The Weaver of Grass

Kindle or Books?

2012-01-28T03:46:00.000-08:00

There has been an argument over which is going to win for some time now. Kindle enthusiasts say there is no contest, those of us who love the feel, the small, the weight of the book say we will never give up. Now I see that this year 'the bookcase' is set to become a new best seller in the furniture shop. So it looks as though ' you pays your money and you takes your choice.'

I have just spent a week clearing out my study and disposing of all my embroidery books and materials because I know I am not going to use them again. I am pleased to say that most of them have gone to a very enthusiastic new home.

Now I look to my books as maybe the next thing I should make a start on. If I were to suddenly 'pop my clogs' as they say, some poor sod would have to go through all my books and decide what to do with them.

But when I look at them I know that I really can't do without them. They are an integral part of who I am. You will see that I have three book cases. I did think of tidying them up well before I took the photographs (taken five minutes ago) but then I remembered my policy of always presenting myself as myself on this blog - what you see and read is what I am - so here you see them in all their glorious messiness.

The top shelf of one bookcase is all poetry books. In the last week three friends have given me poetry books they don't want any more. As I have nowhere to put them they are stuffed into the top of the poetry shelf awaiting sorting. Would you believe, when I first purchased that bookcase about a year ago, I filed my poetry books in Alphabetical order by poet?

The other bookshelves, which are an integral part of the room (an old-fashioned cupboard with the doors taken off) contain a lot of travel books and mostly art books which belonged to my previous husband, who was a painter. I think maybe I could get rid of some of them, as I rarely look at them. But then, suddenly, I am talking about a particular artist's work to someone and I reach up and get a book down and we look at his work. So I know I can't part with those either.

My third set of bookshelves is in the kitchen. The top shelf is mainly reference books, because it is here - in my armchair - that I tend to do my crosswords/sudokus/word puzzles etc. Below that are two shelves of cookery books which I use so regularly that they are tatty (not helped by the fact that Tess, when a puppy, chewed the backs of one or two (well maybe three or four).

How could I possibly get all that lot on Kindle? I have a friend who travels to London regularly and Kindle is ideal for his reading material on the journey. Me? I prefer the good old fashioned book. I could do with another bookcase, but there is nowhere to put it and I dare not raise the subject with the farmer. Have a good weekend.

The Vagiaries of our English Weather.

2012-01-27T01:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, after lunch, Tess and I set off for our walk in brilliant sunshine. Our lane has a high hedge on one side and luckily the wind was blowing from the South West, so we were completely sheltered. It was like walking on an early Spring day.

People often dump garden rubbish on our lane. While this can be unsightly and annoying, it does eventually rot down and it does have the occasional 'perk' like these lovely snowdrops which are growing up through last year's detritus.

The fields were bathed in sunshine and the sun was quite warm on our backs as we trundled along as far as the beck, which you will see is pretty full. Then we turned for home and even with the wind facing us, it was still quite warm and sunny.

We came in. I took off my boots, hat and anorak and we came into the warm kitchen. I looked out of the kitchen window and it was snowing heavily! It was only a shower and soon the sun was out again but by tea time it was sleeting and was a perfectly horrible end to the day.

I know it is only January, but the trouble is that a bit of sunshine, a clear sky in the morning so that one realises the days are getting longer, a lovely patch of aconites or snowdrops, and I tend to think that Spring is here. I have to keep reminding myself that February is still to come.

There was a time when we used to say 'February fill-dyke' but in recent years there have been some very dry Februarys. Who knows what it has in store for us this year. The farmer is hoping for a dry one as our fertiliser is coming this afternoon and at present the ground is far too 'claggy' for it to be spread. The fertiliser we have is called 20:10:10: although quite what that means I have no idea. I shall try and catch its delivery this afternoon and make some enquiries. Watch this space.

'Night Mail'

2012-01-26T01:39:00.000-08:00

'This is the night mail crossing the border,
bringing the cheque and the postal order.....'

Auden's poem is still exciting to listen to, with its rhythm of the train diddle-de-dotting over the rails and the men and women sorting through the mail as it goes over the border into Scotland ready for delivery the next morning. Someone read it at our Poetry afternoon. It is a lovely poem to read out, with its fantastic rhythm.

Is it just my age or does everyone wish they still received 'ordinary' letters? Yes, e mails are superb with their instant queries and instant replies. If I wish to know whether my niece can come to stay I can e mail her with dates and get a reply within five minutes. But nothing quite replaces that feeling of excitement when the plop on the mat means a letter.

You pick up the letter, you recognise the handwriting, you put the letter to one side until coffee time, make a coffee, get a biscuit, sit down and savour several pages of news from a friend or relation.

Cheques are almost extinct, I think Postal Orders already are. I don't expect there is even a night mail train any more. Does anyone know whether there is or not?

My mail has just this moment arrived, so I shall go and pick it up and review it for you.
1. A letter about a Cancer Campaign in my area. This is marked 'For Private Business use only. Recorded correspondence. I have a charity which I support each Christmas. One year it was cancer research, so every few weeks I get a letter asking for more. I am afraid this does not encourage me to give them my support.
2. A letter from my Private Health Insurance company. This is the third letter that I have received saying exactly the same thing. I can only assume they have me three times on their data base.
3. A third letter from the same source for the farmer.
4. A letter from the tax office for the farmer (I know where it is from from the back of the envelope, I don't open his mail!)
5. A letter from my bank confirming a standing order - which had already been confirmed verbally.
6. One unsolicited catalogue for silk flowers. (Often there are half a dozen such catalogues)

Of those letters only two are even necessary. Assuming this is the kind of thing delivered to most households, one wonders at the senseless number of trees felled to make the paper used,

I know we cannot stop progress but how I would love to get just one letter to sit and open over my coffee. I might even break my keeping weight off rule and have a biscuit as well.

St Paul's Day.

2012-01-25T03:22:00.000-08:00

Today is St Paul's Day here in the UK. Did you know that? Neither did I until I read my Times this mor ning. But if I had lived in any part of Europe in medieval times I would have been very aware of it.

In fact there were processions in London in the sixteenth century: "And then the King with my lord cardinal, came to St Paul's, and heard masse, and went home again; and at night great bonfires were made throughout London, for the joy of the people." (Chronicle of the Greyfriars of London 1555)

Interesting stuff - of course I realise that in those days the majority of the population did work on the land, so the folklore prediction that
"If St Paul's Day be faire and clear,
It doth betide a happy year.
If blustery winds do blow aloft,
Then wars will trouble our realm full oft;
and if it chance to snow or rain
Then will be dear all sorts of grain." was listened to avidly.

On that prediction today is fine as the snow and fog of yesterday has gone and it is like a Spring day here with warm sunshine. So it remains to be seen whether we have a happy year.

The farmer doesn't quite go to those lengths in his belief in folklore - but he does still look at the sky for signs of tomorrow's weather and he does quote "as the days lengthen the storms strengthen" at this time of the year.

I suppose weather is uppermost in every farmer's mind. At present it is the state of the ground. After yesterday's sleet and snow the ground is now too wet to spread the manure, so that is building up in the midden again (amazing how quickly it grows). We have a load of fertiliser ordered. This needs spreading when the ground is damp but not too wet and hopefully when showers are forecast so that it is quickly washed in.

Daft sheep climb on walls and break them down - they need building up again but the ground needs to be firm enough to get the tractor and bucket of stones near enough to make the job as easy as possible.

There may not be so many working on the land these days (most of the farms round here are one-man-bands - just a few have one part-time helper) but the weather and the forecast for the weeks ahead is just as important as it ever was.

And we all look out for signs that spring is just around the corner. All our snowdrops are fully out now - a few crocus are showing their yellow flowers (sparrows go mad for them unfortunately) and I for one am determind to look on the bright side.

It is our poetry afternoon today - so must get choosing my selection.

Tenpting Fate.

2012-01-24T06:37:00.000-08:00

I should have known that it was tempting fate to put a piece on yesterday about Spring, snowdrops and aconites. Overnight the sky was clear and full of stars. The Northern Lights were visible almost down to where we live and the position for seeing them is even better if there is a clear sky tonight. But this morning it was a very different story.

The temperature was below freezing, it was snowing, and once I got up on to the top road out of the village towards the Supermarket (my regular Tuesday morning trip) there was also thick fog. I almost chickened out and came back home, but instead I took it steady and once I began to come down again into the Car Park it cleared and the temperature rose to minus one.

