Mad March Hares

Even smallholders have days off.

Mothering Sunday. Time for some self-indulgence.  A day off, doing what I fancied doing. So, the lawn, or what passes for the lawn lay uncut, and the oven stayed dirty and once I had fed and watered ducks and chickens and sheep I packed up my rucksack and slipped quietly through the gate and off for a walk. I took sandwiches, binoculars, a waterproof and a four-legged accomplice. As I sneaked away from the house a small voice echoed inside my head; but you have potatoes to plant and that area you dunged in the autumn needs rotovating. But I wasn’t listening because this was a special walk, a challenge, something I had promised myself I would do.

It had started on holiday last year when, driving back at dusk to the cottage we had rented on Orkney, a hare had run across the track in front of the car, the first hare I had seen for thirty years (give or take a century). The easy gait as it bounded along the road until it disappeared into a break in the fence, the sleek body, long back legs, the dark line of the ears, had touched something primeval deep down inside. Rabbits may be cute and cuddly and bright eyed, but there is something mysterious, magical about hares. One sighting wasn’t enough. I wanted to see another one and at my age I don’t have another thirty years to wait.

I bored everyone with the hare when I returned, including an old farming friend who smiled indulgently and told me where I could see them not much more than three miles from home. ‘Here in Sussex?’ I had repeated. He had nodded. So, I made myself a promise that before March (appropriately) was out I would take off in search of hares.

The walk took me down towards the river and then up over the top of the Downs into a clear blue sky that spread for miles across open countryside and softly merged with the sea to the south. By the river, the footpath had been sheltered from the sharp wind blowing from the east by a hedgerow dipped in the snowy white of blackthorn blossom. On the top I walked into the wind. On either side of the footpath stretched green fields of grazing sheep and brown stubble fields that would soon be ploughed and sown again with corn.

Perfect habitat for hares which like open grassland, flat wetland, and arable farm land. What I was looking for as I stopped to scan the open down land was a ‘form’, a shallow nest in the grass scratched out by a brown hare literally lying low sheltering from the wind. Rabbits are easy to spot from a distance because they are social animals. Hares are normally solitary creatures that only come together at certain times of the year. And this was the right time of year.  Around the Spring Equinox nature sends out some mysterious signal, that brings the hares together. The females or Jills stay in one area all their lives while the males (yes you guessed it; the Jacks) range over long distances but once they meet up the partying begins. They are nocturnal creatures and it is often at dusk that they can be seen chasing each other around fields, leap frogging in the air, rolling wildly in the grass and boxing as the moon rises above the earth. The boxing was always assumed to be males competing for females but it is now believed to be a battle between males and females; possibly the females are seeing off unwanted attention or maybe they are testing the fitness of potential mates. 

‘Mad March Hares’. 

It was probably too early to see leverets. Sometimes people stumble across baby hares and mistakenly think they have been abandoned but they are independent of their mothers from the beginning. They are born with fur and their eyes wide open, ready to go. The female or the ‘Jill’ makes a form for each of her offspring and ‘visits’ them, feeding and moving between them but living alone in her own form.

Anyway, I wasn’t expecting to see boxing hares or leverets. All I wanted was to see A hare.

And it was half way up a long haul to the top of the hill, along a narrow stony, footpath, enclosed by wind-blown hawthorn that I spotted a brown shape in the middle of the grassy field on my left. It was a long way off. I rummaged in my rucksack and found my binoculars. The dog wandered further on and stopped, waiting. As I focused I found the wind made it difficult to hold the ‘bins’ still and it’s sting made my eyes water. I could make out what looked like a brown rock with something black laid flat across the top of it. Ears? Was that an eye I could see? I propped the binoculars on top of a fencing post to steady them and looked again. The dog got bored, fixed a questioning eye on me, as I refocused. Was I looking at a hare or was my imagination playing tricks? I so wanted it to be a hare. After a long time, I decided it was a brown rock with black markings.  

I walked on, the dog walked on. I was almost at the top of the hill when I picked up another brown shape amongst the grass on the side hill. Binoculars again. Just in range. I held my breath. This looked like another rock, brown against the green of the grass around it and there, along the top of it, were streaks of black.

