so outdoorsy, and a male shepherd was found at the last minute to get in the wash to do the cold and heavy lifting in the actor's place.

Another tick in the self-reliance box for Bathsheba, then.

My chickens have made the cut, and I drop them off to Gill the animal wrangler after my lambing checks. They asked for all brown hens, but I didn't have enough Rhode Island Red-type layers so I threw a couple of young meat chickens in there, and no one noticed. My future chicken dinners are earning a crust before they go under a crust.

When Gill's on another site filming, I look after a small flock of geese and Cromwell the goat, all regular film industry extras. They're used to handling so they're quiet, and I fit them in among my daily chores. All the animal work means there's still something extra to put in the bank, without long days in a cold bath - a blessing in disguise for me during a busier-than-usual lambing period. But, it's not such good dinner conversation as being the shepherdess double. "Always the goat handler, never the sheep wash babe." That's a saying, right?

Apparently, Cromwell the goat worked with Angelina Jolie. He doesn't do autographs, just pellets.

Mike gets occasional calls from various assistants to answer relevant game keeping questions. He's been summoned to show the actress the technique used to dispatch a rabbit. Not a live rabbit. No rabbits were hurt in the making of this film, of course. She simply wanted her scene to look accurate. I think Mike used a tea towel for demonstration purposes. (Incidentally, tea towels also make good chickens.)

Other than that, seeing how films are made is sort of like seeing how sausages are made. Personally, I don't want to know what goes into either, I just want to consume and enjoy. And with no story to tell of "the time I doubled for that actress" I will just have to be satisfied with being my own Bathsheba, and washing my own sheep. Incidentally, we're having bunny biryani for dinner tonight - one I shot, dispatched, and butchered myself in late spring, when it was fat on good weather and good grass. I hope Thomas Hardy would be proud of me.


Lambing update: Six ewes have lambed, and there are seven yet to lamb. Even with a few tricky births and to-be-expected baby illnesses, we've not lost any more lambs. As of this morning, there are nine healthy lambs. 

Lambing Live! (and no-so live...)

Lambing has started, and we've had two births now - one easy, and one fodder for a shepherd's nightmares. Of course I'll start by describing the bad one in detail first.

On one of my regular checks, I saw this -

Easy to identify, first stages of labour: the water bag. It was attached to Gregor, an experienced ewe who had triplets last year. It was an hour or so before sunset and a nice evening, so I settled down on an upturned bucket to watch the show. It got dark before the end of the first act. Just water, no lambs.

I walked her to the maternity stable, but had to disturb her to move her. I thought it may set her lambing back a bit, but nothing to worry about. I let her settle in and sat in the truck to close my eyes for a minute. A minute turned into a hour, and when I checked on Gregor, she was still restless but not in labour. Mike came up to the field with dinner and a cup of tea. We sat in the front of the Land Rover eating Chinese takeaway, keeping out of Gregor's way and hoping she would settle.

I made a fatal error in judgement and let her continue unaided. I thought moving to the shed was slowing things down for her. In fact, when I finally went in for a look, the twins were so tangled that neither could enter the birth canal and start the process. That's why the hold up. Traffic jam.

I untangled triplets in her last year, but had to get a local shepherd to lend a hand with this one. It was a Gordian knot, with fleece. A shepherd is more cost effective than a vet. Vets don't come out at midnight on a Saturday night and detangle your lambs for homemade cake and a dozen eggs. This shepherd is a late-season lamber like me, so was on his rounds when I called and was with us in minutes.

Even after the pig's ear I made in that sheep's uterus, the shepherd managed to save one of the two twin rams. The survivor was very weak and couldn't stand or suckle.

12 hours later, and he's still so depleted. He's too tired to respond when his mother calls to him.

I tube fed him, and propped him on a straw pillow. I fed him and adjusted his position every few hours so he wouldn't get stiff. I milked the spare colostrum off the ewe to put in the freezer. And I worried. And I felt guilty. I had just read a chapter in the Malcolm Gladwell book about plane crashes. Apparently, in every plane crash attributed to pilot error, it has been shown that a minimum of seven errors occurs. Small errors in judgement combined with tiredness leads to catastrophe. I worked backwards from dead lamb to water sac, and charted my errors - at 3 am sat in a dark office with a cup of tea, unable to sleep even though I knew I had to be up to the field in two hours for the next check. No more lambs came that day.