I had then arranged an important engagement with my friend G. In twelve weeks my dear God-daughter is getting married and I am to 'give her away'. This, of course, entails best bib and tucker wear. I have the dress (kindly lent to me by another friend J) but need a hat. Instead of a full-blown hat I am having a fascinator made by a milliner. (Men can stop reading today's post here!). I have been slightly worried as at first fitting I felt I looked silly in it. In fact, whenever I see anyone wearing a fascinator I think they look silly in it.

However, today at second fitting I was much happier about it - it was comfy and did not look too ridiculous - in fact I am getting rather fond of it. The event will be here in no time at all and I am really looking forward to the big day. You will all be informed of how it went in due course.

On the return journey we stopped at The Station cafe for a Croque Monsieur - toasted cheese, ham and mustard sandwich with a side salad and a shared basket of french fries - together with a sparkling elderflower drink.

By the time I got home the weather had improved tremendously and there is even a lightening of the sky in the South. Of course we are all hoping for clear skies again tonight. It is so rare to see the Northern Lights this far down the country - it would be wonderful to see them.

From Winter to Spring.

2012-01-23T03:12:00.000-08:00

I am having a major clean-out of my study. I have decided to do no more machine embroidery and am giving the stuff out to make a bit of money for the local Air Ambulance, who were so good to me when I needed them. In the process I have found so many things I had forgotten about.

One of them was a writing exercise that we did at our local Writers' Group several years ago, when we had to write a piece on each season of the year in no more than fifty words.

Reading through them a few minutes ago I thought how apt they were for this time of the year. Alright, Winter still has a long way to go and there can be very cruel weather in February. Locals are quick to remind us that one of the worst Winters ever up here didn't start until the beginning of February.

But reading my Winter and Spring pieces together, does give one a feeling that Spring is not so far away. It is also possible to view it as a metaphor for life (particularly if, in may case you read them the other way round!)

Winter.

Bushes are heavy with berries - red haws, orange hips, purple-black sloes. They shine damply in the morning light. Fieldfares, a thousand, fly in and settle on the branches. By evening the berries are gone. Next morning the bushes are bare and black. The fieldfares have gone. Winter has come.

Spring.

A celandine under the hedge; a marsh-marigold on the beck side; aconites in the garden; a primrose in the wood; a daffodil by the side of the road; pollen on the pussy-willow; the sun shining weakly through thin cloud. All yellow. All the colour of Spring.

Have you ever tried doing a piece in fifty words? For someone as verbose as me it is jolly hard - do have a go. I would have been hard-pressed with the Spring one without the semi-colon.

Great Chieftan of the Pudding Race.

2012-01-22T01:22:00.000-08:00

Yes, Burns' Night has come round again - well it will on January 25th but last night was the nearest Saturday night so, as we do every year, kind friends invite us round for a celebratory 'Burns' Night for the English'. It is always a lovely, relaxed evening in good company.

We are all getting older - many of those there are now in their eighties - but often we don't meet between one year and the next. Our friends lay tables in various parts of their bungalow and we choose a table, collect our meal from our hostess, serving in the kitchen, and then we just have a lovely chatty evening with lots of laughs. What could be better?

Yours truly does not eat haggis although it is always on the menu. Well, to be truthful I have never tried it, but I don't care for offal so presume I wouldn't care for haggis. Interesting how every country has some cheap filling dish which dates back to when times were hard and which fills us up nicely. In Scotland it was the haggis, made with offal and oatmeal basically; in the North of England it was the steamed suet pudding and/or the Yorkshire Pudding.

When I ate my first meal at the farmer's table his parents were still alive and his mother invited me to Sunday lunch (i think to look me over and see what she thought!). The meal started with a plate of Yorkshire Pudding and onion gravy. I said something to the effect of it being interesting having the pudding on its own rather than with the meat and the famer's father replied, "You're in Yorkshire Now!"

I suppose pasta takes the same role in Italy. When you think about it, all these things are made with basically the same ingredients but put together differently (or as the late Eric Morecambe used to say "I am playing the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order!)

So - for any Scots reading this - Happy Burns Festivities. Eat all the haggis you like, but go easy on the whiskey.

A Pleasant Jolly.

2012-01-21T07:43:00.000-08:00

A jolly outing today with friend, G, to the small cathedral city of Ripon - a mere twenty five miles away. It is a blowy, stormy, sometimes-wet, sometimes-sunny day and quite cold with it and, as with all cathedrals, the wind really whistles round.

We had a look in a craft shop and then went for a cup of coffee in a lovely little coffee shop, of which there are a lot. I guess that in Winter these shops find it hard to make a living. In Summer, when there are plenty of tourists abouts these cafes will be full - in Winter they are empty.

We came back round by Fountains Abbey - a lovely National Trust property - not to go round it but to call in the rather nice cafe for a bowl of soup. Then we came back by a different route (you never know with my friend G which way you are going to go - she is a wonderful wanderer!).

I took a few photographs of the lovely countryside through the windscreen of her vehicle on the return journey. I share them with you. Interestingly - at Fountains Abbey there is a huge car park and the path from the car park to the abbey cafe is lined with neatly cut hedges. Now that they are bare for Winter we saw that they were full of chaffinches' nests from last year. What opportunists these birds are. The hedge is near to the outside picnic area so they were willing to risk nesting close to where people were constantly walking past, so that they could go to the picnic tables and pick up the crumbs.

Enjoy my photographs of typical English countryside in January - lovely from inside a warm vehicle - rather less so if you are out in it.

The Sound of Silence.

2012-01-20T01:40:00.000-08:00

We are a quiet pair living as we do down a lane and away from even village life. Our neighbours are equally quiet - I am deaf anyway - so there is little to disturb our peace. If the owls are calling when the farmer goes out with Tess late at night he comes in, tells me to put my hearing aid back in - and I go out to listen. But that is a beautiful sound in a silent background. I suppose you could say that there is a difference between sound and noise, although where one ends and the other begins is possibly a matter of opinion.

Reading Ronald Blythe over my morning coffee this morning (oh thank you Ronald Blythe - how often you provide me with a blog topic) I was interested to read what he had to say about farms and the noise there used to be. I related this to our own farm.

The farmer is one of six children and they were brought up to help and to do their share of the work - the boys outside and the girls to help with the baking, the hens, the making of the butter and cheese etc. I have to say that they have grown up to be very capable indeed - they put me to shame. (When I first started 'going out' with the farmer (we have been married for nineteen years and married a few years after I retired from inner city teaching) his mother remarked that she could see from my hands that I had done little work!!

So I thought back to what sound/noise there would be on our farm in those early days. They worked the fields with two horses, who were stabled quite near the house; they reared turkeys for the Christmas table, again quite near the house as this was a job for the farmer's wife; they had a dairy herd and the milking parlour is only a short distance from the back door; there would be machinery, animals, children shouting and playing, buckets rattling, turkeys gobbling, the sounds of the butter churn. I suspect there was rarely silence.

Now all that has gone and usually there is silence here. The farmer does a few jobs around the fields - mending fences, cutting the grass for silage and hay, looking after sheep etc. but all a long way from the house and its environs. When he is indoors we chat, we read, we play Rummikub, we do jigsaw puzzles, we watch some television, we watch the birds outside the kitchen window, we do the gardens - both front flower garden and back veggie garden - but all these are quiet activities. I sometimes think that the house must wonder where all that sound has gone.

And even in the village it is quite rare to see children out playing and making a noise. I suppose they are in and sitting at their computers. When we were children we couldn't wait to get outside. At home we would play various complicated ball games even if we were alone - they entailed doing various moves with the ball against a ball (I think it was called something like 'seveners' - anybody remember it?), we would have a hop scotch chalked out on the ground, or we would go off down the river bank, collecting tadpoles to bring home in a jar, only to have the poor things die on us year after year (still, hope springs eternal), we would make dens in bushes and climb trees and often we would go off for the whole day with a picnic lunch.

Does this kind of thing still happen? Is there still the sound of childrens' voices in the countryside? Or do parents consider this kind of behaviour too dangerous these days? Is it so or do we imagine it so?

I am not saying I don't like the silence. I love it. But I wonder whether our old house feels the same.

War Horse.

2012-01-19T03:23:00.000-08:00

This morning Spring seems to have arrived. It is nine degrees, the sun in shining, the snowdrops are fully out and the bird table is inundated with cock blackbirds strutting their stuff while the hens sit on the privet hedge. Dangerous talk I know - snow next week I expect. Still we are hastening through January and that can't be bad.

I have been occupied trying to find hotels in Northumberland. It is a county neither of us know well and we rather fancy a week there in May. We have finally found one in Embleton which looks OK so have booked that. It will give the farmer a chance to see the Chillingham herd of wild cattle we hope.