Coincidence? Impossible.

I was looking at my second hare.

Imbolc

Midway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox lies the ancient Celtic festival of Imbolc. One of the cornerstones of the Celtic calendar, it fell each year on the first of February and as our distant ancestors awoke, they gathered together to celebrate the passing of winter, the start of spring; the return of the sun and the stirring of new life. They were close to earth in a way that we will never be again. They were farmers. Their lives turned with the seasons and Imbolc marked the beginning of the lambing season, the start of their agricultural year. After the darkness and harshness of winter they looked forward to the promise of new growth and the renewed warmth of the sun and celebrated its arrival with light and fire.

One of the symbols of Imbolc was the Snowdrop. The first gift of Spring in the bleakness of Winter.

There are snowdrops in the lane. Perched on the top of the bank at the side of the road where it bends sharply before falling away downhill through a tunnel of sycamore and ash. Tiny, soft white teardrops suspended below pale green stems that shiver in the biting wind. They have pushed their way through the pointed arrow, dark, glossy leaves of the ivy which sprawls across the bank and up the bare grey trunks of the trees above. Beneath them rain has loosened chalk from the bank and rivulets of grey mud cut through the soft, mushy piles of last year’s leaves lying at the side of the road. Sheltered by the trees from the wind and rain driving from the southwest, these tiny pearls, fooled into opening by the warmth of the sun over the last few days, wait defiantly for the grey heavy clouds to lift from the hills that rise all around them.

Harbingers of Spring. 

They are not alone. Down at the farm dozens of sparrows squabble endlessly in the bottom of the hedgerows. Skirmishes break out inside the hawthorn, scraps take place amongst the blackthorn; birds flash from branch to branch, on the move, busy, attention seeking, vying for a mate, loud and incessant.  In the plum trees, smart black and grey long tailed tits are performing acrobatics across the bare branches, showing off to potential partners. From the middle of a green limbed elder a robin pours forth his territorial ambitions and above him a blackbird, perched high against a grey sky adds his song to the dank mist drifting across the valley. The air is split by the yaffle of a green woodpecker bobbing across the field. Birds in waiting for the spring.

The wind blows and briefly the dark sky lightens and a tear appears in the heavy sheet of grey lying along the horizon. Watery sunlight spills from the cloud and suddenly the wood, at the top of the hill, erupts as hundreds of rooks spill out from the dark, black, bare limbs of the trees. Rising, falling on the wind they wheel and turn against each other, their cries scorching the air. They fly around the top of the trees, settling briefly, and lifting again until the noise rises above the hill top. They know, they are ready, ready to move on with the year, ready to start building their scruffy nests up in the tops of the wind battered branches.

And me?  As I lift my boots from the cloying mud outside the greenhouse and look up at them I know too. The year is turning. Maybe, I will light a candle to Imbolc tonight.

And So, Into 2017

The New Year never happened. Having caught some nasty, vicious little virus that is doing the rounds; the sort that sends you scuttling (rather guiltily) to an out-of-hours doctor at the local hospital because you are feeling so ill, I didn’t get to celebrate New Year’s Eve or enjoy New Year’s Day.

But I did live to write another blog. I am on the mend but this evening cooking supper I suddenly thought how nice it would be to go away for a week. I’m not yearning for golden beaches, swaying palms and warm seas; maybe I am becoming a little weird in my old age (ok, weirder), because what I have in mind is something along the lines of a five-star hotel in the Highlands, with really good central heating, roaring fires, hot showers and deep luxurious baths, serving hearty winter food, with huge breakfasts that I don’t have to cook and a stock of carefully matured malt whiskey. I would like to throw in walks in the snow on crisp bright days and a trip or two out with a local wildlife expert to find red deer, red squirrels and maybe hares in their winter coats.

The reality is a little different. I spent this morning grappling with frozen locks and water pipes. Getting into the duck run through the electric fence was like breaking and entering. The gate, awash in a mire of mud after the incessant rain on New Year’s Day had melded to the ground. It required a hammer accompanied by the right amount of swearing to open their coup. As I watched them spread out across the frozen soil I silently prayed that Defra would lift the bird flu protection zone and they could return to their normal field where the ground was reasonably firm and dry.

