I’ve probably written about harvest before on here. I’ve certainly written about harvest many times in the past few decades in various places, because why wouldn’t I? The abundance is gratifying and you can forget that there is abundance because of all the effort that was put into it rather than just through luck. Polytunnel and veg garden activity on steroids. The pricking and planting and picking, blanching, freezing and cooking. Caring for poultry, hatching the eggs, rearing the birds, dispatching, plucking and dressing the birds. The same with sheep, cattle and pigs - well not the plucking or dressing as that is either irrelevant or done by the abattoir and butcher, but you know what I mean.

Right now, I have a fragrant batch of ratatouille doing its thing in the oven, and it includes the first aubergines of the year, the beauties. It will be served alongside locally caught tuna and picked samphire and there, on a plate, will be heaven. Lunch is lettuce, toms, cues, roasted red peppers from the garden plus a wodge of the heavenly mature goat Haytor made by Curworthy cheese which is as wildly delicious as the very best parmesan and for the goat haters among you, has not a whiff of the nanny. I know that I’ll be adding black olives and they are not local, nor is the olive oil, but I forgive myself for that.

This year’s onion harvest

Going back to the poultry theme, this week I’m picking up new turkey poults, the old breeding pair having lost all sense of fertility. Even though the eggs were forthcoming, the stag had left his lead in some long forgotten pencil and blanks were the only things being shot. But because we are thrifty and love vintage meat, they were both dispatched and portioned up last week, the hen made into the most unctuous stew, providing us with numerous wondrous meals, and the stag in bags in the freezer, all 32lbs of him. Long slow moist cooking for him too as you might not find him a tender roasting option. If you see something in our freezer labelled “old cock”, you know it’s as guidance for the cooking method rather than an indication of something more macabre.

The old turkey stag

The majority of our hay crop is also in the barn, and that is not to be sneezed at. This prolonged hot dry spell is causing ructions across the country with farmers already feeding winter forage as their fields dry to dust. Being in wet Devon, we still have grass and good ground coverage and nothing is mooing or bleating for lack of food, apart from the freshly weaned ewes who are having to work a little harder than usual on the aftermath of our hay cut and make the best of the headland which is left uncut for the benefit of wildlife. This is a deliberate process to ensure the ewes’ milk dries up and avoids mastitis. After a couple of weeks they will move onto sweeter, greener pastures once their udders have shrunk, but for now they are feeding the soil with their dung and eating a slightly restricted diet. They all look as fat as butter for this stage of the year, so do not fret.

One harvest that is slowing down is duck eggs. From six or so a day, we’ve moved onto one. I expect few eggs if any once we move into August, and we return to the slightly humdrumness of chicken eggs. But so it should be. Seasonality and all its pleasures means boom and bust for crops of any kind. And with the loss of duck eggs, the plums will come alive, juicy and perfumed and producers of sticky chins and fingers. Then the blackberries, the apples and pears, the leeks and corn cobs and the reliable chard. The bustiness of the basil will flower and wilt, but for now it is running rampant, in parallel with the tomatoes. A match made in heaven.

And this morning I woke too early out of a very deep sleep, with the Beatles’ “All You Need is Love” ringing in my head. As I prised my mind slightly open, I realised it was because one of the growing young cocks is nearing maturity and has just found his cockadoodledoo voice, to the exact cadence, timbre and timing to the responding Da-da dada-da of the brass.

“I’ve been thinking” is always a dangerous phrase round here, and much to my husband’s amusement and mild discomfiture, it’s one I use a lot. Its use means he knows that I’m about to launch into something that involves work, sometimes lots of work, and quite often work for him as well as me. So I launch into the phrase with appreciation and understanding, because sometimes it’s suggesting something life-changing – “let’s get cows” or “we should run courses on the farm” – and sometimes it’s much simpler like “I’m going to get some picnic tables so we and our course participants can eat outside in the farmyard in comfort”.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve turned away from as much news as I can, sanity being the better part of valour, as it were, but it’s impossible to ignore the fact that we have a new prime minister (relax, this is not a party-political broadcast, although I’m feeling more optimistic at the moment, so that’s good). And this change of scene and face has had me thinking about the fate and future and status of farming and farmers in a fairly gentle fashion. And those thoughts have been revolving around the concept of farm diversification.

Gorgeous blankets from Dodgson Wood - one of the best examples of farm diversification

Farm diversification is not new. Farmers have invented ways to stay afloat financially since time immemorial. This is because it is one of the few entirely bonkers sectors that cracks on, doing what it does, and then hoping (and praying and crying and rarely rejoicing) that the price dictated by the abattoir or the dealer or whoever, will cover their costs and bring in some actual income. Can you imagine going into a supermarket and telling the cashier how much you’re prepared to pay and that they have to accept that or let the goods rot on the shelves? Or paying a shop £5 less than the ticket price on a pair of trousers and expecting them to just suck it up? Well, that’s the reality of farming finances for the majority of farmers.

In order for there to be some certainty of income (you know, to pay the mortgage, keep fuel in the vehicles, have something to wear other than wellies and ripped t-shirts and put food in the bellies underneath said t-shirts), farmers have looked at what they are rich in which might be land, barns, gorgeous landscapes, and set up glamping, camping and caravanning sites, holiday lets, farm experiences, wedding venues, metal detecting days, alpaca trekking, you name it. There are some amazing, inventive examples and my short list doesn’t even touch the surface.

As good as these things are, and we engage in this ourselves to a significant degree (meat boxes, smallholding courses, selling our own lambskins, writing books for smallholders etc) so I am not being critical about these necessary endeavours, but what I would really like to see is an entirely different definition of diversification.

I want to see the diversification of the market, where, just like all other retailers, farmers dictate the price of their goods so that there is no danger that they are losing money with every sheep, every crop, every new wildflower meadow planted. The average Joe and Joanne has purchasing options – you can buy your clothes at Prada or George at Asda as purse and priorities dictate – that should also be true in farming. Farmer Tom’s vintage multicoloured tomatoes too fancy and expensive for you? Buy some good old Gardener’s Delight from Farmer Ben. Devon Ruby grass fed vintage beef dry aged for seven weeks before butchering or 14 day hung beef from dairy bulls reared on barley; the choice is yours. Switching the market suppliers into the market deciders seems like a good idea to me and then you pays your money and takes your choice. And all this of course has to be ring-fenced to stop poor quality imports with lower farming standards completely skewing and skewering the UK market. Because food security for an island is not a concept, it is a necessity. Good healthy food that works with nature and doesn’t come with a list of ingredients I can’t interpret is something that farmers produce, whether it is asparagus, raspberries and clotted cream or spuds, cabbage and swede. From edible luxury treats to necessities, farmers produce it all and need to keep producing. So let’s switch the financial model. We should be safeguarding farming’s future because it is fundamental to all of our futures and our health.

15 year old vintage Devon Ruby beef

Named storms, always a threat, always a worry, sometimes a nightmare about to unfold. On Thursday 8^th January 2026, just a few months ago, Storm Goretti hurled extreme weather across the UK and much of mainland Europe, bringing what the Met Office called “a multi-hazard event with exceptionally strong winds, heavy snowfall, and significant rainfall”. The strength of the winds caused seriously large waves along the coast, and parts of Cornwall received a deluge of 61.8mm of rain. The Isles of Scilly suffered from winds over 100mph. In the South West, over 50,000 homes and businesses lost power, many train services were put on hold and people were warned not to travel as trees came crashing down with real threat to life. One man lost his life in Cornwall when a tree crushed his caravan.

In 2015, after a couple of days work in the largest island, St Mary’s, we’ve been holidaying in Scilly ever since and it has become very close to my heart, as it seems to for many of its visitors who also travel there annually. For those of you who are unfamiliar, the Isles of Scilly (IOS) are 28 miles from Land’s End, made up of five inhabited islands and many more uninhabited islands and islets, home to birds, seals and sub-tropical plants.