Last night we went to see War Horse. I had read a lot about the making of the film - about the way the horses were treated and about the fact that all the props (barbed wire etc.) were made of soft rubber. Apparently the horses and their handlers had weeks together before the film started in the making, so that a trust built up.

What did I think of it? Well, I certainly did not need the tissues I took as everyone said it is a tear-jerker. Maybe that was because I had read about the film's making. For young people it would be a marvellous introduction to that absolutely awful First World War. I think Speilberg got it absolutely right - the mud, the rats, the inhumanity, the way the men were treated by the officers on the whole, the little touches of sanity in a world gone mad.

The farmer loved the pre-war part on the farms of the day - the auctions, the ploughing etc. The whole film was very watchable - slightly improbable but then so are most films and it did make for a lovely story. The boy and his horse riding home in the sunset after the end of the war was just a bit too sentimental for my taste but I did read that of the whole film, getting the horse, Joey, to hold his head still at the end and to look as though he was looking into the past, was the most difficulty part to shoot.

I can recommend it - not sure it is Oscar material but it was gripping and the time passed so quickly that we were amazed when the end came.

Why should it be so?

2012-01-17T11:22:00.000-08:00

A friend and I were discussing at the weekend why it should be that these days people look so much younger than they did fifty years ago.

At seventy my mother was an old lady. She wore old lady's clothes, she spent most of her days sitting in a chair dozing - maybe reading a little or knitting a little. She was always delighted to see callers and would chat happily but when they went she would always say they had tired her out.

This seemed to be the norm amongst the mothers of most of my friends.

Now most of my friends are over seventy. They all still drive. They all dress fashionably - some very much so. I met a friend on Friday morning who I have not seen for a year. She looked fabulous and I was astounded to hear that she is eighty next month. She was walking quickly down the market place - her only concession to 'old age' was her basket on wheels. My friends read books and discuss them, go to the cinema regularly, entertain - in other words they live life to the full. So what has happened to make this great difference?

I would be interested to hear your views. I have asked around my friends - they cite better food, better health care, better education, central heating, better mental attitude. I don't know what it is, but I do know that I certainly rarely feel my age and unless I get too close to the mirror I even manage to look younger than my age! So enlighten me all you 'young' oldies out there.

Miserable Monday.

2012-01-16T01:28:00.000-08:00

The photograph of daffodils on my kitchen table is supposed to cheer everyone up, as today is officially the most miserable day of the year ( along with next Monday also). Perhaps this will not be so today because although it is still minus four outside it is also white frost and bright sunshine - very beautiful in fact.

Spare a thought though for Alaska where they have so far had twenty six feet of snow this winter and where the heating oil has still not got through to the town of Nome.

Even worse spare a thought for those caught up in the awful cruise disaster - I bet it will put a lot of people off cruising for a while, although statistically it is still a very safe holiday. For anyone like me who really does not care for the sea the whole thing sounds like my worst nightmare.

The Times today tells of this day in 1368 when winds tore through Ireland and on into England - monasteries, houses, churches, trees, woods - all were destroyed. Norwich cathedral lost its wooden spire and St Albans Abbey was completely destroyed.

Even worse was the great storm that then occurred in the North Sea which flooded all that vast inland area almost below sea level (I come from that area so am aware how low it is in places). The posrt of Ravenser Odd at the mouth of the Humber Estuary was completely destroyed and many were drowned further inland.

In The Netherlands enormous waves swept in land and killed thousands of inhabitants - it was so bad that it took over fifty years for all the dykes to be repaired. All together an estimated thirty thousand people were killed.

So, if you live in the UK, enjoy today's sunshine - if you live elsewhere please make the most of miserable Monday - enjoy my daffodils and remember only ten weeks or so left to the first day of Spring.

Friends and allied matters.

2012-01-15T08:58:00.000-08:00

Friends are wonderful, aren't they? I don't know what I would do without their company. This morning I went to have coffee with one friend, J. She has a really lovely dog called Topsy, who has had such a troubled life and is now at last settling into a kind and loving home. Topsy doesn't accept me as a friend yet, but we are getting there. Anyway, we had a nice long chat before I came home to a warming casserole I had left in the oven.

After lunch and a quick baking of a batch of mince pies, another two friends came round for the afternoon and we had another long chat about all kinds of things. I can't think of a better way to spend a winter's afternoon.

I had really gone to town on an afternoon tea, using a table cloth I bought in Long Melford village when on holiday in the summer. The photograph above shows a little bit of the work that has gone into it. I find it so sad when cloths like this are abandoned to sale rooms. I found this pretty linen and crochet cloth - with crochet panels and a lot of drawn thread work - hanging on a rail in an antique shop. It was £40. Many years ago somebody lovingly crocheted this cloth = there does not appear to be a mistake in the work - and I wonder how a family could bear to part with it. I have a cloth which my uncle embroidered for my first wedding over fifty years ago. I hope that when I die my son, or even my grandchildren, will want to keep it as a fine example of his handwork. That such a cloth should end up in an antique shop seemed very sad to me - so I bought it. Did I need a new tablecloth - no, of course I didn't. But it now has a good home and I appreciate the workmanship that went into it.

So there you have it. A kind loving home for a maltreated dog; a kind, appreciative new home for a beautifully made tablecloth -

Now the sun sets on another frosty evening - a slight mist rises off the frozen ground. The curtains are all drawn, the stove is made up and glowing, Tess and the farmer have had their evening walk with Tip the sheep dog. Time to sign off until tomorrow. Night-night.

Panto

2012-01-14T04:30:00.000-08:00

'Jack and the Beanstalk' - it was like going back to my own childhood!

The Panto is held each year in the Methodist Hall in our little town. It is put on by the same dedicated bunch of people every year - for charity (this year, in memory of my dear friend, Joan Cairns) who was the pianist for years. The charity dear to Joan's heart was the Terence Higgins Trust (for people with AIDS and HIV) and this is the Panto's chosen charity this year.

Of course, as with all these things, 'amateur' was an understatement. But I remembered my own childhood when we had a concert party and we went round all the villages entertaining - long before the days of TV, when our viewing public did not have today's sophistication.

Nobody forgot their lines. There were one or two lovely singing voices in there and the chorus of little girls, who took it all so seriously, was absolutely lovely. Audience participation was huge - 'cheer up' every time one character came on stage; 'boo/hiss' every time the giant appeared;
lots of songs where we had to join in.

But the highlight for me was the little three year old girl who sat directly in front of me. She had absolutely no sophistication/ no expectations/just plain innocence. She took in every single word - shouting, clapping, singing and - when the big, bad giant appeared on stage she was so terrified that she sprang on to her mother's knee.

I went with my friends who meet for coffee in the Golden Lion on Friday mornings. We all sat together in one row and we had a good laugh. What more could you ask for? Then we came our to an icy cold clear night and a sky full of stars. Brilliant in all senses of the word.

Sorry no pictures but photography was forbidden.

A Good Day for catching up.

2012-01-13T06:01:00.000-08:00

Friday is always special here in the farming week as it is Auction Mart day. Although the farmer no longer buys and sells cattle, he still likes to go both to see what the prices are like and to catch up on local gossip!

I always go with him as it is also Market Day and I like to buy my fresh vegetables and fresh fish too. And a group of friends and I always meet for coffee in The Golden Lion and for a good old gossip. Tonight we are all going to the local amateur panto - Jack and the Beanstalk - together - I will report on that tomorrow.

But today it is a gloriously sunny day - still, perfect blue sky and dry underfoot. This is just the right sort of day for farming this time of the year as there are so many jobs to do which can't be done if the ground is wet. Principle amongst these is hedge-cutting.

Our hedges must be cut before the beginning of March so that when they come into leaf they can grow up quickly. Our hawthorn hedges house lots of nests, notably blackbirds and yellow hammers, and they need plenty of cover. Some of our hedges are never cut so that they have become small blackthorn, crab apple and hawthorn trees - these house birds too, so that we get a fair selection. In addition, of course, we also get ground-nesting birds like pheasant, partridge, curlew, oyster-catcher, snipe and woodcock (the last two only in the marshy areas). Nesting time will be upon us before we know where we are.

But, speaking of birds, as the farmer and I walked round the fields after lunch to stop and chat with Mike, our hedge-cutting man, we noticed a big flock of seagulls in the field. I hope you can see them in the picture - they are in the middle and slightly to the left - I couldn't get them any nearer than this in the photo. They always stand in exactly the same place - don't know why but the farmer thinks it might be a sheltered spot out of the wind and in the sun. Whatever the reason, they are often there. As we were talking to Mike a jet roared overhead and the seagulls rose into the air as one and took off towards the West.