As I hauled fresh water and food a treacherous thought rose to the surface. Why didn’t I just go to the local co-op and buy boxes of clean, weighed and sorted unmuddied eggs. My feet wouldn’t hurt with the cold or my back ache and I could be sitting inside in the warm nursing my evil little virus with a hot cup of coffee.

But then I watched the ducks doing their early morning tour of the improvised run inside the fruit cage, checking it carefully out while they waited for me to return with food and had to smile. I smiled again as I struggled into the polytunnel as the chickens advanced on me, pushing, shouldering each other, getting under my feet, eager to get at their food. The polytunnel should be full of winter salad in neat raised beds. It is strewn with straw and covered in chicken shit (sorry) but in the middle, stands our makeshift two-pallet coup and in the corner, are a cluster of warm eggs, dun coloured, brown, speckled, large ones from the older girls, small ones from the birds I bought in the autumn, that have now come into lay. I found myself talking to them.

Then it was the sheep. Our two breeding ewes have returned from their holiday having met a handsome ram so I carried an extra apple in my pocket for them. The sun had climbed into the thin, winter crystal blue of the sky and sent a shimmer of light across the jewelled grass. Life was good.

This evening I reversed the process; fed, water and shut the poultry up, switched on the electric fences and turned off the water. As I stood in the middle of my allotment amongst sprouts standing sentinel in the fading light, running a mental check list though my brain, I glanced up at the bank of trees above me and there was the moon, a sliver of pure silver rising through the bare branches of the ash trees. On its tail sat Venus climbing up into deep blue of the night sky.

Who needs a five-star hotel with luxurious baths in the Highlands?

Bird Flu

The news caught up with me just before lunch yesterday.

Over the last few days, things have become easier down on the farm; the weather has given us a respite from the cold, outside water is now flowing and everything that looked so frozen and sad a week ago, has pulled through. Even the coriander in the polytunnel looks as if it might survive to photosynthesis another day.

So, I was in a good mood as I swung into the kitchen to grab a sandwich. Enter my better half; had I heard about the bird flu threat and the decision by DEFRA to impose an Avian Influenza Prevention Zone across England, Wales, and Scotland? No, I hadn’t but I was about to.

There have been outbreaks of what is classified as a ‘highly pathogenic strain’ of avian influenza (there are two strains and this is the nasty one) in several eastern European countries very recently and now the news was of one in France, just across that tiny stretch of water that separates us from all sorts of harm. The disease is spread by contact, bird to bird and through body fluids and faeces rather than airborne so very early yesterday morning the government decided to enforce an ‘immediate and compulsory housing of domestic chickens, hens, turkeys and ducks or their separation from wild birds’; rough quote from the DEFRA website. This applies to all poultry flocks, big and small, from large producers to people like me with a few birds. The order stands for a month until the 6^th January.

As I walked down to shut up my birds, I was trying to work out what I was going to do. My chickens and ducks are free range. They spend their lives outside. They live in small arks and have large runs surrounded by electric fencing which protects them from foxes but not viruses. How was I going to comply and protect them? The arks are too small to keep the birds in for a month. The runs are too big to cover in any way. By the time I reached the smallholding I had had a couple of flashes of inspiration. The chickens could go into the polytunnel and there was room for the ducks in our bird proof fruit cage where I had pulled up a bed of aging strawberry plants in the Autumn.

A plan. I would need to borrow a crate to put the birds in while we moved house for them, we would still need the electric fencing because I don’t trust our fox population, we would need to dismantle part of the fruit cage to move the duck ark inside it and we would need to construct some sort of roosting area inside the polytunnel where the chickens would feel safe at night and lay their eggs.

Somehow today we did it. I rescued some of the plants that were in pots from the polytunnel, cut parsley and coriander to dry and turned my back on the beds of leaf salad and greens and then we swung into action with a couple of pallets and some ply to create a nesting area for the chickens, caught them and introduced them to their new home. Then came the electric fencing around the outside and much swearing.