No sense making mistakes if you don't learn from them. Mike did the next night checks for me, and I got a full eight hours' sleep. That made the correction for overtired. I read up on options for dealing with delayed births, and reminded myself to trust my gut. I plan to bake two cakes for the shepherd, just in case I need to call on him again after hours.

This morning I was at the field before 5 am and, just the other side of the gate, ewe 2844 was cleaning a pair of bright-eyed lambs. I could see the family in my truck's headlights. No hassles, no interference, no late night phone calls.

Ewe 2844 and babies, safe and dry in the maternity shed

We're lambing at Milkweed for the first time and having two horse stables temporarily converted into a maternity shed (individual pens for bonding) and nursery shed (group room for older mums and babies) is a joy. The weather's just turned - single digit temperatures and squally showers - and I know the babies are safe from draughts, foxes, and downpours. Kitty grazes close to the stables and when the ewes call to their babies, Kitty whickers back in fellowship. She has that matronly protective air of an older mare, and I think she's adopted the flock as her own. After all, she was a mother herself once.

There are still 21 lambs waiting to be born. No doubt I'm due more of those "Here's two I made earlier" scenes at the field gate, and no doubt I'm due more stuck lambs and heartsickening mistakes. The ram lamb has recovered despite his hard start. He's up on his feet and feeding now-

I think in aviation terms this one would be classified as a 'near miss'.

Bounty-full

The M&T computer is up and running again - just. It still overheats but I'm going to try and limp it through the winter. I've found that a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a saddle pad makes a pretty good laptop cooling mat.

With that problem in the chiller, I can think about filling the stores. The harvest is coming in and I make time every day to pick, or gather, or cook up a batch of what's been picked and gathered. I've filled one small shelf in the pantry with chutneys - French bean, plum & chilli, apple & onion - and tomato relish. The house smells perpetually of malt vinegar during September.

A small selection of chutneys            

Preserving food is part frugal and part ritual. Though, as far as frugality goes, by the time I've bought canning jars, spices, and had the stove on for two hours, I can't in good conscience say it's free food. But everyone with a vegetable patch knows the mental anguish that comes with a glut. Compost it and you feel wasteful. Serve up beans or courgettes twelve days in a row and face a mutiny at your kitchen table. (A Mutiny from the Bounty!) Try and give it away, and you realise everyone else is wrestling with their own glut.

Garrison Keillor once said that the only time anyone locks their car doors in Lake Woebegone is during tomato season, simply to stop people leaving boxes of their surplus in your car. A fictional town and a fictional harvest, but surely a true statement.

In the UK, there's never an overabundance of ripe tomatoes. Not enough sun. Here, we lock our doors against courgettes. Courgettes and marrows (think a Hulked-out courgette). We can't even make ratatouille with them unless we - gasp! - buy tomatoes.

Pickling spreads the load. I can hardly face another plate of runner beans right now but the week before Christmas, that runner bean chutney with cheese and a door-stop wedge of home-made bread will be most welcome. Courgettes can be made into pickles that will keep until next spring.

A pair of cucumber plants burst out of their makeshift polytunnel - made from leftover pheasant pen sections

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Freezing apples and blackberries is very frugal and less of a time-suck than standing over a jam pan. Peel and roughly chop the apples, add a squeeze of lemon juice, and freeze in recycled takeout containers - what could be easier? Blackberries just need washing before freezing. Voila! - instant makings for a hot crumble on a cold day. The only limiting factor is the size of your freezer. If I shoot a good-sized deer, then we have crumbles every other day to free up some space. And now you're back to the "too much of a good thing" scenario.

This is why eating seasonally has its drawbacks.

But you can't beat preserving for satisfying our human need for ritual. Harvest is probably the most rewarding time in a farmer's or grower's calendar. Whether your harvest is laid out on the counter for canning, or stacked in a barn for overwintering animals, it's a tangible measure of one's successes that year. It marks the culmination of so much luck, skill and hard work coming together. When the chutney or jam has been spooned into jars and you hear the 'plink' as the seal sets, that plink says to me "Your food's safe, now go and enjoy the quiet, contemplative months of winter". After lambing, cutting wood, culling deer, and shoot season of course.

Another crop about to burst out. The ewe's legs look like they are buckling under her weight!