Everyone has their favourite island, and mine is Bryher, the smallest of the five and an island of contrasts, the Atlantic beating against it’s rockfaces on the West, the pale-sanded beauty on the East. It’s a mere 1.5 miles long and half a mile wide, but I could never be bored there. You traverse the island by foot and hop off to other islands by boat, play in the sea, walk the long stretches of beach, frequently seeing no-one else until you reach one of the two quays.

There is one shop, a chandlers, one hotel, one pub and three other places to eat (The Crab Shack, Olivia’s Kitchen and Island Fish plus a few honesty stalls for fudge, cakes, honey, chilli sauces, eggs, veg and plants, oh, and a population of around 85 people. Because the vast majority of people return every year, which makes it convenient both for those managing holiday lets and the regulars, it’s quite the challenge to find accommodation, so there’s an active late availability Facebook page where folk with flexibility can take advantage of last-minute offers. Me, I already have my name down for 2027.

In Storm Goretti, Scilly suffered from damaged roofs and blown-in windows, but worst of all, massive tree damage. Ancient trees, hundreds of years old, were blown over, changing the landscape and blocking access routes. Tresco, just a few minutes boat ride from Bryher, was worst hit regarding the loss of trees. Social media and the news was full of images of so many glorious specimens being laid low, roots revealed, torn from the earth as trunks toppled. I was determined to go and see the damage for myself and last week hopped on the Firethorn and walked to Abbey Drive,

the road leading to Tresco Abbey and its famous gardens. As I curled away from the sea, the damage didn’t seem too bad; the odd tree here and there now horizontal and cut into massive logs awaiting further processing. But then I walked on and the devastation revealed itself. The glorious shelter belt for the gardens, what had been a vaulted cathedral of trees, was in disarray; trees down, roots on display, and where still standing the tops branchless and bare. The power of the winds must have been terrifying to fell those long-lived giants. Gaps everywhere, views altered, the woodlands closed to the public because of the dangers of unstable trees and blocked thoroughfares. The gardens themselves seemed miraculously unharmed, but one of the key specimens, a macrocarpa, that had stood at the top centre of the gardens was just a stump, complete with commemorative sign. I stood and ran my hand over its centre - poor tree, poor tree – and offered it my condolences.

Later, I walked the tracks behind the dunes of Pentle Bay and there, tucked behind the sea front, were countless more damaged and felled trees. I don’t know why, but somehow it seemed important to bear witness to the results of the force of nature in what is normally a gentle place with the biggest worries being the fog that regularly disrupts the flights of the small planes that fly to St Mary’s and whether Wally the Walrus will reappear and crack open and sink another small boat by hauling up his bulk for a snooze.

Tresco Abbey Gardens

It’s 9pm and I’ve just walked up the field carrying the headless corpse of our gander.

The two females were chuntering away; not mad crazed with fear squawks, rather more restless, febrile calls and fidgety cries of despair at the loss of their guardian. No ululating, more a considered sense that they will probably be next. And they are right. The vast majority of a goose’s diet is grass, and if you can find a way to make a two acre field fox-proof, you’re a cleverer and more deep-pocketed soul than me. And it’s slam in the middle of hay-making, so perching on a stool, gun in hand as twilight falls is a time-rich luxury we can’t afford. I will do what I can to keep them in the small paddock closest to the house, but the risk is real.

This particular small group of geese is about ten years old, so not ancient by goose standards but not young either, and certainly no longer fertile. None of the eggs they laid this year had a hint of fertility, and I did keep testing them.

The controlled, unsettled calls meant we knew something was wrong, and I scoured the field for clues. No scattered feathers, yet. In the far corner of the field in the summer-long grasses, was a sad white heap, the head and neck had been chewed off and dragged through the fence and disappeared. The body was too large to be extracted the same way, and the fox would have waited until nightfall and then returned to feast. But I have removed its Sunday banquet. Rigor mortis hadn’t even set in, and I picked up the carcase by its pink, floppy, clever feet, now soulless like empty somewhat pudgy leather gloves. The gander that would never let me pet him or touch him. Who hissed and scolded and ran for my legs, eager to peck and nip. Who would charge at me as soon as I closed the gate behind him, thrusting his neck through the bars in case I was stupidly close enough to proffer my flesh. I never was. And now that neck is detached and swallowed and gone. The only time I handled him on a regular basis was when he has an eye infection which I treated very successfully. He seemed to know he couldn’t help himself and allowed me to handle him for a few all too brief days. Then cured, he was back to his usual pretty aggressive ways.

I am pragmatic about losses like this, but still I mourn for several reasons. Mostly, because his females have been with him all their lives and that family is now forever altered. And because of that, the farm is different. We don’t have a gander. A noisy, some would say noxious gander. But our gander.

The gander is immortalized in a way he couldn’t appreciate, in various images in my book on keeping ducks and geese, so I have a permanent record of him in pictorial form which is sweeter than his actual character. But neither will I forget the final carrying of his remains, across the field on a hot evening, through the grazing sheep who were oblivious and care-free, and the small sadness of those minutes.

A farm has almost unlimited possibilities for unearthing unrecognisable stuff. Bits of old farm implements tossed in a hedge, ancient medicine bottles left by a gateway and never retrieved, skulls and bones from every conceivable native creature, disturbed nests, buried rubbish and buried treasure. Most things, though, do ultimately reveal themselves and their purpose.

Because there are killers on the land, ranging from magpies and sparrowhawks eager for a bit of tasty young blue tit, to foxes devouring everything from rabbits, pheasants and pigeons to lambs struck down with some ailment, you get used to finding a spare ear, a gall bladder or a section of a rat’s head. Just yesterday we had our regular visit from HighGround and one of the dogs dropped half a mouse as a welcome gift at our feet. There was another, very wet, dead but whole mouse on his bed which I found a couple of hours later, buzzing with eager flies. So I’m used to finding things both firm and squishy, animal, vegetable and mineral, in places where they have been put or left by bird or mammal or machine.

But just occasionally there will be a true UFO. Nothing to do with creatures from outer space and everything to do with a lack of knowledge. Someone, somewhere, with the appropriate information and experience would not be fazed, but I’m not always in that category.

Yesterday evening I spotted something the size and shape of a small severed thumb, black, and covered in grass seed and general detritus. It was regular in shape with smooth, rounded ends, like one of t hose well worn pebbles at the sea side. It was on the track on the way out of the farm and I made a mental note not to tread on this unknown object. I hopped in the car, completed a number of chores in the next village, and came home. And as I entered the house I realised there as something attached to the side of my sandal. At first I thought it was just a piece of mud, definitely not dog shit. And there was no smell which was a definite plus point. So being the farmer that I am and with a pretty high threshold for things yucky, I tried to pry it off my shoe with my fingers. That was when I realised that it was the thumb-like object I’d spotted earlier… yep, I had trodden in it after all. And to my horror, it was soft and squishy, like a large fruit jelly, with some sort of skin around it, because although soft, it did not break or burst in my hand. Just the thought makes me writhe, 24 hours later. And most bizarrely of all, it left a thick slick of clear gluey something on my sandal, so sticky that I had to scrape it off with a penknife because rubbing it with a piece of kitchen roll made no impact. Sticky like a manufactured clear glue, the Bostik of my childhood, and not the mildly sticky adhesion of some oozy plant sap.

I have absolutely no idea what it was. The spleen of a rabbit, the plaything of a hobbit, a well-sucked liquorice sweet dropped out of a military helicopter on night exercises. Who knows? And no, I didn’t take a photograph before I put it resolutely in the bin. Not that it would have helped, and I definitely wasn’t going to do a biopsy and risk having the contents spill its secrets. Urk. No thank you.

