Lambing

A face appeared at the entrance to the shelter. Soft light brown wool, a long nose and almond slit eyes that watched me walk down the field towards her. The ewe didn’t move as I got closer.

‘What are you doing in there?’ I asked her. The wind blowing down the field from the west had an edge to it. A storm was blowing in from the Atlantic according to the forecast; strong winds and rain and a fall in temperature, sweeping through the west country and across the south east. A goodbye to the warm, soft Easter weather we had enjoyed over the holiday. But Shetland sheep are hardy. A storm, even with the name of Hannah, was not enough to drive her inside.

I knew what was wrong. My last ewe was about to lamb. As I looked inside the old pig sty which provides the sheep with some shelter, she turned her back to me and I could see watery yellow mucus seeping down the wool just above a large pink, page three udder, full of milk.

‘This had better not be another false alarm,’ I told her. Ten days ago, I had spent the evening with her sitting in the field as dusk had drained the hills of light and the first bats of the season had skimmed through the warm, dry, spring air. She had been panting a lot and looking uncomfortable and she was enormous and I was sure that she was about to become the first of the ewes to lamb. Finally, I had left her as it got completely dark, having decided that nothing was going to happen. But now I knew. So, what did I do? I went back to my shed, grabbed the lambing bag, made a cup of tea, popped it into a flask and found my warm coat because the sun was disappearing behind the horizon and afternoon was slipping into evening. And yes, I grabbed a couple of biscuits from the tin on the shelf. A midwife needs her strength.

By the time I returned the bag of amniotic fluid that had protected her unborn lamb during the pregnancy was showing. I watched and waited as she moved restlessly around the shelter. I could see the outline of the lamb within the bag, the dark colour of the hooves. She was new to this, her first lamb and this is only my third lambing season. We were both novices. We both waited. Should I break the bag or let nature take it course? Seconds, minutes passed. What should I do?

It was at this moment I wished I had my friend Katie at my elbow. Katie with the knowledge and instinctive confidence to know what to do. Katie who has a lot to answer for; if it had not been for her, I would not be kneeling in the entrance of an old pig sty watching a miracle unfold before me and worrying whether or not things were going as they should. She introduced me to sheep three years ago but now has a flock of her own and has moved on, literally, to pastures new, down in Devon.

Lambing is amazing, nerve racking and stressful, full of high moments and lots of ‘if only’s’.

The first lambs had been born late afternoon on Good Friday and predictably I hadn’t been around at the time. With no fuss their mother had deposited them into this world and by the time I arrived, she had cleaned them up and they were on their feet, nosing at the tight, jet black wool beneath her belly that hid her neat full udders, drawn by the smell of milk. Two girls, one black, one white and both beautiful. I waited to see whether or not they were latching on for that all important first feed. By the time night had swallowed the line of the hills, I was confident that the black lamb was feeding but unsure about the other one. I had already shared the birth with half the world on my phone, including Katie and a number of close farming friends. Unsure whether I should leave them I called Katie for reassurance and took her advice. It was a perfect, warm Spring evening, she was a second time mother, the lambs looked strong and I needed my beauty sleep so I left them to it. Lying in bed at two o’clock in the morning wide awake staring at the darkness outside I wondered what I would find in the morning.

When I arrived early at the field they were tucked up in the shelter. Mum was feisty, stamping her feet at my dog and threatening the rest of the flock if they came too close. She had taken up residency in the safest place in the field. The lambs had full bellies. I could relax.

I was there for the second birth, encouraging, feeling the pain as the ewe pushed out a large white lamb. A couple of neighbours had joined me and we stood silently to watch a second black lamb drop effortlessly to the ground. Tiny; and for a second, I thought it was dead. Its mother ignored it and continued licking her first born. I cleared the mucus from its face and nose and popped it under her nose. There was a struggle as it tried to get to its feet and failed. Alarm bells rang as its mother turned away and focused once more on the large white boy who had already found his mother’s milk. I waited and finally the second lamb got to its feet and the ewe started to clean it up. I sat and watched and waited until the sun sank behind the tree line and the edges of the field faded as dusk fell. The rooks settled in their nests and the evening became still. The small black lamb had started to feed. She had a chance now of surviving. I looked hopefully at the shelter. Perhaps her mother would oust the first ewe and use it for the night or they would come to an agreement and share it.

Finally, I left, closing the gate gently behind me.