My other favourite ritual job at harvest is braiding onions for storage. I've pulled and dried a small but respectable onion harvest out of the vegetable patch. I braided the best ones and they are hanging in the spare room on the curtain rod - the curtain rod with its end still resting on top of the bookshelf, having pulled out of the wall two years ago when I hung my braided onion strings on there the first time. You'd think I'd get around to fixing it during one of those quiet, contemplative winter months I mentioned earlier.

The onions too small or soft to make it on the curtain rod have been going into the chutneys. I use them as a self-limiting mechanism: when the onions run out, no more chutney. If you have compulsive tendencies (and let's face it, who doesn't?), canning can become a self-rewarding stimulus. Or perhaps sniffing vinegar stimulates dopamine production, I don't know.

Anyway, the onions are going to run out soon, but the beans seem never-ending this year. I've started feeding them to the dogs, cooked in lamb fat or with scrambled eggs. We have seven dogs and I'm always grateful that not one is a fussy eater. In fact, they never pass up an opportunity. When I'm making chutney or jam, Pip sleeps in the kitchen on the mat by the back door - far enough away that she's not being sent out for getting under my feet, but close enough to snaffle up any apple peelings or blackberries that hit the floor. Quincy adores banana skins, but has to rummage in the compost for her fix. Spud likes the ends of the cucumbers Mike eats in his sandwiches every day.

I hope everyone's had a bountiful season. Tonight we're having our first harvest of late carrots and some beetroot given to us by friends. And, if you're having problems curtailing your own canning impulses, I'm available for interventions.

Please Bear with Us...

We're having technical difficulties here at M&T -- the 'blue screen of death' on your laptop kind of technical difficulties. Parts are on order and the IT guy is standing by but, until then, I only have my husband's ye olde computer, which just about allows me to check my emails but not to edit and download photos, or publish blog posts easily.

There's still lots going on here. Lambing starts this week and there are 13 ewes fit to burst already. I will of course be posting photos of cute lambs. Filming on the estate starts soon after lambing, including my role as stand-in for the lead actress (as in, I get to be filmed "standing in" a cold sheep wash so she doesn't have to) and my extra job as goat- and geese-minder. You make your money where you can in the country. And it will be a fun, new experience too. Then there's just about time to catch my breath before our first shoot day on 8th October.

Please check back with us, we'll be on-line again soon. There's always my email address in the side margin, if you want to drop us a thought or question.

Gluts and Gluttons

We are in the thick of our busiest season (I feel like I say that in every other post). Our day's work runs from dawn to dark and, with the nights drawing in quickly now, we're running out of light before we run out of chores. Mike is out of bed before sunrise, to make sure his pheasants don't drop off roost into the waiting jaws of a predator. We've lost a few early risers but, as I say to him, everyone has to make a living, even foxes. He huffs and grumbles, and vows to get up earlier next morning. I don't see how that's possible unless he discovers a wormhole that allows him to time travel, and get up before he goes to bed.

The rain has come in- nature's way of reminding me that I should catch up on a month's worth of neglected farm paperwork. This included consulting a sheep gestation table to divine exactly when this autumn's lambing is due to start: less than five weeks from today. That leaves me just enough time to set up a fox-resistant fence at Milkweed, vaccinate and worm the expectant mothers, move them, and start them on extra rations. It doesn't leave me enough time to catch up on my sleep before lambs start dropping thick and fast.

A glut of lambs coincides with a glut of fruit, which I hope will be our year's supply of jams and chutneys. After a nearly fruit-less 2012, the cupboard is bare. I don't want to get caught out again and plan to preserve and store as much as I can. As much as I can, can. I've already started juicing windfall cooking apples to make apple cider vinegar, useful in the kitchen and as a tonic for most of our animals. Preserving the harvest is a very time-consuming job.

A lack of last year's chutney also means I have nothing to enter in this year's local country show. I'm full of good intentions in winter when the days are short and our workload has dwindled into something manageable. I always plan to enter a knitting project and some home made chutney at the very least. When the show schedule appears in July on the counter at the feed store or vets, we'e usually up to our armpits in pheasant poults. Knitwear and preserves are the very least of my worries, stored in my mental closet like so many winter coats and long underwear.