Oh the relief. We still haven’t started on the haymaking, what with the weather weeping onto the fields, but there were two dry days, enough for the sheep to shed the water from their fleeces and for the shearer to divest all of them from their coats. Some had pretty much moulted half their fleece already, others held on fiercely, so much so that it had felted round their necks and in some cases beyond, which makes shearing twice as difficult and time consuming.

The long curled fleeces of the Whiteface Dartmoors are particularly prone to felting and the loss of their weighty fleece (minimum 4 kilos) must make the sheep feel so much lighter and freer of movement now it’s gone. As the cutters glide through the parts that are not felted, the thin layer that is left is silvery and shines making the denuded ewes look as if they’ve been buffed and polished like a silver ornament. As of Tuesday at 2pm, the fleeces were all in wool sacks and the sheep free of fluff. I hadn’t been concerned about maggots, having checked them all as we always do, at least once a day for itching, scratching, twitching, sweating or biting, but literally the penultimate one to be shorn had half a dozen freshly hatched maggots contemplating a bit of skin burrowing as they sat atop a Torwen’s tail. No chance of that as the shearer clipped them off and away, making them homeless and abandoned, and the ewe maggot-free. No damage done.

The next day the first fleeces were sold to a craftsperson, but there are plenty left for other felters, spinners, weavers and knitters, as long as they are able to work with raw fleece fresh off the sheep, and don’t expect me to have done anything fancy with them. A number of shepherds will process their fleeces or have them processed in one way or another, making life easier for the crafter, but that’s not my particular bag. It’s raw or nothing.

Our shearer is the son of our original shearer, now retired from the game, and the son has now a very young son of his own. We will be ancient and crone-like and leaning on crooks if the grandson of the original shearer is ever old enough and so inclined to do shearing for us. I remember so well how the son came to shear with his father when he was a young teen and learning the game. He was impatient with himself and obviously hadn’t the skill or the experience of the father. But now? Now he has years of experience tucked away and his patience has emerged along with his skill. It’s heart-warming to see.

And this week was the 21^st anniversary of our arrival at the farm. It’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere; who know what the next 21 years will bring?

Turning the hay with our ancient little Massey Ferguson ten years ago

On a farm, “making hay while the sun shines” is neither a euphemism, a proverb or an idiom. It is a hope. When June hits, and occasionally earlier, the weather forecast becomes of foremost importance. Its revelations shape the mood, the plans and the practical activity. The baler is primped and primed, the mower blades sharpened, the tedder is greased and the tines are checked to makes sure there are spares in case of breakages. Netting and twine are purchased, the tractor is oiled and greased and fuelled, the livestock are moved to fields that won’t be in the way when the tractor heads out to the hayfields. And during all this, the forecast is consulted again and again and again, and the symbols for drizzle, light rain and downpours are cursed. A portent of five days clear sun is mentally embraced, and as this gets downgraded, as it so often does, moods falter. It’s mentally exhausting before anything happens. It should, theoretically, be a huge relief once a decision has been made and the grass has been mowed, but that’s for the naïve and innocent. The weather becomes something you wrestle with in the vain hope that hope itself can keep the sun beaming and the clouds at bay.

2020 harvest (well, a small part of it!)

It’s madness, of course. We cannot control the weather with our emotions or anything else. But still, every year there is a harvest, although when it takes until September to fill the barns with winter forage, the whistling kettle in the brain sends out so much steam and pressure that it’s in danger of going off pop.

In May I was in shorts and sandals. Now, halfway through June I am back in thick leggings and sweatshirts. Shorts weather is haymaking weather and the shorts don’t lie, although they are laying back in the wardrobe. While some may be keeping everything crossed for holiday temperatures, we want the same for our harvest. But it doesn’t look promising right now. On the upside, the grass is plentiful, so it is ready to cut, but the demon of the forecast says otherwise.

Now don’t get all over-excited or exasperated. This is not a tale of how GM and I were best buds or how I was a super-fan who spent weeks hounding the superstar or was one of the lucky ones who had supper at his house on suitable occasions. No. It is much more low key than that and is more a revelation of how oddly separated I was from his fame.

Back in the late 1980’s I was studying for a Masters degree at Durham University. I was a very long way from home, which by then was Warwickshire, and I drove a perky red 2CV. This is relevant because a 2CV takes a very long time to drive the 220 miles between Warwickshire and Durham. I was on my own in my rattlebox for the whole journey and it was a straight and tedious run. I needed company, and George Michael’s was that company. No CD player in a 2CV, of course, I had a battery-powered thingamajig that sat in the passenger seat, strapped in with the seat belt. I sang along to every song from that debut solo album and loved everything about it. I was, like many others I’m guessing (not something I’ve researched), completely taken aback that this lovely stuff was coming from what had been one half of a boppy, ear-catching but distinctly naff pop duo. It felt like a rebirth for what was clearly a hugely talented singer-songwriter. Who knew? Faith was my faithful companion for the year of my Masters, the soundtrack to an odd year where I felt like an adult in a not-quite-adult situation. I was not the oldest in my cohort by far, nor the youngest, but the hooray-just-past-our-teenage-years vibe of the university population was something I felt I’d long grown away from. I was all of twenty-six!

And then, visiting old school friends in London, I mentioned that I’d been listening to Faith and asked if anyone else liked it, and saw these oh so familiar faces looking at me in astonishment. “But Debbie”, someone said, “you do realise that you used to sit next to him in art class!”. Sorry, what? “George Michael, you used to sit next to him at school”. WHAT? WHATTTTT??? “Georgios Panayiotou, remember him?” Well yes, of course, I used to sit next to him in art class, and he and Pano sat behind me in our form room. Nice boy, sweet natured, bright, quite quiet, one of the nice ones. Never a pain. Lovely curly hair too. “Georgios Panayiotou is George Michael FFS! How do you not know this?”

Well, I didn’t know this. It took me some time to accommodate this astonishing revelation. How did I not know? Of course, once you know you can’t un-know, and with this information I finally saw the sweet eleven-year-old boy’s face in the man’s. I didn’t love the music any less or any more, and the next couple of albums were just as delicious and the CDs were permanently in the car, but now I wondered. I wondered what it must be like for that sweet, unassuming, clever boy to be that talented and to rightfully find his feet on the world’s stage and then to be that horrendously famous.

Sean Bean and Niamh Cusack as Romeo and Juliet at the RSC in 1986-7

Fame was something I was familiar with, second hand of course. Immediately before the Durham jaunt I’d worked as a cook at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, and for a year made salads and lasagnes and poached eggs in the green room, cooking and serving the actors and stage crew. It was (it always is) a hotbed of talent and associated fame. Imelda Staunton, Jim Carter, Jeremy Irons, Pete Postlethwaite, Sean Bean, Joely Richardson, Brian Cox, Tony Sher and many others seen and chatted to on a daily basis. But none could match the stratospheric fame of GM. So I continued to wonder. To think back to the boy and try and imagine how it is even vaguely possible to go through life’s highs and lows with a target on your back and a million cameras in your face. And I can’t. Because it is, thankfully, so utterly out of my experience.

Brian Cox - genuinely lovely guy

Whenever GM is in the press, posthumously now, which is unbelievably sad, I remember the boy again. I’m about seven months older than he was, but I don’t see a 63 year old man, or even the 53 year old he was when he died, but that curly headed boy with round cheeks, glasses and a shy smile. A different kind of legacy.

Yesterday, I had the strangest feeling. I was walking across the farm, talking about farming for the benefit of nature with a group of people on a bespoke training course, when I had the strongest sensation that my world was completely self-contained within the 110 acres of the farm, and that what happened outside of it was tangibly other. That the rest of the world had its own life, but was separate and irrelevant. That it didn’t intrude or impact or shape or form what happens in my life, our life, on the farm.

Objectively, I know this is nonsense, that we do not live in a vacuum, nor under a bell jar, and that the butterfly that beats its wings thousands of miles away has a ripple effect, never mind the rules and regulations, practices and offences carried out by the human race.