Halfway to work in the morning with the dog, a van drew up alongside us and Ben, the farmer from along the road who had let my ewes run with his rams in the autumn, wound down the window and asked how it was going. I had known the family for years and Annie his mother had been one of the first to know my lambing had started. I explained about the small, black lamb and he offered me a lift and said he would have a look at it.

But it was too late. When we arrived there was no small, black lamb to be seen. A fox, a badger? As I searched desperately through the patch of stinging nettles along the old fence line, the ‘what if’s’ surfaced; what if I had shut them into the sty over night? Would things have been different. Why hadn’t I done that?

Later that day I sorted out the pig sty setting up a hurdle I could slide into place if it was needed as an overnight shelter. Too late of course but I had learnt something.  

And now, I was standing in front of my last ewe to lamb, watching her struggle, not sure what to do.

I phoned a friend.

I phoned Annie who didn’t hesitate. As I broke the bag, I could see the two front hooves and just the tip of a nose. Ben would be with me shortly Annie assured me. And he was. Long legged, he crossed the field and stood beside me watching the ewe struggle with the birth and decided to help things along, gently pulling on the slippery hooves, fingers carefully easing out the head until it was free and the lamb slipped out of its mother. The next-door neighbour appeared and a second lamb. As I held my breath their mother licked both of them dry and they started pushing and probing the soft fleece beneath her belly following the scent of her milk until they found it.

Ben left. I drew the hurdle across the entrance to the sty and looked down at two perfect lambs.

It was over for this year.

I have learnt some lessons, seen what to do if a ewe needs help and I know that there are some amazing people around me who are more than willing to lend a hand if need be.

A big thank you to them all.

 

A Future Please

I have a little helper once a week now. She may only be nineteen months old and it might all take a lot longer to do but she has great potential as a poultry keeper and shepherdess. With a little training she might also become a gardener. Wednesdays belong to my granddaughter Olivia. She joins me quite early in the morning as I open up the chickens and the ducks and check the sheep. She toddles across the field, waits while I turn off the electric fence, toddles into the chicken run and watches intently as I open the flap to the coop and the birds spill over each other to get out. I watch her, (as only a nan-nan does) as she stands in the middle of the flock of hungry, clucking hens as I collect the eggs and sort out their food. Then it is the field again and into the duck enclosure and a repeat performance as the ducks scurry across to the pond. Straight in, heads down, tails up, ripples on the water and lots of chuckles from a small person.

We then check the sheep; a long walk for someone with little legs, but these are friendly Shetlanders and they cross the field to say good morning and stand still for Olivia to stroke their tight springy wool.

This was my childhood too. I was born here and I grew up surrounded by these hills, this valley, this same sky and this chalk grey soil that sticks to my boots as I move around. I probably never realised how lucky I was as a child to live here surrounded by pigs, chickens and growing things but some sort of chemistry took place because I loved it. I missed it desperately when I was away from it, and when I returned a long time ago, I stopped still and grew roots. I am tethered here.

Boring? Yes. Some people travel, others stay. And I am glad I did because, something from here has rubbed off on me; something which has opened my eyes to what an amazing world we are surrounded by. It feels like an extra sense; a fifth dimension and I have always wanted to share it.

Perhaps, that is why I spent a lot of time trying to show children how incredible our natural world is, trying to foster a connection between them and what is around them so they appreciate it, because from appreciation grows love and the urge to protect. If you don’t connect with something then you don’t care about it. Today we spend more time watching virtual reality than watching sunsets, and this connection with the natural world is slipping away from us and with it the desire to look after the planet on which we live.

We need to rebuild that connection. We need to protect our world, our home, perhaps more at this particular moment in time than ever before. Our planet is now in the midst of its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals in the past half-billion years. We are currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we are now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens becoming extinct every day. The future is bleak with as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species possibly heading toward extinction by the middle of this century.

I guess I want my granddaughter to feel this connection. I failed with my children, I was too busy bringing them up! This is my second chance. Which is why, as we sat munching biscuits, I was pointing out the great tits balancing on the bird feeder.   

I guess I also want her to learn about how we grow things, and how we rear our food; where it comes from (and I am not talking here about the shelves of the nearest supermarket). I feel I need to provide her with a survival kit for the future. Others will equip her for life in a fast-moving technological world, I want to give her knowledge that will help her if that world collapses around her and she needs to go back to basics with a handful of seed and a spade without a computer or a lithium battery to help.