I manage to grab a few minutes while on pheasant patrol, or waiting for Dakota's acupuncture appointment, to knit a couple of rows on this winter's jumper but, at the moment, my knitting entry would consist of the back, plus a sleeve and a half of a ladies' cardigan-

Work In Progress

Picking it up and putting it down so much means the tension is all to hell, and those knitting judges are strict. If I entered my sloppy work, the judges would have my guts for garter stitches. I will have to take solace in the garment's warmth this winter, and forego the chance at a country fair ribbon.

I also had high hopes of entering Kitty in the coloured horse and veteran's classes at the show. She's got good conformation, and she's in the show condition (i.e. fat) that judges seem to prefer on cobs and native breeds.  We would definitely be in with a chance. Without a groom to help with all the preparation - washing, pulling, plaiting, chalking, oiling, - that goes with showing horses, I simply can't spare the time. I'm not even sure I will have enough free time to go to the show as a visitor which, frankly, isn't a bad thing. Last year I got slightly tipsy in the beer tent and bought a goat. It might be safer (and cheaper) to stay home.

I am making time to take Fraggle to her gun dog puppy training classes - that's a priority. The trainer is an hour's drive from here and Fraggle made it exactly halfway there before barfing over the front seat. She recovered, and made a good first impression on our trainer who said to me "That's going to be a fast dog. Stylish - but very fast." The thought of trying to keep up with this pup when she hits her rebellious teenager phase (in about 8 months' time) made me feel a little sick too. 

The meat chickens have doubled in size, and pound down a kilo of food each every week-

Like any hybrid crop, these meat birds will mature all at once and I'll have a glut of chicken to kill, hang, eviscerate, pluck (by machine, thankfully) and package for the freezer. Also time-consuming, but the harvest should last us a year.

The laying flock have another job to do this September: I've hired out a dozen chickens for filming. They will be extras in the movie being shot on the estate. I'll crate them up every morning and drop them at the big house. At the end of the filming day, they can simply see themselves home. Filming takes place around the orchard where they normally go scrumping windfall fruits that time of year anyway.

It seems only a small part of the filming will be here on the estate and tenant farms now. Lady S has also decreed that she will be exacting a 30% cut of any money paid to her tenant farmers for the use of their farms for filming. The farmers are grumbling about taxation without representation, and I'm firmly on their side. I'm waiting to see if she demands her cut of my chickens too (I wonder if she'll accept a check for £1.80). Maybe I can pay her in eggs; I have a glut of those. I haven't got a glut of cash.

Welcome to the real Downton Abbey, folks.

Opportunities

We had a month-long spell of hot, dry weather – an actual summer! I’m sporting a farmer’s tan, horsefly bites, and I’m itching from the dried grass that finds its way into my bra during haymaking. Thanks to a great deal done with neighbouring farmers, our hay and straw is now stacked in the barn, insurance that our livestock will have food and dry beds even if this winter comes early and stays late. A full barn goes a long way to alleviating my worries. That is, until I turn and look at our completely empty woodshed and coal bunker. We burned just about every stick and nugget to stave off last winter. It will take a lot of (wo)man hours to replenish our fire wood supply, the next job that needs my attention.

Our “people” winter food supply is looking good also- 

One freezer is full of lamb, and the rest have been butchered and sold, so even my bank account is more like the hay barn than the woodshed. Fraggle accompanied me on my lamb delivery rounds, harnessed into the front of the Land Rover. She likes riding in the car and visiting new people, but the harness isn't her choice -

It was a kind gift from a client, and comes from a fancy pet store in London. I told Fraggle to enjoy the small luxuries when she can. (To her, a luxury is finding a turkey feather in the garden.)

Thirty day-old meat chickens arrived last week-

I re-jigged the puppy pen and a spare kennel, and wired in a heat lamp to keep them warm until they’re feathered up and ready to venture out onto grass. If we get an Indian summer, these chicks could be in the freezer before shooting season starts, though not before lambing in mid-September.

Last week the sheep scanner man came to Dorset, and the local shepherd let me tag my 14 pregnant ewes onto his flock as part of our hay-making deal. The ram did us proud; we’re expecting 25 lambs! Ewe 5 is empty, Ewes 2 and 7 are having singles, Eudora is my only set of triplets, and everyone else is having twins.