For me, a very unspiritual person – I’m all about the here and now and what I see in front of me - it was a distinctly zen moment. For that moment I literally had no cares about the outside world; it neither mattered nor worried me. I suspect this was partly due to a ripple effect of my own, having written two weeks ago about worrying less about the world, not because it isn’t worrying, but precisely because it is too worrying to cope with. It was an absolutely perfect slippery shoulders moment and made me feel stronger, and all while I was chatting about nature, so no coincidence there.

I remember, as a teenager, that puberty-driven sensation of feeling that there was a literal wall of glass between me and the next person, me and the rest of life. It didn’t last long, but it was strong enough for me to remember nearly forty years later. I think it was accompanied by the shocking realisation that the world was not about me, that there were all these millions of minds at work, all singularly doing their own thinking, minding their business, thinking other thoughts, having other plans. Not dissimilar from a child realising that half the world had one kind of genitals, the other something different and the shock, the absolute SHOCK of that being part of accepting that the world was hugely populated and that the I was a very tiny part of this terrifyingly large whole.

But there I was, chatting away, standing in a wildflower meadow, pointing out yellow rattle, red clover, vetches, sheep sorrel, ox-eye daisies, common knapweed, common cat’s ear and so on, and the sense of relief, of belonging, was quietly and kindly reassuring. Utterly and literally grounding. I don’t know if this feeling will last, the ability, without trying, to close down the external noise, but it feels surprisingly healthy and I am grateful that I have a great big patch of land that can and does work its wonders.

Following the phenomenal success of those omnipresent property programmes where people do up everything from an olde sweety shoppe to a turreted chateau and everything in between, there’s been a mad social media outburst of folk sharing their similar house transitions from ugly to House Beautiful shareworthy in multiple social media episodes. Some are eye-poppingly dazzling in their exuberant use of colour, others a sadness of beige in twenty-five mist and bleak dawn tones, and some make you cry with joy, alongside those that make you glad you’re not living on a set conjured for none other than Fredo Corleone complete with black satin sheets and gold-trimmed tassels.

We seem to have an unending appetite for other people’s domestic environments, and I won’t lie, I have literally dreamt up my ideal interior and recreated it in a novel that will almost certainly never see the light of day – the agents are not biting.

I’ve become increasingly aware that those things I found so quirky and quaint when viewing my current home twenty-one years ago, have become quietly mundane with familiarity, but the mundane still gives pleasure, and you can find it in the most unexpected places. If I had to live in a flat walled, flat roofed, flat floored box, I would be flat of mind.

In the sitting room, next to the kitchen, where we sit with the dogs, watch telly, read, knit, chatter and relax by the log fire that heats the whole house in winter, is a built-in book case. Hidden among the top layer of DVDs that fill this particular bookcase, hanging near the top, are four vicious meat hooks, not coming down from the ceiling but embedded in the wall. I’ve spent hours imagining what these were used for – everything from hanging cooking pots (we’ve learned that the deep fireplace once housed the cooking range) to keeping swaddled babies (quadruplets?) off the floor and out of the way. It’s probably as ordinary as a place to hang slabs of cured bacon, but what if there’s another story behind them? We will never know.

And then there’s the crazy crooked slope of the door to what was the apple and cider store which is now my office, planed to accommodate the equally sloping ceiling behind so that the top of the door, when opened, doesn’t smash into the ceiling or the fearsomely large inner wall behind, that is a metre thick. One day someone will make a hole in said wall and work out why it is as it is. My guess is it was used to secrete some hideous tyrant, and after bashing said tyrant on the head with a warming pan full of hot coals, he was walled up, never to be tyrannical again.

The bible cupboard, where booze is now stored, is pretty ubiquitous in Devon cross passage and long houses, but just because it’s bible-free doesn’t mean it has lost its purpose and charm. The cobbles that make up the scullery floor (ooh, hark at her, a scullery!) are all that keeps our feet off the Devon earth. The very idea of damp-proof membrane hadn’t even been contemplated when the house was built back in the 17^th century, and anyway, it keeps the room and so the food, cool.

When we had a new bath its feet had to be raised on various heights of wood to stop the water sloping at some weird angle. Well, the water would have been level as that’s the way of water, and the bath would have been strangely angled, but you know what I mean. The two hidden staircases which makes things sound a lot grander than they are, leading to a hidden bedroom and the other just a rickety alternative route upstairs. The roof supports in the loft made from spare fencing stakes. All these peculiarities are what makes a house a home and not that dreaded box. I can put up with sash window draughts – it’s just ventilation, innit? Mice in the walls, bats in the roof, battalions of wood lice, kindergartens of spiders, dust and detritus from the wood burners. All of which are inevitable in an old place like this. Have to say though, I’m eternally grateful that the house isn’t thatched. There are enough rats around as it is without them nesting above my head.

I’ve been thinking about bright spots; you know, the high points of the day, the week, the month. And cogitating after this morning’s shenanigans on how a lovely stroll out with the dogs to check on the sheep and cows which is normally a daily high point, can turn into a full morning’s unplanned work when you find something you really didn’t want to see. In this case a flurry of pink eye (a type of conjunctivitis that is a very contagious bacterial infection that spreads like wildfire, can cause temporary blindness but is easily treatable with antibiotics) in a number of ewes. It was the high winds we’ve had for the last few days that sends dust and pollen and other irritants flying about and creates the irritation that then progresses into infection. The worst affected ewe was difficult to get into the shed for treatment as she couldn’t see properly, but she has faith in her unaffected lamb who with considerable gentle chivvying from me, finally led her towards the rest of the flock who we’d just brought inside so we could check everyone out.

Typical that just before our two day intensive Sheep for Beginners course this weekend that we have some gunky-eyed girls, but the course participants will be seeing the reality of keeping sheep and to always expect the unexpected, even when everything was fine and dandy the day before.

There are other mundane but nonetheless high points. On the days I sell a book or books direct to the reader, it’s as pleasing a joy as collecting the daily warm and fresh eggs and gives the same sense of satisfaction. And when folk take the time to get back to me about said books with warm phrases and gratitude, that’s another pulse of pleasure right there. As are the emails which arrive, sometimes years after folk have been on a course, to share photos of their first hens, sheep, cows, pigs, veg garden or orchard.

But I’ve come to realise at this mature point in my life, that bright spots aren’t always about a particular moment, but about comforting realisations. Caring less about things that would cause all kinds of stress and mayhem in the past to my younger self, and being more relaxed about stuff as a consequence. I will never be so chilled as to be horizontal, but I just don’t worry so much about those challenges in life that would once have had my brain in a frenzy.

As one example, rarely watching the news and not getting all steamed up about the utter shits that seem to be in charge worldwide means I may be out of touch, but my blood pressure isn’t boinging off the ceiling, and nor do I feel so helpless and therefore hopeless. I can’t control it, so I let go. Feeble, some might say. Pathetic, perhaps. But if I have just two or so decades left on earth (here’s hoping), any panic produced by me isn’t going to contribute in any meaningful way to easing the situation.

Thinking less about the outside world translates into thinking more about my immediate world and myself – how marvellously selfish is that? As part of that I’ve taken as firm a hold as I can of what I eat. No ultra-processed nasties (not that I ever did much of that), no sugar (apart from in the odd rare splotch of home-made spicy condiment), everything cooked from scratch – real food and as much as possible of it home produced, although fish and seafood are never going to be reared by us. And a few other hefty tweaks here and there for the good of my health. Apart from the obvious result of being leaner, I sleep so much better, have fewer old gal aches and pains and have way more energy. Those mid-afternoon snoozes have become very rare indeed. The hair may be grey, the face wrinkled, but from the neck down I’ve lost a few years. So that’s another bright spot right there.