Because her future scares me. Last year the International Panel for Climate Change predicted that we have just twelve years to reduce our carbon output dramatically if we are to limit our global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. Such a rise is not good but it would make life on earth bearable. If it goes above this figure the future for us as a species, and the future of everything that lives on this earth is bleak beyond our imagination.

At the moment things are not looking good; there is denial, ignorance, complacency. Our government is obsessed and immobilised by Bexit, local government is poorly equipped to deal with crisis and more preoccupied with scoring points off its political opponents than literally stepping in to save the world and the vast majority of people have no idea of the scale of change that needs to take place in their daily lives if we are to get close to lifting the dark clouds that are building on the horizon. 

Like many other people I feel so helpless to change anything. I can get involved in a local group that are pushing for our county and district councils to declare a climate emergency, I can take to the streets with a banner, I can try to reduce my own carbon footprint, I can plant a tree but I can’t overturn the world, shake it, scream at it to wake up and really seriously do something. I can’t close down oil fields, decommission gas power stations, cover a country in wind turbines, plant continents of trees, persuade people to stop consuming so much. I can’t save this amazing, intricate world and the beautiful things in it that I love from destruction.

All I can do is hug my granddaughter close, whisper I am sorry to her, pray and show her how to sow a seed in a pot. 

A New Year Afoot!

I quite like January. I like the dark mornings; the excuse for an extra half an hour in bed, and the warm cocoon feeling of the cottage as I creep downstairs to make that first cup of tea in the morning.

The frenzy of Christmas over, the silent rooms around me, now striped of their yuletide trimmings, the tree, the decorations, the lights, fill with a soft grey calm as the dawn sidles in between the curtains. I let the dog out and lean against the open back door, cup in hand and drink in the tea and the peacefulness. Reaching out into the early morning I can grasp a little bit of time in my hand and take a look at my life before launching into a new year. Look at where I am and where I would like to go. There is time to make plans; the must do’s and the would like to do’s. Time to dream a little about what I want over the next twelve months. Sift through ideas, reshape life before reality and routine cut in and I get back on the wheel and go spinning down a familiar path.

One thing that has become clear over this winter is that I am here to stay. Back in August I was wondering whether to continue keeping sheep. Wondering in fact, whether to continue with any livestock. I don’t think I made any conscious decision about what to do; life just unfolded and, as they say, one thing led to another.

At the beginning of November, three of my ewes took a short trip down the road to a neighbouring farm and met up with a very nice white ram with magnificent horns and, fingers crossed, (no scanning here, just a surprise) there could be lambs in April. I certainly don’t have any holiday plans for that month.

When my chickens started to go off lay as the days shortened, I bought in four point of lay hens to keep the eggs coming in for breakfast over the winter.  Now, for the first time, I have a beautiful Light Sussex laying me pale white eggs.

I also have a freezer full of my own pork, including special things like salami cured with fennel seed, spicy chorizo and some lovely hams as well as tasty joints, bacon and three types of sausage. There is something about a plate of food which is completely home grown, as I never cease to remind my doubting family.

Just before Christmas I took delivery of some fruit trees, apples, pears, plum, quince, even a cherry for the birds to enjoy. They are heeled in at the moment ready to plant out in the bottom field where the chickens and ducks and the woodpecker range.

So, what about this year? There are some must do’s that need to be done very soon involving money. The chickens and ducks need new homes. Their coops are in their third year and falling apart; a fact the resident foxes have probably already clocked and are keeping a watchful eye on. If anyone out there knows where I can buy well made, reasonably priced chicken houses please, please let me know.

The fruit cage needs replacing along with the rabbit fencing around the allotment. I can do the former but the latter is going to need serious digging. Anyone with a post driver and a mini digger that can take out a trench to sink wire netting into.

I need to dig over the polytunnel to install the new leaky pipe watering system I got for Christmas. Other women are delighted with jewellery and perfume, I was thrilled with a hose pipe!

I also need to sort out buying in some more pigs to rear and I am on the lookout for more ducks; Khaki Campbells or Welsh Harlequins for their egg producing capabilities. I will probably buy some more point of lay hens as the days lengthen and the weather improves. Exciting or am I just sad?

What about the would like to do’s for this year; the dreams? I think it is time to revisit my original desire to be self-sufficient and add a dollop of sustainability.

The self-sufficiency has slipped a little. I got caught in our local supermarket just before Christmas buying carrots. I love carrots but can I get them to germinate? I hid the air-miles heavy rice and pasta beneath the milk.