Sorry about the sudden change to italics - don't know why it happened and can't see how to change it.

Clear January Days.

2012-01-12T10:14:00.000-08:00

The sky has been clear blue all day today and the wind has shifted round to the North, bringing with it much colder air. Tonight it is scheduled to be frosty and much more wintry. But one of the assets of that clear sky was that the sunset tonight was absolutely stupendous. The whole sky was suffused with a deep pink. Sadly, for some reason, my camera will not take such shots - I am sure it is not due to the camera - I just have not learned the knack! We shall certainly look out tonight for the Aurora Borealis - such a clear sky would give us such a lovely view of it if it arrives.

Today has been a day with lots of visitors. I love days like that, when lovely conversations happen and lovely people call. Tess loves it too, especially as one special friend 'G' also brings with her Tess's two best friends - Milly and Jem - terrier cross and collie respectively. So G's arrival always means another walk.

Today Tess had a walk with the farmer and the farm dog at 8.15am, another with the farmer and me at 1.30pm, another with G and her two friends at 2.30pm and a final one with the farmer and the farm dog at 4.15pm. But more than that, she had what she always asks for (and always gets) - a mammoth cuddle from G. So here she is - resplendent in G's arms and enjoying every minute of it. That is one dog spoiled rotten I think you will agree.

A Winter Walk.

2012-01-10T06:57:00.000-08:00

Do you fancy coming with me on a winter's walk through the fields? The day is dull but not cold, sun now and again and a light breeze - so off we go.

Gateways are always muddy at this time of the year - I really don't know why as the fields are mainly empty other than sheep and they do not have a habit of congregating near the gates. But once Tess and I get through the gate and into the field proper, the ground is quite dry.

We walk down the hedge-side and come across a new rabbit hole. My goodness me, how clever those rabbits are - they always put their holes in sheltered and dry places. This one looks quite cosy don't you think?

The beck is very full and slow-flowing at present. Of course this is Sod's Law because in the summer, when our neighbouring farmer friend is crying out for water for his beast, the beck will be almost empty.

Here and there the wall has fallen down a little. Usually there is wire netting as well because sheep do love to jump on to walls - that is probably the reason there has been a bit of a fall in the picture. The stiles between our fields are quite narrow - this is also to stop the sheep moving from field to field but it does make for difficulty for anyone wide of the hips!

Every sloe and every holly and hawthorn bush has been stripped of berries. There is hardly a bird to be seen other than the odd cock blackbird skulking in the hedge-bottom and a small flock of starlings flashing overhead. Here and there there are a few crab apples left on the ground. The birds only eat these in emergencies as they are so very sour.

There is little colour in this landscape. Only the lichen on the stone walls give a golden glow. Coming as I do from the fenlands of Lincolnshire, I love the browns of winter - the bare earth, the bare trees, the lack of colour. John (Going Gently) on the other hand, years for the bright colours of summer.

John Clare, that poet of the Countryside, puts it better than I ever could, when he says,

"All is gone, and nothing but the grass
remembers Spring."

Oh yes, the grass is green as we make our way home, but it is a sad, dismal green - no new growth here - just the drooping blades of last year's grass. But what is this we see in the grass - an aconite! I knew Spring was only just round the corner.

Two in one today!

2012-01-09T06:17:00.000-08:00

First an up-to-date photograph of my rooster and his entourage - thought you would like to see him. Ever the opportunist (aren't all birds?) (maybe that should have been aren't all men??) he spotted immediately that the farm gate was open to allow our neighbour to collect a load of straw - he was through it like a flash and up to the bird table for a feast on the droppings of niger seed, sunflower hearts and the like. Still, I don't begrudge him his little outing - he is so lovely I could forgive him anything.

Now to today's real topic. It says in today's Yorkshire Post that there is the best chance over the next few weeks of seeing the Northern Lights. Admittedly it says the best chance is in Ireland but there is also a good chance in Scotland and the Northern counties of England. Between now and the equinox in March is the best time for years, so I shall be looking out every clear night. Those of you who live North of the Border (Titus and Rachel and Juliet spring to mind) will have an even better chance.

It is something I have always wished to see. Some years ago the farmer and I went on the Hurtigruten up the Norwegian coast to the Russian border at the time of the midnight sun. The photograph above is of the sun shining into Tromso cathedral at midnight, when it was literally as light as day. The alternative of course is to go in mid-winter, when it never gets properly light - then there is a chance of seeing the Northern lights. Sadly there is also a chance of meeting forty-foot waves in harbours like Batsfjord (where the harbour has been destroyed countless times in mid-winter). As I was seasick in a slight swell going over to the Lofoten Islands then I think I will give mid winter Northern light spotting ideas a miss. But I would dearly love to see them - so shall watch carefully. If anyone is lucky enough to see them please do report it in Blogland.

A Wintry Swaledale.

2012-01-08T09:01:00.000-08:00

This afternoon we felt like giving Tess a change of scene so we set off in the car into Swaledale in brilliant wintry sunshine for a walk at Grinton leadmines. Tess loves it there as there are so many exciting smells (it is a favourite dog-walking spot) but we never dare to let her off the long lead as the heather (it is on the grouse moor) is quite high and we think we would lose her in it.

Then we went on into the dale. A few weeks ago there was serious flooding here and so many of the stone walls are down. Good news for the stone wallers trade I suppose but bad news for the poor farmers who have to foot the bill - we had just a small piece of wall rebuilt last year and the cost was almost a thousand pounds.

I took a few photographs through the windscreen as we went along. The sun gradually disappeared and was replaced by heavy cloud and drizzly rain. When we crossed the Pennines at the Buttertubs Pass (the highest point) we were up in the cloud and it was quite scary.

Still, we enjoyed the drive out - me especially as I spent another night in hospital on Friday night - I had an attack just after bedtime - seems to be something to do with the balance of my inner ear and always occurs just after I lie down in bed. I was out again by lunchtime on Saturday but still feel a bit queasy.

It is nice to think we are getting well into January with fairly good weather (ie not cold) - each week brings us one week nearer the Spring. Today I have two crocus out and one clump of primroses in flower - can't be bad.

In Scarlet Town...........

2012-01-06T06:41:00.000-08:00

The hotel was as I remembered it. All I had requested when booking was that we had a room with a cathedral view in this city where I had spent my formative years. I was not disappointed. The West front of the cathedral filled the window of our room, the creaking floorboards gave away the age of the hotel and the smells from the kitchen promised an exquisite meal to come.

We didn't use the lift. I have a fear of enclosed spaces and prefer to use stairs. The stairs were old with many landings, each holding a piece of antique furniture. One landing held a particularly nice windsor chair, its seat gleaming with polish. On our way down we admired it and speculated how lovely it would look in our house.

Dinner surpassed expectations and we ended it with a drink at the bar before turning in early. We wanted a full day tomorrow to explore my childhood haunts. This time the chair was occupied. She was neatly dressed and sat crocheting, her work and a ball of brown wool on her knee as she worked. She didn't look up as we passed and I noticed she was humming a familiar tune - although I couldn't remember what it was.

The next evening she was there again. Her work was growing and the ball of wool was getting smaller. I almost spoke but as she was humming I thought it rude to interrupt.

It was one of the best holidays of our lives - seeing my old school, the cathedral with its nooks and crannies and the excellent hotel. She was there again on our last night and the wool ball was now very small. She was still humming and although I murmured
"Good evening,"
she didn't look up.

When we paid the bill I mentioned her at reception but they could throw no light on who she was, suggesting it might be one of the other guests taking advantage of the lovely chair and the shaft of late evening sun which fell on it at about that time of day.

My mother died a few years later. My sister and I were cleaning out the drawers in a sideboard and came across a piece of brown crochetwork and a tail end of brown wool.

I picked it up.
"Know anything about this?"

My sister is considerably older than me and she knew all about it. My mother's mother had been doing it the night before she died. She had complained that she was running out of wool and asked my mother to get her another ball.

My sister reminisced about old times:
"She was a lovely woman. Her favourite song was 'Barbara Allen' and she used to hum it all the time as she worked.

Writers' Group

2012-01-05T01:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the first meeting this year for our Writers' Group. We seem to be going from strength to strength, as we now have twelve members and almost all of them contribute each month.

We meet in The Golden Lion in our little town. There was a bright log fire blazing, the wall lights were on (we meet at 10am) and there was a cosy atmosphere. It costs us nothing to meet there except the cup of tea or coffee we all buy - and this is very welcome half way through the proceedings.

This month's topic was Open Manuscript and we had such interesting things - short stories, poems, humorous articles and parts of novels, and there was good discussion on each piece. I think this is due to our having a good strong chairwoman who really keeps things moving. It is so easy when listening to a piece of writing to go off at a tangent and say, "Oh I remember when such and such happened to me!"