The gentle reduction of the flocks and herds has also been surprisingly easy and my mantra that having more of something you like doesn’t equal more pleasure, is actually true. Ten cows are as enjoyable as thirty, and the massive upside is that it takes half the time and half the effort to muck out the cattle sheds every day in the winter. And there’s less hay to make and more options for encouraging yet more biodiversity. There are definite bright sides to ageing and mellowing. It won’t be long before the orchids start nosing towards the light, and I spotted my first pignut this week too. Joy.

Online life is as full of spring as our fields. So many celebratory images of hawthorn coming into bud, gorse busting out all over, primroses shouting their wee heads off, cuckoo flowers rampaging across meadows, bluebells sprinkling their glory and dog violets poking out from the bottom of hedgerows. It’s a feast for the senses and a calming reassurance that LIFE GOES ON, whatever shitey bollocks is in the news. Which for good or ill I’ve stopped watching/listening to.

I focus on what’s beneath my feet, before my eyes, at hand’s grasp, and what’s scenting the air. Although the latter can be rather too grounding as Andrew is currently pressure washing the cow sheds, now that the herd is out at grass (hoorah!) and the sheds have to be prepared for calving. Just a brief spell back inside for the heavily pregnant gals (days, not weeks) who, all being well, will be back outside grazing with new babes at foot as quick as they like. To be honest, I don’t mind the smell of the cow muck at all. It’s not offensive, unlike the muck from intensively raised indoor chickens which is truly pungent and pretty vile.

We ran our popular Introduction to Smallholding course this past weekend, and after thousands of participants we can pretty much anticipate the questions, however deliciously off the wall they might be. But I had a first, which is always fun. People regularly ask what we do with the muck, the farmyard manure, because they imagine it is a problem, and haven’t yet gauged that it’s a huge asset that returns nutrients and life back into the soil. Black gold we call it. But there was a twist on this theme. One chap asked if the smell caused a problem for us, so we all went to sniff the muck heap, right up close, nostrils flaring inches from that lush organic matter. Sniff sniff sniff they went. Did anyone less accustomed to muck find it smelly or unpleasant? Nope, not a one. Nothing like being able to give people in your face reassurance as well as advice.

Reaching back round to the title of this particular rambling, the emerging spring flowers are indeed gorgeous, but I’m still with Miranda Priestly on her dismissal of florals, just not where nature or clothes are concerned. I’m talking floral-flavoured foods; they should stay put with Parma violets and elderflower champagne and cordials and not venture further. I have a deep-seated dislike of lilac or lavender flavoured food – cakes, syrups, biscuits, fudges or anything else sweet or savoury. Lilac is a glorious plant, and those really dark purple ones are a particular joy, although I’ll happily take mauve and white too. And lavender gives equal joy to a garden. But I don’t like either in soaps, face creams, body scrubs or perfumery, and their presence in edibles makes me gag. I must have a weird unaccommodating gene. Not that enthused with rose-infused munchables either, now I come to think of it. And if you’re thinking that geraniums or lilies get a free pass, you’d be wrong. Nasturtiums, with their peppery, non-floral flavour are welcome in the salad bowl. If it’s stuff for the face or body, give me citrus (give me THIS citrus, and this too) – I keep a pot on my desk and another by my bedside. It’s evocative of driving through Spain or Portugal, windows open, gasping at the glory of the lime groves, the lemon trees in everyone’s garden and the fields and fields of oranges. A different kind of farming from ours, often punctuated with pomegranate bushes and cork oaks.

So here’s to florals in their place. Abundantly displayed across our land, celebrated on frocks and shirts, but for the most part, absent from my plate.

Does this have anything at all to do with farming? Have I suddenly turned into some sort of “Buy this! BUY THIS!” moron? Take a moment, take a breath.

Three times so far this year. THREE TIMES (that’s thrice), I have worn my Birki sandals. That’s telling me something. I’m a shorts and sandals gal for as much of the year as I can get away with, but I refuse to be chilly. So if the Birkis are on the feet it means that there is sunshine. It means I can walk across the farmyard without needing wellies. I can already just about venture to the polytunnel and veg patch without waterproofed tootsies. Soon it will mean I can walk across fields without wellies. This equals celebration time. The swallows are here and nesting. The wagtails are wagging their tails, and the dogs are lying on the cobbles outside the front door until they get too hot and head for the shade. The front door is now open to the elements; voles and toads and sparrows will enter the kitchen and find their way back out again. I have even put out a lounger, piled high the cushions and fallen asleep in the sun. Bliss.

I’m not an idiot in sandals; I won’t go wrestling sheep or checking on the cows in inappropriate footwear. I value my toes too much, and suffering from trampled foot is not helpful on a farm. But whenever it IS appropriate, there I am, in my Birkenstocks, letting my toes breathe, stretch and wiggle. I don’t care if they are in fashion or out of fashion, although I did giggle appreciatively and in recognition when I saw the fab Marj Hogarth wear my exact sandals last week on the telly, and her style is definitely one I like.

Marj Hogarth and Keith Brymer Jones

And yes, I wait until the sales before I indulge, but they (the shoes, not the sales) do seem to last forever, so I have three pairs of sandals at the last count of varying pedigree and vintage, plus some mad plastic clogs and much loved and worn silver trainers. Each comfortable as all get out. I’m hugely tempted by their red patent sandals too, but if I try and fit any more shoes onto the rack Andrew made me, the floor will start filling up again.

If I do have a gripe, it’s that you can’t get replacement shoelaces for their shoelaced shoes/trainers. WTF is that all about? But it did mean after some online focussed research that I found some sparkly silver laces for the sparkly silver trainers that might be more suited to a six year old, but so the hell what?

My clothes are not flamboyant, although I do love sequins and leopard print. I remember India Knight writing something about having been influenced by old tarts in her younger years regarding appealing modes of dress, and I’m clearly, unintentionally, of a similar mind, although without the push-up bra and revealing decolletage. Perhaps it’s a throwback to spending so much time in Soho as a child? But where shoes are concerned, as long as they have low heels, more is definitely more. You can’t spend a life in wellies and suddenly swap into heels. Well, YOU might be able to, but I can’t/won’t. But reds and silvers and animal print and embroidery speaks to me, shoe-wise. My idea of flamboyant might be tame, because I don’t have the time or inclination to hunt out anything in the Iris Apfel mode, but perhaps I can start when I reach my seventies?

Iris Apfel - magnificent

I don’t have anywhere to wear crazy clothes; the vast majority need to be farm-friendly, and in the evenings I just want to be comfy. Leggings, t-shirts, sweatshirts are the bulk of the wardrobe. But my knitting is producing something a little less discreet, and that is a joy.

My latest knit

But back to the Birkis, my ancient toes will now tan in fat stripes, as the sandal straps are wide, and that will make me smile too; because, you know, SUMMER!

There are those who love to admit mistakes, others who will resist blame (self or otherwise) at all costs, but in farming as in other pursuits, it doesn’t pay to ignore the evidence of getting it wrong.

I was forcefully reminded of this last night when it was my turn to put the geese, turkeys, ducks and hens away for the night in their individual huts, and wash out and refill their many water buckets. We pick up overnight eggs when we let out the birds in the morning, but apart from one obliging hen, the rest of the chickens prefer to hold on to their loot and deposit them in a cosy straw nest at various points during the day. This being the case, evening bird-putting-away-duty includes picking up this particular bounty. And because I never think to bring some sort of receptacle with me in the evening, I am to be found sliding half a dozen or more eggs into my pockets while ushering birds to bed and wielding the hose. You can see where this is going. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, this is a perfectly acceptable way of carrying eggs. But just to keep things lively, the odd shell can be thin or cracked and yep, you’ve guessed it, I now have a pocketful of liquid rather than solid egg. Will I learn from this daily mistake? Perhaps, for a couple of evenings, but the lazy gene is strong in me, and I’m not placing any bets on my ability to be sensible going forward.