I need to make better use of what I grow. What happened to the rhubarb and ginger marmalade I have been promising to make for the last three years, the bottles of olive oil filled with herbs, the store cupboard bursting with lots of lovely homemade preserves. Time happened. 

I also need to work on the sustainability. Solar panels to run electric fences and the kettle and fridge in the veg shed? Making my own potting compost? Replacing some of the nasty chemicals I use in my home and on my body with natural products taken from the garden? No packaging, no air miles, no pollution. And then there is the dreaded use of plastic.

Christmas reading included a book on living off wild food so in a burst of enthusiasm I have decided to include more wild plants in my diet. After all I have large quantities of nettles and dandelions growing around the smallholding.

So, lots to think about.

In the meantime, there is the magic of January.

Sometimes you have to stop and look.

My diary says;

1^st January Winter Heliotrope in flower in a sheltered dell I pass walking the dog.

3^rd January: 7am, just before daylight, in a clear, cloudless sky to the south hung the waning moon with bright sharp Venus suspended on its tail.

4th January: There is a kestrel hunting over the sheep field. Poised for a second, motionless, hanging in the grey air and then it drops sideways, fast, a blur above the brown withered winter grass.

Fieldfares have appeared taking the last of the windfalls I have left on the ground for them. A Song Thrush opens the morning with its song.  

5^th January: Closing up the ducks and chickens later than usual my head torch picks out two green eyes staring at me from the bank of elder and ash that rises from their field. Neither of us move. I looked away first. A fox waiting for me to forget to put on the electric fence?

6^th January: Greater spotted woodpecker disappearing up an ivy clad sycamore on the walk into work.

8^th January: Two smart cock pheasants have taken up residence in the garden.

13^th January: Snowdrops out in the garden.

The good life.

Winter Solstice

Darkness is gathering along the rim of the hills to the east; light spilling from the heavy grey cloud that has sat hunched, arms crossed, along the Downs all day. To the west, at the head of the valley, a thread of silver light, trapped between black clouds and the dark green of the hills holds the last of the day together. The wind is blowing from the west and carries the smell of rain and something sharper; cold and earthy.

I am standing in the middle of my bottom field, just inside the chicken run. In the wood above me, the rooks are settling into the darkness gathering amongst the ash and sycamore that straddle the lip of the hill. The startled cry of a blackbird breaks from the brambles that trail along the base of the slope that climbs up into the trees. There are splashes of rain, and I turn the collar on my jacket up. I have ducks and chickens to feed and shut up for the night, plants to cover in case it turns cold, a polytunnel to close. I grab the chicken feeder and water drinker and head towards the shed where the food is stored.

Slowly, a huge pale grey-yellow moon rises from behind the sloping stubble field that lays behind me, and lifts through the bare, dark outstretched arms of the apple tree that stands beside my vegetable shed. It climbs on a soft bed of black cloud up into the evening sky and hangs above the darkening ground below, spreading pale yellow light across the sky around it.

The wind lifts across the field as the shortest day of the year slips away into the dark line of the hedgerow. Night, the longest night of the year, rolls off the hills.

We have arrived at mid-winter, the point at which the earth’s axis is tilted at its furthest point from the sun. Tonight, is the turning point of the year as the sun reaches its southernmost point in our hemisphere, pauses, and begins its trek northwards again across the sky.

Tonight, is the Winter Solstice. Tonight, is special; has always been special. Special for those who live close to the earth and its natural cycles. Those whose lives depend upon the weather and the seasons for survival. Hunters, gatherers, farmers, fisherman.

Special, for early Neolithic settlers on the island of Orkney, who almost five thousand years ago, created a burial mound, a chambered cairn, at Maes-howe on a flat, windswept finger of land caught between loch and sea. They carefully aligned the low, narrow entrance to the main chamber, to catch the rays of the low December sun before it sank below the horizon. Evidence suggests that they placed a standing stone at the entrance to the tunnel. They also erected a solitary monolith known as the Barnhouse Stone to the west of the cairn. On the day of the Winter Solstice the sun sets over the top of this stone and its last rays go on to illuminate the darkness of Maes-howe’s inner chamber.

Like their descendants who, two thousand years later built the stone circle at Stonehenge, they would have gathered as the day faded and darkness grew and stood in the silence of that burial chamber to wait for the moment when the last dying rays of the sun ran down the passage and cast light across them and their dead.

This was the turning point of winter. It was a promise. Light would grow again, the earth would warm, seeds would germinate. Those rays of light, down the passage, between the standing stones, bought hope.