Once family one was settled in, we concentrated on the ducks and moved their ark into the safe zone I had chosen for them. More electric fencing and more swearing but we did it. There is no pond but they can move around through the raspberry canes and shovel for worms.

Once everything was done I peeped into the polytunnel to see how the chickens were faring in their new abode. The leaf salad, spinach and lettuce were gone and the greens were stripped and they looked remarkably happy with life.

Tonight, as I shut up the ducks and checked the chickens everything was quiet, all had settled down in their new homes; it was just my world that had turned upside down.

Winter

Who rattled Winter’s cage? Who poked a stick between the bars and woke her from her slumbers? Who whispered in her ear, ‘ok enough of this rain and wind. How about some real winter weather’?

As she awoke and we slept, temperatures plunged. Up early, she tiptoed down the lane and brushed the leaves, which had been scooped by the wind into piles at the edge of the road, with frozen fingers. Her skirts swirled across the fields and left behind a rind of white frost. Water turned grey and frozen. The air stood still, holding its breath in the silence left by the cold. The sun rose above the rim of the hills into a spotless sky. The light fired the bare branches of the silver birch and the world shook itself and woke to a winter’s morning.

-7⁰C. I checked the thermometer on the wall outside the porch as I pulled on my coat and struggled into gloves. This was it. My first real winter as a small holder. The dog and I walked into work. A short walk, with the warmth of the sun as it lifted through the trees, with ears stinging with the cold, breath hanging on the air, fingers throbbing, with contrails in a clear blue sky, hips sparkling with frost, with a sudden loud green woodpecker bobbing across a stubble field, with eyes watering, a robin, and with a good to be alive feeling deep in the warmth inside.

Then we were there, standing outside a glistening polytunnel looking out across the field to the chicken and duck arcs pitched in a field painted white by the frost.

When I opened up, the chickens spilled out across the frozen run, fanning out across the grass as usual. When it became apparent to them that the ground they were pecking at was frozen solid they seemed to accept the situation with a large dollop of stoicism and made a headlong assault on the feeder of mash I carried into their run.

The ducks were confused. Their flurry out of the shed normally ends in the pond, in the water in the pond that is. Today this was not to be. They stood on it, tested it, walked across it and one of them tried to take off from it but nobody got to swim.

Water was the first problem. The weather forecast had warned it would be cold but I hadn’t expected all the outside water to be frozen. The pipes were lagged but there are limits and -7⁰ was obviously it. Even water inside the field shed was frozen and the kettle in the veg shed was solid ice. And it was not about to thaw. I was obviously not well organised. There was no choice but to scourge buckets of water from one of the workshops that lies alongside the small holding so the birds could drink and I could make coffee.

Then it was up to the sheep. The field at the top where they are grazing slopes gently east to west and the sun was warming the air and the ground. I carried apples as a treat and hand fed some of the more trusting sheep, lingering in the warmth of the sun and enjoying the view across the river valley to the hills in the distance. The bottom field, where the birds and the allotment are, was still lying in shadow and still very cold.

Then came the polytunnel and greenhouse. As I lifted the bubble wrap from the plants things did not look good. Even with the extra protection, the leaf salad and lettuce, carrots, parsley, and spring greens lay limp and sad. The coriander was definitely not going to be a survivor. There is nothing I can do except hope some of the plants come round as temperatures rise.

Now was the time to get organised better. More water carrying, ready for late afternoon when the ducks and chickens would be fed again and put safely away for the night. Then there were extra buckets of water for the morning wrapped in old paper sacks inside the field shed. I wasn’t going to get caught out again. Extra straw to keep everyone warm. Everything is a learning curve.

Winter is enjoying herself. With another cold night of -7⁰, it dropped again to -8⁰ last night. But I now have a routine. A different routine. Life has shifted a little, like walking into a tunnel where you know you just have to keep going because you can see light at the end which you will eventually reach.

It IS cold working outside but it is also very alive and quite amazing at times.

As I shut the chickens and ducks up it has grown dark except for a smear of light lying along the ridge of the Downs. The rooks lift from the trees on the side of the hill, their noise fills the air, and then as one they settle back into their night roost. Silence fills the sky. The trees stand dark, limbs outstretched against the fading light. Cold drifts up from the frozen ground. And then from out of the trees the moon rises above the line of the hills. So close you could touch it, against a clear velvet black sky, a perfect crescent hanging in the night sky.