There are so many ways to get things wrong in this game, from failing to notice a rotten gatepost so that the cows have a spree in the hay field that should be providing their winter forage, to putting the wrong lamb with the wrong ewe when you’ve confused who belongs to this one or that, or forgetting to bale out a water trough which has become somewhat shitey and causes an eye infection in all your geese, requiring treatment which in turn equals having to handle and squirt eye cream into all their eyes when they are the least handleable members of our livestock clan. Mistakes always bite you in the bum. And sometimes it’s just an angry gander.

Avoiding mistakes is one of the reasons why we have so many to-do lists. These are updated daily and there’s one in the kitchen for the bigger farm chores, another on my desk for stuff I need to do there. But not everything can be on a reminder list. Did I do a second or third check of the viability of the eggs currently in the incubator? Keeping those that were fertile but are no longer viable spreads bacteria to the healthy eggs and you can lose some or all of them. It’s a waste of electricity (incubators are leccy hungry) and time as newly laid eggs tend to lose peak fertility as the weeks roll on.

There are times when you congratulate yourself on being prepared; this afternoon we’re putting in a few replacement fencing stakes in the two fields where the cattle will be enjoying their first taste of spring grass in a few days’ time. I’ll also be wielding loppers to remove the gorse growing so rampantly round the water trough; you don’t want the cattle to get pricked in the eye when they take a drink. But hold that thought, because pride and all that. I’ll put money on it that we’ll have forgotten to do something else equally important, forgetfulness being just another manifestation of getting it wrong.

I hope, I think, that we get less wrong as we draw closer to our retirement years considering all the experience and knowledge that has accumulated in our overstretched brains. If the worst that can happen is a crushed egg in a pocket, I can live with that.

We are having a spate of April showers. Sunny spells where you throw off the jacket, followed swiftly and determinedly by a rush indoors as the heavens open to splash the ground with rain and hail, and just as abruptly, the faucet turns off and the sun returns. It’s confusing. It always is. The tomato plants are being ferried every night into the workshop in case of overnight frosts and then traipsed back outside in the morning. And my footwear is also playing the okey-cokey. Sandals on, sandals off. Sheepskin boots on, sheepskin boots off. But to be fair, I’ve graduated from kneehigh to ankle sheepskin boots, and in a matter of weeks the very thought of woolly feet will make me sweat. One day I’m mucking out the cowsheds in t-shirt and sweatshirt, the next day muffled up to the eyeballs, waterproofs firmly wrapped round me.

Last year’s tomato plants

You think it’s time to remove the heap of firewood from the sitting room because who needs a fire? Next thing you know you’ve filled three more sacks to keep the fires burning for the whole evening with some left over for tomorrow. For a while longer I’m scavenging paper and cardboard from any deliveries to use as kindling. I’ve just had another box of my books from the distributor as I was running out, and they pack them with the perfect fire-lighting paper, so thoughtful of them.

Livestock-wise this weather is always a worry. Warm days and cold nights can mean pneumonia, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it; I don’t believe in the power of prayer, so vigilance is key. On the cheery side, I’m hatching chicks to rear for the freezer, and I’ve organised turkey poults and more pigs. Old age comes to us all and it’s time for younger blood.

The turn of the season has made inroads by way of my to do list too. Everything from pulling together the info to do my tax return, to sourcing some unrelated bull semen; unrelated to the heifers we want to breed, not unrelated to me. And with lambing behind us it’s time to prep for our smallholding and livestock courses which kick off again in a couple of weeks. The next two courses are full to the brim and having been relatively isolated for the last few weeks it will be lovely to see new folk eager to learn.

With hope in my heart and a sense of NEW I’ve hauled all my t-shirts, shorts and leggings out of the cupboard and chucked a huge number of items in the rag pile. T-shirts are perfect for oily rags and a farm has multiple uses for such things. Do you get that sad feeling when an absolutely favourite item has worn so thin it’s marvellously comfortable but not fit to be seen by anyone but the dogs? I bit the bullet and those too have been demoted to the rag pile. There are now two new t-shirts to welcome into the fold. Will they become ancient favourites in their turn?

Lambing is done and dusted for 2026. Yeehaa! No more night shifts, back to normal eating patterns, and all we have to do now is keep them all alive. At the moment the vast majority of them are loving this sunny spell and split their time between suckling off mum and cosying up to her at night, alongside actively seeking independence, tootling about in gangs, twisting and leaping and hurtling up and down as if they have switched on a lamb turbo button. In the first days their mums would rush after them, remonstrating noisily and insisting they return to the familial fold. Just a few days later they look up, mouths full of spring grass, and then return to the task in hand. Only if a lamb bleats in distress will mum take serious notice and beetle after her young and offer milky comfort. Meanwhile we plug up any gaps in gates or fences that a small lamb can squish itself through; they can always go one way, it’s the return journey that they find challenging. And our fences and gates are in great order, but still, if there’s a slight dip in the land, a lamb will find it and wriggle under the fence just to show spirit.

Mopsa, all grown up and rather ancient (now long deceased)

It reminds me of my first dog, Mopsa. We had a cat flap tunnel about 18 inches deep, because of the thickness of the wall. When puppy Mopsa became bold she squished herself through the tunnel to venture bravely into the garden, and then toothpaste herself back again. But Mopsa was a Bernese, expanding by the minute, and it was only a matter of days before she could squish out but no longer squish back in. I heard a distressed yapping and had to ease her backwards and hug her sensitive soul. She was gorgeous. Never tried to force her way through the tunnel again, clever girl that she was.

But back to the topic I had in mind; nifty gadgets. As lambing finished this afternoon, I’m cooking for the pair of us so we can eat together – not always practical when we are doing different shifts. I’m roasting spiced chicken thighs on a bed of butternut squash with a bunch of asparagus from the polytunnel, and I am writing this in celebration of my new(ish) peeler. I have many Opinel penknives; one in pretty much every jacket pocket, several on the shelf by the kitchen door, another in the sheep shed etc. Every farmer carries knives as we need them all the time. But I never knew they did a kitchen peeler, then saw one in the ironmonger’s in Chagford and nabbed it. Bloody hell! I love butternut squash and we grow lots, but peeling them has always been painful and tortuous. No longer. The Opinel peeler is a little piece of wizardry. No batteries, USB ports or any other techy bollocks. It is simple, brilliant and my new best pal. I feel like Jamie Oliver, whizzing through the task with speed and aplomb, but without the banter. Don’t stand too close to me with anything peelable…

See those beautiful slices of immaculately peeled butternut hidden under the chicken?

Do you have a favourite little gadget? Something that makes your life simpler, easier, more pleasurable? No smirks in the corner. Not so much a favourite, but already a necessity, are my many fly swats. The flies are already gathering and invading and yes, I open the window for them to escape when I can, but their insistent buzzing is a least favourite irritant. You go from none to twenty in the space of a day. And then hundreds. Cluster flies – yuk!

Brinsea candler with egg scope

A seasonal favourite gadget is my candler, to check if the eggs I’m incubating are actually fertile and developing as they should. I should clarify that I am not personally sitting on said eggs, they are ensconced in incubators. In theory, you can use an inner from a bog roll and a torch for candling eggs, but try doing that with the usual complement of hands. It is currently getting plenty of use, and once hatching is done and dusted for the year, it will sit smugly on a shelf in my office, hibernating until next spring. The little accompanying plastic shroud makes all the difference to being able to see what’s happening in the eggs and has the benefit of making me feel like some clever scientist in a lab, possibly with a Bunsen burner and an array of petri dishes, test tubes and glass containers in interesting shapes and particularly bulbous bottoms perched about me. Science was never my strong suit.

Here’s to spring and all it’s primrose-filled loveliness.