But why is the Winter Solstice still special? Why do I pause and take a last look at the dark sky locked against the hills before I start for home? Our lives are divorced from the natural world and its cycles. Outside the temperature has dropped to freezing but the room is warm. We buy, we do not grow the food we eat. We are surrounded by things we have manufactured for our comfort and pleasure, we are cocooned from what is on the other side of the window, cushioned from the hardship of the weather, oblivious to the seasons. We no longer see ourselves as part of the natural world, of its cycles and its seasons. We believe we are in control.

Perhaps, we need a reminder that we are just one tiny speck in a vast, complex, symbiotic whole; that we are part of the same cycle as our ancestors were, that we are bound by the same laws of nature as those early Neolithic settlers on Orkney.  Perhaps we need to stop and stand and watch the sky as the longest night begins; to feel at one with what is around us again.

Then maybe, just maybe, a shift will take place in the way we see our place in this world because we have badly screwed up. As a species we have become too greedy. We have ransacked this planet we depend on, used its resources for our own ends, taken, but given nothing back, forgotten that we are not the only species living here, refused to acknowledge that our way of living is unsustainable and in pursuit of our own mean, selfish ends have become too clever for our own good.

On this eve of the Winter Solstice we are standing in the shadows and staring into a different darkness. Our future and the future of everything that lives on this world, is balanced on a fine knife edge. And I am talking run-away climate change here. A disaster of our own making. According to eminent scientists we have ten maybe fifteen years to turn things around, to ensure there is a future for our children and their children.

We need action, determination to do this. We need to put the planet first and ourselves second otherwise both of us will perish. We need to change the way we live dramatically. We need to make hard decisions, sacrifices in order to survive. We need to realign ourselves with the earth on which we live and we need a ray of light coming down a narrow passage way into a darkened chamber. We need hope.

Decisions

Her fleece is milk-chocolate brown, tightly curled against the skin, soft and lanolin-oily as I run my hand down her back. Her head rests cupped in my other hand. Brown faraway eyes, narrow dark slanted irises look up at me. Her nostrils twitch. She knows I have apples hidden in the pocket of my shorts. This is not a stupid sheep. She has not walked the length of the field for me to fuss over her. She is waiting for her treat. There is a rush of noise as the rest of the flock come running down the hillside towards us. They are not stupid sheep either.

I would miss this; this moment of intimacy with another living creature if I gave it up. I look up towards the woods at the top of the field where the rooks are lazily lifting and falling on the warm morning air. The trees shelter the field from the south westerlies that blow from the coast. It is a good field for sheep. It could do with more shade, something I have learned from this summer. Maybe a lean-to shelter of some sort in a corner which catches a cool breeze. My mind wanders off into plans for the future before I quickly catch myself and stop. I have a decision to make; the decision of whether or not I carry on with the sheep.

Sheep were never really part of the masterplan for this place, but then there was never really a master plan either. It just grew and the sheep just happened along. Seven Shetlands in need of a home, four wethers and three ewes. 

At the time my friend Katie was helping out with the allotment side of things, mainly out of the kindness of her heart and the odd bag of nibbled vegetables and pick your own fruit. Katie had been a shepherdess in a former life and in passing had said, with a far off look in her eye, she would love to keep sheep again. That look was there when we went to visit our new potential flock and discovered these weren’t any old sheep. They were Shetlands with a pedigree and proper ancestry. So somehow, we ended up by having a family. Think puppy syndrome. Who goes to view a litter of puppies and ends up coming home empty handed?

So it was, a few weeks and some hard work fencing later, the Shetlands arrived. I knew nothing at all about sheep apart from the fact that they had four legs, hooves that could cause problems if wet, and woolly coats that needed removing once a year. Katie was the expert. I still don’t know much about sheep but I look after them on a day to day basis and telephone Katie in emergencies and for advice. Over the last three years (is it really that long?) I have grown accustomed to having them. They have become part of the daily routine. I have stood and watched them lamb, worried about fly strike, carefully trimmed their feet, and fed and watered them in the snow.

Now things are changing. Last year Katie took on more sheep, renting land near where she lives and now she is seriously thinking about moving down to the west country and buying a small holding. If her dream becomes reality and she leaves I am on my own with my small flock of woollies. The question is, do I know enough to become solely responsible for them. Am I up to the job. Am I strong enough to handle them or am I too old now to do this?