Next month's topic is "A Ghost Story", which I find a bit daunting. But it is always good to have the imagination stretched and last night, thinking about it after I had gone to bed, I remembered how my mother always kept a piece of crochet that her mother had been doing when she died at the relatively early age of 58 and I thought of the bare bones of a story I could write around that. So watch this space - I might try it out in blogland first.

Guess who came to call?

2012-01-04T06:22:00.000-08:00

It is another wild and windy day. But, never daunted, the farmer set off round the fields with Tip and Tess at 8.15 this morning. No sooner had he got into the top pasture than he saw, across on the other side of the field, a fox slinking up the hedge. Neither of the dogs saw it, although their noses in the air suggested they might well have smelt it.

After walking through the fields, along the side of the beck and through a muddy patch, he started back up the far pasture and had only got a few hundred yards up the field when he saw the fox again. Strangely, it was coming towards him, had obviously seen him and did not seem in the least afraid.

This time Tess spotted it and went towards it, standing until they were almost nose to nose. Scared that the fox might attack her, the farmer clapped his hands and the fox turned tail and went off down the pasture, hotly pursued by Tess - obviously a fox hound in Border Terrier skin.

In all his years the farmer has never seen a 'brave' fox who was not both suspicious and scared of humans (let's face it, nothing else preys on them) and we cannot help speculating that this might be a 'pet' fox which has been released. We do sometimes get urban foxes which have been dumped in the countryside. My only hope is that he/she learns quickly that humans are not to be trusted and that fox hunts are best experienced from well down in one's earth - also of course that my hens are safe from a hungry fox!

Wild, wild, wild.

2012-01-03T08:26:00.000-08:00

It is a wild day today. The trees are bending and crashing in the wind. We go to the feed merchants over a very swollen River Ure and River Cover - carrying vast tree trunks with them as they cascade downstream. Trees are down everywhere. Where one has fallen across the road someone has already been with a chain saw and sawn the trunk into pieces. All is piled neatly by the side of the road.

Where a tree has been ripped up in the field it lies, its roots cruelly exposed, its limbs broken and scattered - a giant felled in an instant. A buzzard rips a rabbit apart and devours it in the middle of one field and along the side of the road a sparrow hawk darts, below hedge height; although whether to keep out of the wind or to chase a little bird it is impossible to say.

The sky is very beautiful. Layers of angry cloud, some black, some grey, some silvery-white, overlay one another and here and there bright rays of sunshine push through. We can see another hail storm passing down the dale and we run into a torrent as we arrive at the feed merchants.

Sheep huddle against stone walls, keeping well out of the force of the wind. The hail, when it comes, is sharp and cuts into the skin. At least we end up with rosy cheeks.

Now indoors with all animals fed and watered, hens shut in, curtains drawn, log burning stove glowing I write this and look out of the hall window in front of me to see the most magnificent sunset. The whole sky is pale apricot edged with black clouds. There is such beauty in this wild weather.

The First Sign.

2012-01-02T02:43:00.000-08:00

'Yes - I know Winter has only just begun - officially on December 21st - and there has just been a snowstorm here although the sun in shining again now, but stepping outside this morning I saw the first snowdrop. I just had to take a photograph of it - and it is a poor little thing. I was going to say 'a feeble little thing' but then I thought of these hardy little harbingers of the New Year and the way they push their spikes up through the hard, frosty ground to give us such joy and I hadn't the heart to call it feeble.

In the hedges around our fields the wild honeysuckle has begun to come into bud and the catkins on the alder trees are showing red. One week of relatively warm weather and the hazel catkins will be bursting forth. And all this at 700feet above sea level. And, of course, all kinds of growing is going on just below the surface of the ground.

I have to cling on to that through the weeks ahead to the end of February when the weather can throw anything at us. I also remind myself that on January 28th 1992 the weather was so warm that I wrote in my diary - 'sat in my shirt-sleeves on a tree stump in the field and did the Times crossword and ate an apple.'

The farmer has just brought down the box for the last of the decorations, so yippee - in five minutes time it will be goodbye tree for another year.

New Year's Day.

2012-01-01T11:09:00.000-08:00

Is anybody else ready to get 'back to normal' - to get the fridge cleaned out, the last remnants of the turkey disposed of, the last few slices of ham put in a sandwich, the cards down, the tree away and peace on earth? Or is it just me?

I have really enjoyed all our friends and relations coming - I have enjoyed cooking gargantuan meals - I love cooking; I have enjoyed the conversations and the fun. But by this morning, after sitting up to see the new year in with seven friends and family I have been pretty much good for nothing today. I crawled back to bed after breakfast and slept for another couple of hours and then have dozed on and off since, apart from one last hour's chat with my grand=daughter before she goes back tomorrow.

I think it does us all good to relax and take things easy and to chat with our friends and relations but there does come a time when I want to get back to normal three meals a day at the correct times. And that time has come.

So here is to 2012 starting the day after tomorrow (tomorrow is a Bank Holiday) when all the mundane, ordinary things like bills coming through the post, washing needing doing etc. take over again. Happy 2012 to you all.

A New Year.......

2011-12-31T09:13:00.000-08:00

......a new beginning. Well that is how it always seems anyway. Already the sun is beginning to creep back up and though there is little warmth in it, at least it has been shining today.

What do I want for 2012? Well World Peace would be wonderful - that the Arab Spring should be completed and that democracy would spread throughout the area. That people could stop being killed for demonstrating for what they believe in.

That women throughout the world could get a better deal. Countries like the Congo have a terrible record of unspeakable violence against women and there are many countries where women are still treated as possessions, where they are violated as a matter of course, where they have no free choice in any single area of their lives.

That there should be peace in Afghanistan. I have never agreed with our troops being there - I think it is a war we cannot possibly 'win' - the terrain itself means that locals can melt into the mountains and come out again at will, whether we are there or not. Another young man has been killed today - it has just been announced on the news - what a New Year present for his family.

Closer to home I hope that family and friends have a happy, healthy 2012 and that all my blogging friends have a wonderful New Year.

There will be nine at our New Year's Party tonight. The three dishes are ready to heat up in the Aga - fish pie; pheasant casserole; vegetarian shepherd's pie; the puds are made - trifle; pavlova with fresh pineapple and little chocolate pots topped with a dab of cream and a strawberry. All I have to do now is to put on the vegetables.

Incidentally - the farmer dismantled the Aga and cleaned it out - it was carbonned up. Now it is chugging away merrily and I love it again.

Here's to another year of blogging.

Larkin to Poets' Corner?

2011-12-29T10:24:00.000-08:00

I understand from today's Yorkshire Post that there is a move afoot to have Philip Larkin installed in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey alongside the likes of Tennyson, TS Eliot and Ted Hughes.
I think it is a splendid idea, I don't know about you.

Apparently Larkin was invited to be Poet Laureate in 1984. His health was not good and he felt that his best poetry was in the past. Also, as he disclosed to Betty, his secretary and lifelong friend, he didn't feel inclined to have to write poems about royal babies!

Of course Ted Hughes became the Laureate and this meant eventual installation in Poets' Corner. I think this amused Larkin somewhat as he remarked to his lifelong friend, Kingsley Amis, that he found it hard to live with being the cause of Ted Hughes ending up in Westminster Abbey.

Although he was born in Coventry, Hull is the place we always associate with Larkin because he spent the last thirty years of his life there, most of them as Librarian at the university of Hull.
He was given various honours in his lifetime (Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry; CBE; Companion of Honour) but anyone who has read his best poetry (try Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album from his book The Less Deceived) must surely agree that he should be there alongside the greats who go back to 1400 and Geoffrey Chaucer.

A Way with christmas Leftovers.

2011-12-28T09:50:00.000-08:00

I found the perfect way to get rid of all those unwanted Christmas leftovers today. My two grown up grandchildren came to see me (both at University and home for the holidays) and stayed for a scratch lunch. Everything came out and I included a dish of chips. Now all that is left can be a beanfeast for the hens tomorrow - then I can get ready for my New Year's Eve party.

Yesterday the Aga functioned perfectly and was back to normal. Today it is a very wild day with storms and down it has gone again, so the problem seems to be the wind. The farmer is going to switch it off and have a look if it needs a clean, so fingers crossed it will be back on and working properly when I need to cook pheasant casserole, fish pie and vegetarian shepherd's pie for Saturday night. I reason that the pheasant casserole can be cooked on the hob anyway and the other two can be fully prepared and if necessary cooked in my daughter in law's over at the last minute. Ah the problems of being the head cook and bottle-washer.