There are many things I should be doing, but if they require brain (they do), it’s pointless looking wistfully at the to do list when still lambing. There are multiple reasons for this. The practical one is that getting involved with anything mentally demanding means I take my eye off the ball, metaphorically speaking, and I might miss a ewe going in to labour that needs my attention.

Related but separate, is that the stop start nature that the lambing demands, smashes into uselessness any sensible thought process that may have been in train just before you spot something small, wriggly and slimy requiring midwifery skills.

To be fair, I’m a bit beyond writing a cogent to do list anyway. Night shifts will do that to you, as well as messing with your eating patterns which means you might be ravenous for supper at midnight and don’t know whether a snack or a full meal is best. Having stuff to eat is not the problem. The polytunnel is yielding asparagus, lettuce, purple sprouting broccoli and chives, the ducks and hens are laying as if tomorrow has been slated for Armageddon, and the freezers are busting with homegrown and homemade steak, mince, chicken, last summer’s ratatouille, oxtail stew, curries and pork and fruit and so very much more. The freezers are trophy cabinets that can satisfy hunger, greed and spin you out of tiredness, providing bursts of energy. But still, the mental energy has to be reserved for the lambing, not writing or concocting of new projects, or contacting agents or for remembering not to wear that shaggy, fluffy teddy-like fleece when refilling the hay racks, which I did half an hour ago and came back to the house like a walking haystack. I have picked half a sheep’s daily ration out of it since. On the upside I smell rather nice as a consequence.

There is a downside to the night shifts. Nighttime is when the rats come out to play and I have what I consider to be an entirely rational response to them; I tend to shriek, when in all other matters I am not a shrieker. There will be the odd forgotten ewe nut scattered about, delicious bits of placenta and bits of wheat straw enrobed in birth-juice, all laying about inviting rodent attention. Please understand that any visible gunk is removed, but bits get missed or trodden into fresh straw by the sheep, and this is a barn, not a hospital theatre. There is plenty of poo and urine and plenty of the Werthers Original toffee shit from the new lambs. It really does look like chewy toffee, although having got all too close to plenty of it in my time, the smell of it is somewhat different from the confectionery. Although the ewes will lick their lambs’ bums to try and keep them clean (yuk, yuk, yuk), as the colostrum starts to emerge out the back end, it can adhere like superglue under the tail. If this causes a plug, it can literally seal the anus and the lamb can balloon with the gathering shit. So we check for and remove any shit-plugs when the lambs are being turned outside at 48 hours, and after that it’s no longer a problem. The smell is more pungent than you’d expect from a cute, fluffy, two day old lamb. Put bluntly, it absolutely reeks. It’s one of the reasons we get through so many boxes of gloves (latex, nitrile or vinyl, powdered or not, as you prefer), because any trace of that toffee-textured shit has to be kept away from naked fingers; it’s not a stink you want to carry about your person.

But to get back to the point, there’s plenty to interest a rat, rats that are, like the ewes, producing offspring and permanently on the hunt. Yes, you see the odd one during the day, but at night they all come out to forage. And some of them are huge. You see them on the camera, body as long as a sheep’s head, and double that when you add in the tail. I feel braver than a warrior when I step out into the night to go and check the sheds, not because of any potentially worrying dystocia but because the rats boing along the barn floor as I turn on the lights and hurtle under the barn gate EXACTLY where I am standing in order to turn on said light and they might run over my foot which is definitely shriek worthy. I absolutely hate the fuckers. We set traps, shoot them when possible, but won’t use poison as we have barn owls and other wonderful wildlife that we won’t put at risk. The barns become my very own Room 101 at night, and yet, up I go, torch in hand, heart thumping, thinking flame-thrower type thoughts and whistling all the while, hoping that and the torch beam will send them on their merry way. Well it does, but slowly enough for me to witness their exodus. Nerves of steel, me. Until I shriek and give the game away.

p.s. Just because the recycling and rubbish collections have been delayed a day each because of Easter (apparently it’s Easter weekend; not something that had really raised its head above the lambing parapet, but here we are), I saw no reason for delaying this post to match. Lambs and Easter, sort of matchy matchy, no?

Torwen Badger Face lamb

Lambing can be like a foxtrot: slow, slow, quick quick slow. Nothing, nothing, pop pop pop, nothing. The use of lamb cam makes this immeasurably more acceptable on the brain and body. No hurtling up the (steep, long) track to the barns because something might or might not be happening and a twitch of the tail that you saw when you were up there ten minutes since, now has you convinced that perhaps madam was faking lack of labour in order to get you to piss off and leave her to her own devices. It’s not that you need to be delivering every lamb; far from it. The ewes are left to doing their own natural thing, but if she gets distracted by another contraction, has produced a particularly thick water bag, starts licking at the tail not head end of the lamb, drops a small one out without noticing, is getting older and can’t be arsed to stand up and attend to her newborn just yet etc etc etc, not being on hand is literally a matter of life and death. So. Vigilance. But vigilance over a CCTV camera (actually three separate ones, all with that magical tilt and zoom function, collectively cheaper than the value of a single lamb) allows absent observation, letting nature progress, and doing the hurtling up the track bit at the last push to act as midwife and resuscitator. It’s also critical to move the new family unit into a separate bonding pen so that yet-to-lamb ewes don’t nick the babes and cause horrendous confusion. Mis-mothering is no joke.

Anyway, both the camera and in the flesh eyes are ultra busy right now, noting and in many cases enjoying the sheep behaviours that are normally done in private, in the field, and are not exhibited to humans who by their very presence, change the flock dynamics. For all I know, sheep pick their teeth, swear, practice their tango steps and hang around on street corners when I’m not looking.

Herdwick lamb

The majority of our sheep do not have names, but a few have gained a moniker over the years. One such is Sausage, our last remaining Herdwick, who required a great deal of attention from us when she was born as mum loved her to bits but had inadequate milk, so Sausage was bottle fed. She stayed with her mum, but we’d go into the field several times a day and wave a bottle and Sausage would come tootling up, suck like a good-un, and replete, tootle on back to mum. Sausage had her first lamb two days ago. She was a bit of a drama queen, but that’s allowed, surely, if you have never given birth before (or even if you have) and this great big THING is contracting its way out of you. But she did it all herself, like a clever Sausage. When penned with her new ewe lamb – just the one, also clever for a first-timer – she decided she was a hen rather than a ewe and clucked and yelled and bellowed to announce to the world that she, yes, she, Sausage, had just produced her very first egg, no, sorry, lamb. She’s kept this up for 48 hours, so far. Normally we’d turn mums and lambs back out to grass at this point but the forecast is grotty for the next two days so they will have all the comforts of indoors for a wee while longer, and that insistent bleating echoes in the barn rather than dissipating in the winds outside.

Mrs Lonely Whiteface Dartmoor with twins

Then there’s Mrs lonely Whiteface Dartmoor, the only sheep of this breed to lamb so far. While the Badger Faces are introducing each other to their new lambs, Mrs WD is Janey-no-mates, her new family shunned by the others. No cosy maternity ward chat for Mrs WD until one of her own kind gives birth. Appallingly xenophobic, sheep. It won’t be long until a pal or two appear to admire her young ‘uns and expect compliments in return, but for now, she has to keep her thoughts on labour to herself. She looks at me, disconcerted, not being used to being friendless and flockless, her two lovely lambs are waiting for the shower of compliments and none are forthcoming.

Torddu Badger Face ewe with lambs

So how’s about that from someone who really dislikes anthropomorphism and practically retches when anyone says “fur babies” and the like? Late nights and cute lambs can do that to you. Apologies.