The question of whether or not to keep the sheep or send them down west with Katie poses a larger question. How much do I want to do on the smallholding in the future? Should I be thinking about scaling down, reduce the number of vegetables I grow, phase out the ducks and the chickens and buy my eggs from the supermarket. Do I run pigs again next year; my sweet, playful piglets have become very large and pushy and I have a plaster on the back of my leg where ‘Ginger’ decided I was tastier that the contents of the bucket I was carrying. They are getting scary!!

I have struggled this long hot summer to keep on top of everything in the kitchen garden. I have been running since April to keep up.

Just at the moment I feel I probably need to catch my breath. I have been lucky this summer. I have had a night camping, another bivouacking, two weekends out, and a short trip away. More than a lot of farmers and small holders manage to arrange.  Going away can be a nightmare to organise, exhausting before you go trying to get up close with everything and hard work when you come back trying to catch up. Sometimes it is easier just to stay still and keep on working.

But I find myself wondering what happened to Sunday once a week and the pledge I made the dog that we would get out for a ‘decent’ walk regularly?

Equally, I have suddenly become aware of my age; the mirror in the morning says it all.

I also have a new little person in my life who is going to need her Nan to look after her on occasions.

So, am I saying I should wind everything down, squander the children’s inheritance, buy that camper van and drive off into the sunset?

What I do know is that this autumn is decision time. I need to look at the future and decide what I am going to do with the rest of my life. Do I carry on or let the reins drop and go for a softer, easier existence. Tempting.

There is the sound of quiet munching all around me as the sheep take the apples they are offered. A soft breeze shivers through the wood. The sun is lifting above the hills and warming my back. All is right with the world. I am going to walk down to the veg shed, put the kettle on and go through my list of jobs for the day.

Maybe I can find a beginner’s course on how to handle sheep, enlist some help to re-net the fruit cage and dig the rabbit fence, or even plan a few good canine walks.  

I wonder where the best place for a sheep shelter is?

Surfacing

I am sitting sheltered from the wind in the entrance of a small two-man tent looking down across a hillside topped with line after line of dark brooding conifers. Beneath them, catching the afternoon light, is a fringe of ash, rubbing shoulders with sycamore and field maple. And below them threads a line of quivering silver birch.

At the bottom of the valley lies Ladybower Reservoir, its sunken village and church hidden beneath sunlit silver-grey water that ripples with the breeze. Above, the sun plays games with the shifting clouds, lighting patches of moorland across the mountains in the distance.

I am in Derbyshire for five days. Time out, with the soft murmur of the trees behind me and the rustle of the tent around me and total peace and quiet reaching out with long fingers in all directions. Around the tent purple-whiskered thistles push up through long, dry, brown stalks of grass and tiny pale blue harebells nod in time to the wind. There is a cup of tea beside me and a book lies face down on the dusty earth waiting to be picked up again. I ignore it and just sit and look. I close my eyes for a second and listen to the mewing of a buzzard lost somewhere in the blue of the sky and the grey of the clouds. As he spirals upwards I catch sight of him lifting above the mountains, riding the thermals into endless blue. Up and up and up.

This pilgrimage to Derbyshire at the beginning of August is becoming a habit. This is the fourth year in a row I have stayed here at the top of Hope Valley, taking time out and gradually surfacing from the two busiest months of the year on the smallholding. June and July are manic as every gardener knows. As you turn the calendar over into August things begin to ease off; the sowing and planting are over and the weeding and hoeing become less imperative, and harvesting what you have grown becomes part of a routine.  

Every year is the same but different. This has been an amazing summer, shrink wrapped in heat, with endless blue skies, and not a drop of rain for two months. Holiday weather; weather to lie back and enjoy on a beach, asleep in a hammock in the garden or on a gentle walk through a woodland. Not weather for farmers, smallholders or growers.

It has been totally full on. Hard work, moments of despair when I have wondered why I do this smallholding thing, wonderful moments, moments of anxiety, sadness, and joy.

I need to share these:

Definitely hard work: Spring was long, late, wet and cold and I found myself a month behind trying to get things into the ground. Then at the beginning of June it stopped raining and as temperatures soared the ground dried out and plants struggled to survive despite long hours spent watering. Everything has need extra coaxing, extra care.

Despair: during the long, wet lead up to summer I watched as slugs and snails munched their way through seedlings, demolished struggling brassica; devouring everything green; except the weeds of course. As I re-sowed they came back for seconds.

Couldn’t we come to some sort of arrangement? Eat the weeds, not the crops and I will be extra specially careful that I don’t step on you as you slither around at night on your silvered trail.