Have a good New Year.

Post Christmas

2011-12-27T02:52:00.000-08:00

Two m inor crises over the festive season. Dominic's hot water tank sprang a small leak - plumber coming today, so that has been resolved. My Aga, after cooking the turkey well, decided it needed a rest and went onto slow for the whole day. As I had nine people for lunch and seven for an evening buffet it was rather inconvenient - still we managed and today things are back to normal. One good thing, as far as the household cook is concerned, is that there are usually so many bits and pieces left to eat up that no cooking is needed for a day or two after Christmas. One things is for sure - I do not wish to see any turkey for a while.

Not much to write about today but I'll leave you with an amusing little story that my friend G has just told me on the telephone. A friend of hers, along with her family, decided to take the ashes of their beloved dog and scatter them in the Lake District. They are keen walkers and the dog loved that area. They set off up the fells and it was very windy - so windy that they did not go to the top. On the way down they met a lone man striding out towards the top of the fells and G's friend say Good morning and told him to be careful as it was very windy up there. It was only after they had passed that her husband said, "You do realise that you have just told Chris Bonnington to be careful up there!"

2011-12-25T01:40:00.000-08:00

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE from WEAVER, THE FARMER and TESS. See you all after Boxing Day.

A Strange Thing.

2011-12-24T06:28:00.000-08:00

Memory is a strange thing isn't it? We all take away different interpretations of past events which we shared with others. What looms large in one mind becomes forgotten by someone else; and even the same memory has differing interpretations.

Yet I really think that memory is the skill I would most hate to lose as I get older. Even on a day like today, when my walk with Tess included a struggle across the pasture where the force of the wind hit me full side on and nearly blew me over, I could come back home and sit by the fire and do the fantastic Guardian Christmas Crossword (well, try to) and toast my toes by the stove and indulge in the odd Christmas memory of Christmases past.

Do you keep a Christmas card list to jog your memory each year? I do and before I write the cards I have to go through and eliminate those who have passed away during the year, making sure the card is just addressed to the wife or the husband, rather than to both. And I always have to add one or two new names - people who have become friends during the year. It is always a triumph when I do not receive a single card from someone who has not already got one from me. But this year, three cards are missing as I put them all up on the wall.

The first missing card is from a dear sister in law - still alive at 90 but, sadly in an advanced stage of dementia, so that she no longer remembers me, or even in fact my brother (her husband). What fun we had together when we were younger. I have known her practically all of my life and was her bridesmaid at their wedding in 1941. Until she went into care last year I rang her every Saturday evening and we had a long chat. Alright, so she repeated herself all the time and told me the same story over and over again, but we could reminisce about the old times.

The second missing card is from a relative of my late husband. I spoke to her last Christmas, by telephone, and she seemed fine. Looking back perhaps I was deceived, perhaps some of her generalised comments could have meant anything.. But now she has reached the stage of being in care and not remembering.

And the last is a dear old friend from my musical days. What fun we had on musical weekends away - Durham University, Burton Manor on the Wirral, Theobald's Park in Hertfordshire - all those places where we met up and made music together. Now, after a series of small strokes, her memory is 'not what it was' and I think - does she remember anything of the past fun we all had together?

Babette Deutsch (who she anyone?) put it succinctly - if a bit depressingly - when she said:

'Old women sit, stiffly, mosaics of pain.....
Their memories: a heap of tumbling stones
once builded stronger than a city wall.'

So I shall sit and remember my childhood memories of wartime Christmases - especially one when my brother unexpectedly got home leave and turned up on Christmas eve to our delight.
And then there was the one when we performed a fantastic pantomime in the village hall in our little village and another when the snow was so deep and the ice so thick that we could go sledging on Christmas Day.

Memories of our son when he was so small and would come into our bed with his pillow case on Christmas morning and take all his presents out to look at.

There is a kind of magic to memories and especially to Christmas memories - and long may it remain so.

To finish today's post - a heartwarming story told yesterday by a friend who had given the little girl next door a bag of carrots and told her to put them at intervals down the path to the front gate so that when Santa and his reindeer passed the reindeers would get the scent of the carrots and come up her drive. No carrots out on our drive but I hope Santa calls nevertheless. A mince pie and a glass of sloe vodka will be left out just in case.

Mouse control.

2011-12-23T06:44:00.000-08:00

We have passed the winter solstice so the days are slowly beginning to lengthen. The farmer always says that local folklore says, 'as the days lengthen the storm strengthens.' Let's fervently hope that he is wrong.

Bats have gone into hibernation - although where on the farm they over-winter we have no idea. Each Spring they reappear in small numbers, so they must sleep the winter out somewhere near. Hedgehogs, on the other hand, tend to make for the hay barn and the warmth of a covering of sweet-smelling hay. There they stay until the weather warms up - and hopefully they have enough fat layers on them to survive.

But for owls this seems to be THE time of year. When the farmer takes his last walk with Tess at night our Scots pines are full of owl conversations. There are tawny owls in a barn across the field - they breed there every year and have done for years; there are barn owls close by. Our neighbour has a barn owl box in one of his barns and we know they brought off two babies last year, although whether they survived our cruel winter we don't know. What I do know is that if we drive up the lane in the dark, we almost always seen the barn owl's ghostly form gliding across the lane. As for little owls, we always have plenty of those around. They are diurnal to some extent and any time you care to walk down the yard and into the pasture you may well hear the alarm call of a little owl - usually in the same holly bush. And there are several fence posts which are favourite roosts. Last winter, in the cruelest weather, a little owl spent a large part of each day on a gate post watching out for any road kill to provide a meal.

They all make a rather melancholy sound - in fact Ronald Blythe tells us that Byron thought there was only one thing sadder than the call of an owl, and that was the phrase ' I told you so!'
Shakespeare called the owl 'the fatal bellman' in Macbeth. But, of course, their voices are not sad and doom-laden at all - they are the most communicative of birds. And to add to that the Tudor musician used to sing about them, saying: 'Thy note, that forth so freely rolls - with shrill command the mouse controls.

So spare a thought this Christmas for the poor little mouse - victim of owls and farm cats, of necessity searching in the hedge bottom for something tasty to eat rather than becoming something tasty to eat himself. Enjoy the run-up to Christmas day - and don't forget Carols from Kings tomorrow evening - my favourite programme of the whole Christmas on TV.

Christmas thoughts through the ages.

2011-12-22T06:51:00.001-08:00

I have been reading the thoughts of others on Christmas Day - they conjure up such lovely images I thought I would share some of them with you:-

The first is from the diary of Frances Kilvert in 1870:

Sunday - Christmas Day. As I lay awake praying in the early morning I thought I heard the sound of distant bells. It was an intense frost. I sat down in my bath upon a sheet of thick ice which broke in the middle into large pieces while sharp points and jagged edges stuck all around the sides of the tub like cheveux de frise, not particularly comforting to the naked thighs and loins.
I had to collect the floating pieces of ice and pile them on a chair before I could use the sponge.
The morning was most brilliant. I walked to Sunday school with Gibbins and the road sparkled with a million rainbows. The church was very cold in spite of two roaring fires.

(Sad that this lovely young man, with such an eye for the girls, died young - just as he was to embark upon a happy life).

Now from the diary of Daphne du Maurier when she was an old lady and lived at home alone in her house Menabilly:

It is so queer having no one down here for Christmas. I have not done my routine decorating, but have put all my cards around, and have lovely flowers everywhere, and an arrangement of holly on the centre table in the Long Room, and so it all looks very cheerful. If I thought about it too deeply, I might be rather sad, but I don't. I think the thing is always to look ahead in life and never look back; except in gratitude.

And finally from the diary of Stephen Spender, who was in Jerusalem for the Nativity. The year is 1974.

After dinner, to the Church of the Nativity, for Midnight Mass. The Church is large and bare, the Mass was intoned in Latin, with some dignity. The most beautiful part of the evening was after we left the service and walked back along the road the two miles to Rebecca's well, where our car was parked. We heard, from that distance across the valley dividing us from Bethlehem,
the voices from the Church still singing, which the cold night air seemed to purify of raggedness and wrong notes, so that coming from the hill above us, they seemed those of a heavenly choir.

I wonder how safe it is these days to walk those two miles in that terribly divided country.

Enjoy these few days before Christmas.

Last Poetry meeting of 2011

2011-12-21T10:33:00.000-08:00

It's silly, I know, but I am always sad to see the year drawing to a close. Last year at this time, still recovering from the shock of my illness, I was just very grateful to be alive. This year has been one of good health I am glad to say - and I am sad to see it go because of all the good times we have had.