Winter is enjoying herself and so am I.

Cheesy

When the world seems a grim place and there is winter in the wind blowing across the empty stubble fields, the only thing to do is hunker down in the farmhouse kitchen of a friend and learn how to make cheese.

The friend is Sharon and the idea hatched in Cheddar (where else?) on a girls’ weekend break, youth hostelling and walking in Somerset. Having just circumnavigated Cheddar Gorge we were considering a cream tea the way you do, when we spotted the cheese shop at the bottom of the hill that winds up the narrow gorge. The small factory behind the shop is open to visitors and as we walked round and learned how they make their famous cheese it quickly became obvious that this was a small family business, very hands on, using traditional methods with minimal mechanization. The staff were very welcoming and passionate about their product and as we sampled it we could see why. This was not the cheddar you buy in the supermarket; this was something special, something unique, some of it matured, as it has always been, in the caves deep within the amazing geology of this beautiful area.

As we bought a collection of cheese to take home, Sharon invited me over to share in a cheese making session. She has been making her own cheese for a year or so now and is well qualified as a teacher, a very good cook, and the wife of a dairy farmer to run a cheesy day.

So, with Katie (of sheep fame) and Carla her dog, we rolled up at Sharon’s house on a bright clear-blue-sky day with a sharp wind blowing from the north. Collar up against the chill I knocked and opened the outhouse door and found myself eye to eye with a soft black and white bundle of twelve-week-old collie puppy. This was Bess, the newest member of the family, and a complete time waster if ever I saw one. After introductions, I wondered if I could smuggle her out at the end of the day but I suspected she would be missed.

Sharon has a real farmhouse kitchen; large and warm and living, with an ancient stove, an old dinning room table, a battered settee, a piano, a dresser, and shelves crammed with china, books, and photographs. There were a dozen or more flagons of cider popping away contently to themselves in one corner and a stack of jars of crab apple jelly waiting to be labelled and put away.

So, the day began; with a cup of coffee and a quick catch up on local gossip and then it was down to serious work. We started at the beginning with a trip down to the milking parlour to collect the raw milk we needed to produce our cheese.

We had decided to make mozzarella and a soft curd cheese. The process is amazingly simple. We kicked off with the mozzarella. Sharon gave us each a large stock pot and watched carefully as we poured our milk into them and dissolved citric acid and rennet in water ready to add at the appropriate time. As we warmed the milk on the cooker, Sharon lit the old stove, cautiously feeding it as it caught alight and spread heat through the kitchen. Under her watchful eye, we added the citric acid (we could have used lemon juice) and carefully carried the stock pots over to the ancient stove. Stirring gently, thermometer in hand, I leaned into the warmth of the range and through the large window beside me, watched the wind creep across the lawn, its long fingers scattering silent flurries of leaves into the air. How many women I wondered had stood beside this stove and stirred patiently waiting for milk to warm. I checked the thermometer, 90 ⁰; time to add the rennet which sets the proteins in the milk to form the solid curds.

Then we set it to one side and had another cup of coffee. There was a pattern developing here. Whilst we chatted and ate cake, a quiet miracle took place and when we lifted the lids of the pots there were the curds we had been hoping for. Then it got exciting as the curds were cut, reheated, and separated from the whey. Modern technology muscled in as the curds were placed in the microwave. Sharon brandished rubber gloves which we slipped on as the curds were removed, ready to squeeze the whey out of the hot, elastic cheese by carefully kneading it like bread. Then it was back into the microwave for thirty seconds, out again and the curds were folded, kneaded again and then stretched. We repeated this until the cheese was firm and glossy and ready to be shaped into that familiar ball of mozzarella.

Whilst the drama of the mozzarella was unfolding we had a go at making cream cheese. Similar process but a mesophilic starter rather than citric acid and it needed time to set. Which was fine because there was lunch; homemade soup and freshly baked bread, the dogs needed a walk and there was an old spinning wheel begging to be played with using some of the wool from our sheep.