Heat drove the molluscs into hiding. The snails found deep, dark cervices between pots and paving slabs and sealed up their shells to conserve moisture. The slugs, slunk off into the undergrowth. But then came the cabbage white butterflies; white, delicate, beautiful, with amazing striped caterpillars which are capable of annihilating a row of cabbages or sprouts, in hours.

After that it was the rabbits that infiltrated my rabbit proof allotment.

But the final straw came when the fruit cage fell apart. It has always been essential for protecting strawberries, raspberries, red, white and black currants from the birds. As holes appeared in the netting, inviting in a variety of feathered friends, it quickly became apparent that old age and the heat had taken their toll. Blackbirds, thrushes, dunnocks and a single black cap took advantage of the gap in defences and feasted on the fruit.

Wonderful Moments; there have been so many.

Waking to an ear shattering dawn chorus camping in the Wye Valley on a stolen weekend.

Bivouacking beside the Adur, lying on my back looking up at a clear, dark sky hung with millions of tiny worlds long since dead. Falling asleep to wake at first light, and sitting with a cup of tea in hand, watching a barn owl hunt along the misty edge of the river bank.

Sharing our bedroom with an elephant hawk moth.

Watching a rare stag beetle flying at dusk.  

Shutting up the ducks as large bats (too big for pipistrelles) winged their way across my bottom field.

Sitting on our patio, glass of wine in hand, listening to the night, surrounded by darkness and the warmth of a summer’s evening.

Lying in a hammock looking up at the trees stretching into the night sky.

Anxiety: sitting beside a sick pig on a hot, sweltering afternoon willing him not to die after the vet had left having administered anti-biotics for an unknown infection. What had I done wrong? Had I missed earlier signs of illness. Was I fit to keep livestock? How did I get fond of a pig I mean to eat?! Everything going around in my head.

Sadness: The sudden death of an old friend. A lovely human being who will be sorely missed.

Then one evening at dusk, as a chill rose from the grass, I walked over the field to shut up the ducks and chickens and stopped to listen. On the evening air came the sound of ewes calling for their lambs. It drifted down the valley from a neighbouring farm and hung around me; sad, plaintive, persistent and I knew the lambs had just been separated from their mothers. The ewes had called through the sticky heat of the day for their loss and they would call into the dark stillness of the night.

Wrapped in the sound was all the sadness of our planet. All the damage we have done to this earth we live on. We have taken away its wild places, stolen its forests, denuded its resources, caused mass extinctions of its animals, polluted its rivers, seas, and air and now we are changing its climate. And we cannot see what we do.

The spectre of climate change has stalked this summer. Record temperatures have been set and then reset. Farmers, those producing our food, have struggled as grazing has dried up, corn yields have crashed, crops have suffered. The countryside is parched and wildlife has had a hard time of it as well. Reservoirs like Lady Bower are seriously depleted. There have been fires. The effects go on and on and this may be only just the beginning.

I looked around me at the brown dried out field I was standing in and prayed for rain.

Then there were moments of Joy: returning in the evening to the pig to see him on his feet coming to the gate for food. A miracle.

You need to hang onto these moments………. like sitting outside a tent at the top of Hope Valley, listening to a buzzard and watching shadows shifting over distance moorland. Surfacing from everyday life, and gathering strength to go back and carry on with it.

Dawn Chorus

5^th May. 4.30am. Dawn. Soft grey, grainy light has slipped into the room through the window pushing the darkness into the corners. Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, a bird breaks the silence of the early morning. A blackbird. Maybe the one that sings from the apple tree at the end of the garden.

I turn over, squint at the clock and hurriedly switch off the alarm. As I shuffle out of the bedroom I ask myself whose stupid idea it was to get up at this ridiculous hour to go on a dawn chorus walk. I could have listened to the bird’s wake-up call lying in bed, cocooned in a warm comfortable duvet.  ‘You booked it’ replied a tiny voice inside my head. No answer to that.

Filled with toast and tea, binoculars and notebook in rucksack I set off. It is the perfect morning to be up early; a chill rising from the ground, the sun lifting into a clear, pale blue sky etched with soft white contrails. And everywhere it is green.