One of the best of these has been our monthly Poetry meetings, when as a group of friends we meet in one another's houses to read our favourite poetry. Today it was my turn to host the event. The day turned out bright and mild, so road conditions were no problem, and there were eight of us sitting round the fire and reading our favourites - and what a selection.

The poems make us recall events in our lives, we reminisce, we discuss the poets, we laugh at poets like Wendy Cope and Brian Patten and we get that warm, cosy, Christmassy feeling when poems about Christmas are read. Christmas can be a sad time if you live alone, as quite a few of our members do, and I like to think that this coming together in friendship goes some way to overcoming this.

I really feel that the celebrations have started now, although after the Cookery Programmes on television tonight I shall probably be adding more things to my Boxing Day menu. At least the Cookery programmes give one food for thought (sorry about the pun) unlike the Perfume adverts which I think suggest to men that the sky's the limit if they buy a certain perfume for the woman in their life; closely followed by the adverts for jewelry - buy this necklace or that bracelet and you will pull some very glamorous twenty year old rather than the old dear you have been living with for the last twenty years. (I count myself in the latter, by the way!)

I think it is worth reminding ourselves as the jewelry adverts seem to take over the papers at this time of the year, that most of the words for items of jewelry (necklace, bracelet, ring, ear-ring etc.) have their origins in slavery.

And while we are on the subject of crazy things - a friend went into our local superstore, which is on the largest army garrison in Europe, to buy a CD of the wonderful Army Wives song destined to become number 1 at Christmas (fingers crossed), only to be told that they weren't stocking it as they were not a big enough store. Those women are inspirational to us all I think, and what better place to have it on sale than one where the women know all about what it is like to be here while their husbands, sons and brothers are fighting overseas.

It is nearly here.

2011-12-20T10:09:00.000-08:00

Does everyone do a lot a preparation and baking for Christmas or is it just me left doing all these things? When I tell friends I am icing cakes, baking pies, making biscuits etc., they tell me to take it easy and shop for them at Tesco.

I do still enjoy making Christmas cakes and have made five this year - two for us and three for presents. The same goes for Christmas puddings. I made a huge tin of mince pies but we had lots of lovely visitors at the weekend and the tin is now empty,, so it has been a mince pie baking day again today. I so enjoy being able to give friends who call in just a little home-made taste of Christmas.

Yesterday the farmer and I had sadly to go to a funeral of an old friend. When we came home we decided to get out the Christmas decorations and put them up, because tomorrow is our poetry meeting and it is here on the farm.

Now all the decorations are up, the tree is lit, the outside tree will be festooned by the farmer in the morning and everywhere smells lovely. This afternoon I have marzipanned two cakes ready for icing and decorated two more with fruit and a glaze. What I would do without Delia Smith's Christmas Cookery Book I cannot imagine.

Now I am going to go on line and see if I can find any Christmas poems to read tomorrow to get us all into the right mood for the celebrations. Enjoy the run up to Christmas.

An amusing little story.

2011-12-17T08:41:00.000-08:00

Not much time today, but a friend came for coffee this morning and told me this little story. Before she retired this friend worked for a well-known (nameless) high street store. Suddenly they kept getting complaints that all the crisps they sold were soft. They were puzzled until one day somebody noticed a little lad sitting on the crisp shelf with a pin and making each packet pop! Have a nice Saturday evening - and if you watch Strictly - settle down early for what should be a jolly good final, because I think these are the best three finalists we have ever had. My money is on Harry winning. We shall know later tonight.

A Jolly but chilly outing.

2011-12-16T11:10:00.000-08:00

We weren't sure whether to go or not. My friend W and I had arranged to meet our friends in Kirby Lonsdale, on the edge of Cumbria, for a Christmas lunch in a local Bistro. Whichever way we decided to go meant going either over or down the side of the Pennine Chain, along high and bleak ground. And there is snow lying on the tops. Earlier in the week the weather was awful - snow showers, icy roads, biting winds, and we decided not to go. Then yesterday two things made us change our minds. The first was that yesterday was a lovely still, sunny day - glorious for the time of year; the second was that the farmer suggested that it was hardly the road for two old women to be driving on at the time of the year! That decided us.

My friend was driving (she has a four-wheel-drive vehicle) and we are nothing if not intrepid. In fact it was a pleasant and easy journey. All the way there snow was lying - sometimes just on the tops, sometimes quite thickly on the sides of the road and when we came down to lower ground, to the edge of the Trough of Bowland, there had been four or five inches of snow overnight and all the parked cars were heavily covered in it.

But the roads were mainly dry and we had set out in plenty of time. Kirby Lonsdale is such a pretty little town and decorates so well for Christmas. I did intend to take photographs after our lunch but when we came out of the Bistro it was snowing, and our only thought was to get home before dark. (It takes one and a half hours to get there).

The journey home was in thick cloud, well down over the hills in places. But a lot of the snow had gone during the morning, when the sun had been out. It was an uneventful journey and we arrived home - two old, intrepid ladies, unfazed by a bit of snow and ice - just before dark.

And what of the lunch. Well, W and I had a 'share platter' - laid out on a slate. It was delicious and a splendid idea. A pork pie, cut in half; four triangles of cheese (two blue, two cheddar); a pot of dressed green salad; a pot of sun-dried tomatoes; several pots of olives; a pot of fried whitebait with lemon slices; a pot of hummous; smoked salmon, serano ham, thinly sliced beef; white and brown chunky bread and a pot of butter. I shall certainly try something similar over the Christmas holiday if the occasion arises.

Anyway - for what it is worth - here are a few photographs I took through the car windscreen as we bowled along. As you will see, Ingleborough was - as usual - in cloud. But I think you will also agree that the Ribblehead viaduct in bright sunshine is a lovely photograph.

How do you approach Christmas?

2011-12-15T10:20:00.000-08:00

Assuming that you love Christmas, like I do, then how do you approach it? Some people seem to leave everything until the last minute - present buying, baking, planning, decorating, writing the cards, posting them at the last minute. Some people like it that way - I have friends who say that that is the best way to do it.

I am not like that. I like to start everything well in advance otherwise I get flustered and don't enjoy anything. I am a maker of copious lists and I start early - possible presents, possible food, possible guests. Dare I tell you that I even buy my second class stamps twenty at a time over the space of five weeks, so that I hardly miss the money!

Some people put up their decorations and their tree without doing all that much cleaning beforehand, arguing that as the tree will be dropping its needles everywhere and on the morning there will be wrapping paper everywhere, the big clean up should be after Christmas.

I am not like that. Pre-Christmas is the one time of the year when all the drawers get cleaned out, napkins get washed and put in their proper place, tables and my best pieces of furniture get a polish with 'proper' polish rather than the spray stuff and silver and brass get cleaned.

And only when all that is done do I think of putting up the decorations and putting round the cards. Last jobs include writing the menus (most food is already in the freezer or at least ordered) and a few days before I shall check that I have done all the shopping.

I hope this does not sound 'holier than thou' - it is not meant to - it is just that it is the only way I can keep my head above water throughout the Christmas season. And enjoy it.

One of the things I have polished today is the original brass from the last working farm horse on our farm. It hangs on our kitchen wall - I love it. The farmer well remembers it - they got their first Fergie tractor in 1948, when he was five.

Blogging world.

2011-12-13T08:02:00.001-08:00

I could, of course, be making up the whole thing about my age, where I live, what kind of life I lead etc., for blogland does give one the opportunity to do this. And if we were to do so then we would probably get away with it - unless, like me, bloggers who live fairly near, or who are passing through, are welcome to call in and often do.

But it is an interesting thought, isn't it? We present our lives for all to read in such a way that it can be interpreted however you like. I can even write about the lane being muddy or icy, and if I do it in a fairly poetic way then it sounds wonderful. And if the wood burner is stoked up for evening, as it is now on this very stormy day; if the curtains are drawn across, the whole house is smelling of freshly baked mince pies; if the farmer is in from feeding up for the night and has his slippers on - then all does seem to be right with the world. In other words, every blogger can make his or her world sound marvellous if he/she so wishes.

It's a thought.

On the home front I have indeed baked my first lot of mince pies today. Pastry is not my strong point so this year I am making three lots, each using a different method and ingredients and the farmer is acting as guinea-pig having one for tea each night and passing his verdict. The rest of the batch will then be frozen for use when callers arrive around Christmas - they are easily heated up in the oven and are ready in five minutes. It is also true than the baker can almost get away with murder if the said pies are warm and the warmth covers a multitude of bad pastry making sins. He is a very willing guinea pig - I monitor his cake and pastry eating carefully so to be offered some is a treat indeed.