We drove away (no chance to smuggle out the puppy) with tubs of soft, white, creamy cheese that we had made ourselves, and a warm glowing sense inside that we had shared in something that was very old. We had stepped into a tradition that stretches back centuries, dipped into a well of knowledge that goes deep down into our pasts. Like the cheese makers in Cheddar we had become a tiny cog in the wheel that keeps old country crafts alive to be passed down to new generations.

Will I make some more cheese? Oh yes, definitely! I might even invite my daughter round to help.

                                          

Endings and Beginnings

It is no use pretending any longer; summer has stolen away; autumn has sidled in and winter is waiting in the wings to steal the show.

The mornings are dark when I awake and yesterday as I stripped the old runner beans from their poles, there was a sharp wind with a cold edge blowing from the east; the same wind that is following me across the field to shut up the ducks and the chickens for the night. It is only quarter past six but heavy, grey night clouds have darkened the east, and are gathering their forces against the clear band of silver light still lying along the top of the hill to the west. The air is full of raucous cries as the rooks lift into the sky, turn against the gathering darkness and sweep towards their night roost in the woodland at the top of the hill. Then all is silent save for the plaintive quack of one of my ducks waiting for its supper. My waddling friends don’t argue. Once I place the feed hopper inside they dutifully follow each other into their shed. By the time I secure the electric fence around the chicken run it is dark. I call my dog and head down, collar up, I am glad to be heading home where a warm, bright kitchen and the smell of supper awaits me. Gone are the warm evenings when I lingered to watch the swallows fill the evening sky, and waited for the first glimpse of a bat through the trees as dusk fell. 

The allotment looks forlorn. The apple trees are bare; their fruit is carefully packed into boxes in the store shed and only a few windfalls are left for the squirrels. The squashes have been lifted, hardened and are also in store and all that is left is a bare patch of grey earth and a rash of new young stinging nettles in one corner. The large, green umbrella leaves of the rhubarb have collapsed and their rotting remains lay spread eagled across the flinty soil. In the greenhouse, the last tomatoes hang on shrivelled stems to ripen slowly until the first frost.

The end of the season. Time to hang up the fork and the hoe and burrow down indoors in the warm.

But that is not the way things work. Because this is where next year starts. It is a time for new plans, new ideas, and lots of hard work preparing the ground (literally) for new beginnings. It is wellies on, gloves at the ready, scarf tucked in, a jar of hot chocolate on the shelf in the veg shed, and down to work while the weather holds.

I have already sown broad beans, and onion sets outside and in the polytunnel late salad leaves, winter lettuce, coriander, parsley and rocket are showing their heads. There are carrots in tubs which will hopefully survive the winter and this week I split open a packet of winter peas, soaked them in paraffin to deter the mice and carefully dropped the small wrinkled seeds into shallow drills in the dark, still warm earth in the hope of an early crop next year. Hidden at the back of the potting cupboard is a roll of horticultural bubble wrap waiting to be used if it turns cold. 

And now it’s into the manure heap with the wheel barrow. Steam gently rises in the cool air as I shovel in the dung and trundle it along to the beds I have cleared ready for digging. There is something special about the smell of damp earth as it is turned with the spade; freshness and decay rolled into one. Equally, there is something seriously satisfying about digging; a sense of achievement as a messy patch of weeds morphs into crumbly carefully tilled soil. Or is it a masochistic streak buried deep that just enjoys the exercise? I try to do less each year to protect the soil structure and I have come around to the idea of permaculture and green manure but tucked inside I am my father’s daughter and he believed in digging.

And the digging gives me time to plan and to dream of all the things that I am going to do next spring. The vegetables I am going to squeeze into this plot, the drip feed, self-watering system I am going to work out how to use next year, the sacrificial flowers I am going to plant between the vegetables to deter ravenous insects from eating my crops, the beautiful scarecrow I am going to make, the ornamental bed of cut flowers I am going to grow, and so it goes on.

Just a few more weeks of hard work if the weather is kind and the allotment should be put to bed, clean and tidy, ready and waiting to begin again. Then I can retreat indoors.

Roll on the spring!