After long months of wet and cold, with a false start in April that sent everyone rummaging for sun cream and shorts, followed by more miserable cold and wet, spring has finally spilled out across the fields, along the hedgerows and through the woods. The lane is laced with waist high white umbels of Cow Parsley, elephant-eared leaves of burdock and the tiny mauve flowers of Herb Robert. Gone are the glossy dark green leaves and yellow splashes of celandines. They have been shouldered out by clumps of Garlic Mustard, (or Jack by the Hedge) with its small white flowers and spicy green leaves. The Hawthorn has finally broken and the Sycamore is shedding its pale green florets across the tarmac. The Horse Chestnut at the bottom of the hill is covered in creamy white panicles each made up of tiny, white, five petalled flowers with deep lipstick pink centres quivering in the gentle early morning breeze.

Early May is the perfect time to meet up to enjoy the dawn chorus. Bird song is at its height because it is the breeding season. We might pause, hold our breath and listen to a blackbird pouring out its song from the top of a tree as daylight fades, amazed at the beauty of the sound but birdsong is purely functional as far as the birds are concerned. It is all to do with sex. The strident song of a wren hidden in a thicket of brambles is a come and get me call to catch that soul mate we all look for. The liquid sound of a nightingale late in the evening is a lure designed to attract migrating females passing overhead. The robin sitting on the fence, singing its heart out as daylight breaks is warning possible competition to stay out of his territory. In May sexual activity hots up and so does the bird song. By June most birds have paired up and the serious business of rearing young takes priority and nights out on the town looking for that perfect partner have become a thing of the past.

I arrive a little late (as usual). The group has already gathered at the edge of the village where fields open out westwards and the Downs sweep up towards the sky to the south. A dozen of us; all carrying binoculars and well wrapped up. After introductions and the inevitable safety talk we set off along a gravelled road dubbed ‘Nightingale Lane’ into the hushed stillness of the morning.

On our left runs an overgrown thicket of Hawthorn, Blackthorn and Elder with Willow, Sycamore, and Ash rising behind. The sun has lifted above the tree line and is picking out the new green growth of the hedge. Behind it lies a mill pond, overgrown with reeds and hidden from view.

We pause to listen to a Chiffchaff repeating its name followed by a trill. I am looking for a small grey, brown bird with paler underparts but cannot see it flitting around amongst the leaves. Migrants, they arrive here in April from the Mediterranean. To the right of the Chiffchaff our guide Andrew picks up the wheezing sound of Green Finches as they dart through the trees. They form loose colonies for nesting. Safety in numbers? We pick up the song of a Chaffinch practising its musical scales. Someone once told me to remember the Chaffinch’s song by imagining a bowler working up to pitch a ball and for me that works.

And then comes one of my favourite bird songs and I see him! A Blackcap performing his rich musical repertoire; just for me. Another migrant which arrives in April. He has a black skull cap, she wears a blue. A Song Thrush competes, repeating the same tune, not once, not twice but three times to make sure we have got it! There are wrens hidden deep inside the hedgerow singing against each other.

Finally, the lane lives up to its name and the warbling, bubbling sound of a Nightingale pours out into the still morning air. Their numbers are declining, mainly due to the loss and degradation of their coppiced woodland but there are other factors involved which we are uncertain about including an increase in the number of deer grazing on the vegetation they need.

At the end of the lane, a gate opens out into a wide grassy valley with steep sides where if you look carefully you will find cowslips and Early Purple Orchids growing alongside each other. There are Skylarks rising and falling and singing around us. We climb and behind us the Weald yawns and stretches out his arms and turning around we can see forever. In the distance lies the smudge of the North Downs. Below us are fields, hedges, woods, churches, farms, villages wrapped in the soft cellophane light of a spring morning.

As we climb, the sun climbs and warms our faces. We are surrounded by open country dotted with clumps of brambles and thorn bushes. Here there are Whitethroat with their raspy song as they take off and dart from one clump of brambles to another. Linnets flit from bush to bush. Someone spots a Yellow Hammer, and we stop to listen to the ‘chink, chink’ of its call.

Almost at the top of the hill, a pause for breath and in the clear blue sky is a Buzzard, up early. This one has not waited for the air to warm so he can use the thermals to lift into the sky. We leave him and as we plunge into the shade of the woodland that runs along the top of these Downs a Green Woodpecker yaffles across the valley. Amongst the trees Andrew picks up the call of a Stock Dove. Often in pairs they nest in holes in trees. Finally, he pauses to listen to the song of a Gold Crest, too high up in the branches to see and too high pitched for me to hear.

Sadly, we begin our walk back. Down from the hills, through the valley, along Nightingale Lane and back to the village. Back to noise and cars and people. Back to reality.