Postscript: Just as I was about to do the evening livestock chores, one of the ewes in the singles shed started to lamb. I sped through putting geese, turkeys, ducks and chickens away for the night and kept popping my head over the gate to check on the ewe’s progress. Pushing hard but nothing of the lamb yet to see so I scampered off to feed the pigs and back into the shed to see the ewe with the lamb’s head out. JUST the lamb’s head out. NOT a good presentation; there is no way the lamb can come out that way without intervention. Got the ewe into a pen and lying down, tried but failed to get the head back in so I could bring out the legs more easily; head is too far out, ewe contracting constantly. Luckily an older girl with four previous lambings up her sleeve, and reasonably slack. Gloves on, lube at the ready although not needed – plenty of slippery mucus present - arm in almost up to my elbow, sliding down the lamb’s body to find a front leg which was tucked well back, and not as accessible as the diagram below might suggest. Cupped the foot in my hand and brought it forward and out, alongside the head. At this point no signs of life from the lamb, but as long as I haven’t broken the umbilical cord in my manoeuvrings, we have a chance. Couldn’t get hold of the second front leg and time is now of the essence, so lambed it with head and one leg only. Again, thankful that it is a roomy ewe and my hands are small. Vigorous rubbing of the lamb, a straw up a nostril and the lungs finally start to expand and contract and its head shakes. We’re on! Fifteen minutes later it’s not just up but suckling like it’s read the manual. I’m crouched by the pair of them, my heart pounding, and I take many deep breaths. The ewe greets her lamb, unperturbed by my ministrations. I am the only one suffering from stress.

Lambing presentations from my book The Complete Guide to Smallholding

Yep, it’s lambing time. In fact it’s lambing due date today, even though we actually got started three days ago. And no, I’m not being gratuitous or rude with the title, I’m being factual. Half of farming is sound observation. I’m sure I’ve said it here before that farmers spend their whole working life looking for things they don’t want to find, usually of the ailment/broken fencing/dead in the field kind. And at lambing time one’s eyes are out on stalks, whether that’s in the flesh or via camera, with tilt and zoom in frenzy mode as you take a much longed for mouthful of a much needed meal but are still keeping an eye on that third ewe from the left, huffing and puffing her way through late stage pregnancy or is that the start of labour and do I see a waterbag starting to emerge even though there were no signs of anything five minutes ago when I was standing a mere foot away from her?

Can you spot the feet just peeping out?

Flappy fannies and swollen vulvas are the bread and butter of the lambing shed, eagle eyes checking for any change from floppiness to engorgement as well as other visual tips. Has madam gone from wide as a crinoline to unexpectedly sreamlined as a linen shift, the weight of the lambs having slithered downwards, under-bellied, as they move closer to the exit? How’s that udder coming along? Large but floppy or taut as a drum with teats like organ stops? Chewing the cud with a nonchalant air or focussed on something other than her last (or next) meal? The scratch and sniff test isn’t madly helpful. Some sheep will scratch vigorously at the floor/their bedding/another sheep if it’s lying in the way, weeks before they lamb. Others will only scratch and then sniff the floor once they are in labour. The scratching is all about creating a bit of a nest which works outdoors with any available twigs, leaves, dead grass. Indoors it will be straw bedding. The sniffing is a bit of self-checking; have my waters broken yet? Is there any liquid I need to lick up to keep predators from knowing there’s about to be something vulnerable and delicious on offer? When that liquid finally arrives, in a splash, dribble or splat, she will lick it up determinedly, and will be getting firmly acquainted with the smell and taste of her lambs prior to their now imminent arrival.

So here’s to straight talking about reproduction and everything else. It’s not the ewe’s doodah or foof or whatever idiotic, random, soft-peddling euphemism someone feels more comfortable with. Even fanny is hardly biologically appropriate, and if you’re an American it’s plain confusing.

For the next month we’re on full alert, and it’s not as if the other tasks can go hang. The cows still need mucking out and feeding, as do the pigs and poultry. We’ll be well out the other side of lambing before we can turn the cattle onto grass. But it’s all heading in the right direction, seasonally speaking.

I spend a fair amount of my life selling stuff. This was not the plan, you understand, but the inevitability of self-employment. Either I’m selling my services (training courses) or products (livestock, meat, lambskins, wool, books). There’s more than one irony here.

Irony number one is that I spend not insignificant units of energy in reassuring people on our courses that a smallholding life doesn’t mean you have to produce surplus if getting away from a corporate role or pressure from the grind is the whole rationale for smallholding in the first place. Keep it small, keep it simple is the mantra – no need for selling and all that entails if the very idea of turning your veg patch and three sheep into a venture rather than an adventure is anathema.

Irony number two is that my parents had a joke shop in Soho. Yes, really. It was across the road from The Globe Theatre, renamed as the Gielgud Theatre in 1994. I haven’t walked past it in decades and understand that where the shop stood is all but undetectable after years of development. It was a small narrow shop filled to overflowing with whoopee cushions, stink-bombs, rubber bloody-ended thumbs, dipping birds, scarily fizzoged puppets, rubber over-the-head masks of everything from Miss Piggy to the devil incarnate, fully regaled beefeaters and bearskin-wearing footguards – or busbies as we called them – and every imaginable kind of London souvenir. Pinched between a Chinese restaurant and a take-away pizza place where the cook twirled three foot pizza bases above their head which pretty much filled the width of their equally narrow shop, it hung on, anachronistically, for decades, providing the family with all its needs. Hamleys would send over tourists who having shopped their fill at that toy mecca, would come and giggle at the goods and leave with yet more carrier bags of humorous tat as a foil to their plush Steiff bears bought as investments. The shop was an effective sort of stocking filler.

Anyway, the point of all this is to say that although I knew what was involved, or perhaps because I knew what was involved, I didn’t find shop-keeping and selling particularly engaging, even though my school and student years had me working in various shops to top up my pocket money and later my student grant (those good old days). My first full time job was working as Arts Officer for a local authority, and yet again, there I was, putting on events and having to sell tickets. I didn’t hang around street corners touting, but I had to do everything else; book the events, plan the events, promote the events, be at the events, run around like a blue-arsed fly at the events and smooth whatever important furrowed brows were created by the events. Later still I had to sell myself. Not in an illegal sense, but the less-kind might call it whoring, doing consultancy work for arts organisations. There is huge joy working with artists and those who support them. I don’t regret a minute of it.

As the farm work grew, selling our surplus became critical to making the farm wash its face. This was a different ball-game altogether. Talking about our produce and services is not the same as selling a ticket to a concert that you wouldn’t dream of attending if you didn’t have to, but were promoting because it was the sort of stuff that was popular in the locale. I’m not saying it is an unalloyed joy, because there can always be issues when money is changing hands, but talking about something you truly believe in to people who are genuinely interested too, is a huge win. And I really care about the feedback, so for example when one lovely woman wrote on her feedback form last weekend “I was amazed how much I learned. Andrew and Debbie were wonderful teachers. I loved the weekend and didn’t want it to end. I need you both in my life”, you can imagine how warm and fuzzy that left me, and there was more of the same from most of the other attendees.

So there I am, still selling. Which is a relief, because the proliferation of AI means our websites are more difficult to find these days and there’s bugger all I can do about that, apparently. And because of what we sell, our sales are always an effective benchmark for how people are responding to the vagaries of the economy. Feeling the pinch? You’re definitely not going to risk a job change or a work from home focus and relocation to rural bliss just yet; those smallholding plans are being put on hold for the forseeable. You’ll also be buying a single pack of mince from the butcher or supermarket rather than a 10kilo box of 100% grass fed beef from me. In boom years we keep putting on extra course dates, in bust years we do less. And then there are fashions; interest in certain things comes and goes. For years we quickly ran out of our raw sheep’s fleece, sold as shorn off the sheep and frequently sent in bulk to the U.S. Now, we sell half or three quarters of it at most over the year, and use the rest as tree mulch on the farm. If I was in my twenties this might worry me, but I’m not and it doesn’t. But I still laugh when I think about the contrast between the Miss Piggy masks of youth and the pigs in the paddock in maturity. I know which I prefer.