Between now and lambing, I need to move the girls to new pasture and begin their prenatal feeding and vaccination regime. Their current pasture - below the partridge sheds – had good grazing but no shade. When the hot weather came, I raided my bed linens and knocked up a Bedouin-style tent with sheets and hurdles-

OK, more shanty town than sheik, but they all made use of the shade it provided. And I needed some new sheets anyway.

The dogs have had their pre-shoot vet checks. Dulcie came up lame, and we worried she would need her other cruciate ligament repaired, but x-rays showed nothing sinister. What a relief. Dakota is having back spasms, but with anti-inflammatories and a course of acupuncture, her prognosis is good too. On our last visit, the vet gave me an ice cream for the ride home. “I bought them as a treat for the staff. We keep them in the dead freezer. Have one.” I've lived in the country long enough that I found nothing odd about that sentence.  Anyway, nothing puts me off free ice cream.

Jazz is now in her new home with Hazel. I still miss her on our morning walks, but she’s a house dog now with teenage boys who adore her, and another spaniel her own age that she lived with for years. It’s a better retirement for her, an opportunity for more companionship, which Jazz thrives on more than retrieving pheasants.

Speaking of opportunities, filming for the Thomas Hardy film starts soon. None of us have caught the acting bug yet, but after receiving a little brown envelope from the BBC for Mike’s day filming, we realised that it’s an opportunity not to be missed. We've offered to be extras in the background scenes where needed. The guys have been told to start growing their hair and beards. The local shepherd’s horned sheep have been contracted, and I'm going to offer Trevor the turkey and his ladies for background shots too. We've had to leave some of the paddocks of grass long, so it can be used in a “cutting hay” scene, and scenery building has started already.

The thing is, it’s not much different than what we would be doing in a normal day anyway. OK, it may be out of season, and I’ll have to wear a smock and bonnet instead of jeans and wellies, but not a lot else will change. I’ll simply get paid twice for the same work, and filmed doing it. I'm already spending the money in my head: replacing the living room curtains that are still stained from the Great Jam-making Incident of ’11, purchasing that longed-for meat grinder, or maybe just a new set of sheets.

Fifteen Minutes of Fame?

Mike has had to take time out of his busy schedule being a gamekeeper to play one on TV. There's a new reality show destined for the US market called Ladies of London (I think that's the working title). The cast includes the incumbent Countess of this estate who will be having a shooting lesson with her friends under Mike's instruction as part of the show. It is one of the duties of a gamekeeper to assist his family and any guests with shooting requirements, and this certainly counts. Much to Mike's horror.

He's had to put on his full set of wool tweeds for the filming, and the temperature today is over 30C. An introverted man by nature, and still conscious of his scars from the accident, he's just walked out of the house looking like a man on his way to his own hanging. It will be good for his personal healing process to face this challenge, but Mike's still hoping that these scenes end up on the cutting room floor.

I want to be as supportive as possible and Mike is a simple man, so instead of talking to him about his feelings, when he returns from his ordeal he will find a warm gooseberry crumble waiting for him. Lady S has let me have her gooseberry harvest as she's not fond of the fruit herself. It's Mike's favourite (I told you, simple tastes). While he was sweating in his wool suit, I walked to the fruit cage in the walled garden and picked a kilo of gooseberries and made him  an "I'm sorry you have to do this, but it'll be OK" crumble.

Mike came home looking both tired and baffled. He's not used to seeing breast implants or enhanced lips. He asked me why they do that to themselves. Where do I start to give him an explanation? To Mike who has been through many painful re-constructive surgeries, he sees plastic surgery as a form of self-harming.

It's safe to say he hasn't caught the acting bug.

I could have stood and watched the filming, and taken a few photos for the blog but I haven't got the 'bug' either. Besides, I had to de-flea the dogs, help a friend trailer her horse, and the leg of venison we're having for dinner wasn't going to cook itself. And I've seen fake boobs already thanks. You'll just have to watch the programme if you want pictures.

The young Countess-to-be was happy, so therefore Mike's happy. And the BBC provided so many cartridges that there's enough leftover for 3 days' practice at the shooting club. Mike came home after four hours' filming and peeled off his tweeds, and ran straight out to check and feed his birds. Real gamekeepers have to deal with real livestock.

I don't know how to break this to him, but filming of a new adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd starts in September on this estate. On the up side, I don't remember a gamekeeper in that book.  I'll tell him to be thankful it's not Lady Chatterley's Lover. September's apple season - I can always make him another crumble.