Just in case you are beginning to wonder whether I am making up my persona on my blog - I walked back through the front garden after my walk with Tess at lunch time. The sum total of 'flowers' out in my garden is shown in the photos above - and I have to admit they are pretty pathetic - but we British are nothing if not hardy. By golly we often have to be - and that applies to the plants in our gardens too. Have a nice evening.

Magpies

2011-12-12T07:28:00.001-08:00

I cannot help having a soft spot for the magpie. He is such a very smart bird, always turning up as though he is in full evening dress, whatever time of day he arrives. On top of that he has such a bright eye and such an intelligent look.

I do know the downside - he steals other birds' eggs and even snatches and eats their babies from the nest if he gets half a chance. The farmer hates magpies and this year, when we had two pairs lurking around the bird table, he cursed them cruelly.

Now that the leaves have left the trees I can see why we had two pairs visiting us, for within a few yards of each other, along the lane, are two magpies' nests. Birds are clever in that they build in such a position that their nests are hard to find. Then the leaves fall and many of them are there for all to see.

I wouldn't have seen either nest but yesterday the farmer pointed them out to me and what clever nests they are. All my bird books speak of the magpie building 'a domed nest' but the farmer put it much better when he said they always put a roof on their nest - to protect the babies from predators and from the sun and to keep off the worst of the rain. I always knew they were clever.

Food, glorious food.

2011-12-11T01:30:00.001-08:00

This time of the year we need 'hearty' food to keep us warm - well that's my excuse anyway.
So yesterday, while the farmer was out shooting, I made a pan of really hearty soup. It was a new recipe - from January's issue of Country Living magazine, which came this week. Obviously, I can't give you the recipe as that would be breaking copyright but I can tell you that it had mixed diced vegetables, snipped bacon, stock, borlotti beans and savoy cabbage thinly sliced. By the time the farmer came in at half past three, the kitchen smelt delicious and after he had walked the dogs we had a bowl full each and it did live up to its promise. Luckily I had a parmesan rind in my cheese box in the fridge and I added that - it is always worth doing as it gives soup such a lovely flavour.

There is some left for today but we are having stuffed rolled breast of lamb slow-cooked in the oven, so I have decided to drain off the liquid from the remaining soup and add it to the gravy and then heat the 'soup' that is left and serve the lamb on a bed of it. And yes - I have been watching Master Chef The Professionals last week, so this aims to be my go at 'fine dining' - time will tell and I will keep you informed!

At last my pullets (born, if you remember, in mid-June) have started to lay eggs. Yesterday saw the first offering - you will see its size from the photograph of it sitting by a 'proper' egg. Pretty tiny I think you will agree - but it is the first offering and I thank them for it. That is six months almost to the day since they were born and they have had to be fed all that time, so you will see that hens are never profitable to keep these days - it is just that I love to see them about the place and I love those golden yolks as they scratch about the fields and eat the grass. Also it is lovely to be able to give special friends some eggs when they call.

Speaking of friends - one of them has died this week. He was 91 and has been in poor health for some time, but I have been thinking back to the time when we used to have nice picnics on another friend's lawn (remember those times M?) - the death of a friend leaves a gap in ones life whatever their age is.

Keep warm.

Cruel weather.

2011-12-10T05:33:00.001-08:00

It looks deceptively pleasant outside; the sun in shining and the wind has almost died down. As the farmer is out shooting today I had no option but to take Tess for her after-lunch walk. I do like to do this anyway but if the weather is particularly foul I do chicken out and let the farmer take her.

Well wrapped-up we sallied forth. As we closed the back door a fine sleet began to fall and the sun popped behind a cloud for a little rest. As we reached the end of the drive I realised that that gentle breeze was actually a cruel, cutting wind and as it came from the North West it was making a brisk cut down the lane. This was not actually noticeable until I turned round to come home and it was directly in my face. I'll tell you this for nothing - it certainly made me walk more quickly!

Now home again, I must say I feel much better for that walk both mentally and physically - in fact I feel almost saintly.

As usual several pheasants are wandering about under our trees - hope they stay there to escape from the guns. There are also a dozen cock blackbirds at the bird table - they only come in when the weather is really cold, preferring to scratch about in the hedge bottom for most of their food. Outside the gate the cotoneaster horizontalis is still laden with tiny red bead-like berries. The blackbirds love these but seem to leave them until quite late in the Winter, then descend and eat the lot in a day.

Yesterday we went to our feed merchants and I was hoping for photographs of some of the flood damage but on the whole it had disappeared without trace. Both the Ure and the Cover had been over the day before but as you will see from my photographs, although they are full, they are certainly no longer in flood.

What did make me laugh was that as we passed a spot where our local beck had flooded the water had gone but the wild ducks had taken it over and were having a whale of a time wallowing, paddling up and down and making such a racket. There are still some Limousine cattle in the same field - they wered ignoring the ducks and getting on with eating.

I say they are wild ducks, but this is something of a misnomer. They are bred for shooting and wander about the fields in huge numbers and are very slow to take off and fly. As long as they stay on the ground or on the water they are safe from the guns. If I could I would go down there before the shooting season starts to give them a few lessons.

The photograph across the fields was taken to show you the barn where the shooters would be having their lunch as I walked (the farmer was having pork and chutney slice, cheese sandwiches, crisps and a banana; a flask of coffee had just a smidgin of whisky in it - last time I overdid the whisky and he had a job to get back home after the shooting finished!!)

The barn they use for lunch is the second highest - almost in the centre of the shot and almost hidden by trees. In there they sit on straw bales and discuss the local gossip! No high-flown putting the world to rights with this lot - euro crisis or no euro crisis. Keep warm.

Storm

2011-12-09T01:09:00.000-08:00

There has been very severe stormy weather here. Yesterday the wind was storm force almost all day, apart from a short lull in the afternoon, when I nipped into our little town to go to the Post Office.
Trees are down, rivers are in flood and branches are down everywhere. There is at least one bridge that has been swept away and in today's paper there are reports of various people being rescued from cars trapped in flood water. A friend was at her embroidery class when the Police came in to warn them that it was becoming dangerous outside and that if they lived in Wensleydale they should get home now before it got any worse. The schools were already closed and these things are always so much more scary once it gets dark.
This morning the weather is quite benign - a slight breeze and sunshine, but we have moors to the North and East of us and both are covered in snow. Pen Hill - to our West - is white over and is sparkling spectacularly in the morning sunshine.
No doubt by now the worst of the flooding will have passed. It is the combination of rain/snow and high Westerly winds that makes it so much worse up here. And, of course, while we survey the damage the poor folk of Boroughbridge and York, lower down the country, bear the full brunt of the water as the Rivers Swale and Ure join the Ouse to make one very large river. So they will be bracing themselves.
Keep warm.

More horrible weather.

2011-12-07T07:11:00.000-08:00

When the farmer took the dogs round the fields this morning at 8.15 (as he does every morning) he set off in bright sunshine. By the time he got half way round it was absolutely dreadful. I have never seen such weather conditions. The sky was black and an angry red sun was pushing through on the horizon; the sleet was horizontal and the wind was howling. Man and dogs sheltered until the worst was over. The farmer said that there was a fantastic rainbow against the black sky. I'll take his word for it!

It has been our Writers' Group meeting this morning and what a splendid meeting it was. Twelve people turned up in spite of the weather. We meet in the Golden Lion where it is snug and warm. We have coffee (and this morning they brought samples of their new menu too for us to try). This month's topic was 'A Childhood Memory' and it was so interesting. For a start our ages spread from 80 up to early 20's so the memories covered a lot of ground. Each memory triggered off other memories in all of us. There were memories of sea journeys, games on the sand, special rooms in grandparents' houses, climbing trees, childhood games - all kind of things. We managed to stick to the rules more or less - i.e. to discuss the construction of the piece rather than talk about the memory itself. I got such a lot out of the morning - I am sure others did too.

This 'trigger' thing is important I think - for that is where we get our ideas. At the Poetry launch I went to the other evening the poet said she got her ideas from various triggers - sentences in the newspaper, phrases on the TV News, things she heard in the street. If we want our writing to improve (and don't we all?) then I think we have to learn to be particularly sensitive to this idea - would you agree?

At present what the farmer would call a 'Glishy Sun' is shining - that sort of sun usually lasts only a few minutes and then there is another downpour. Guess who is taking the dog for her evening walk???

Winter arrives.

2011-12-06T07:39:00.000-08:00

It did not feel safe driving to Tesco for my weekly shopping today, so the farmer kindly volunteered to take me there. This means that I was able to take one or two photographs on the way back, so that you get a taste of what life is like this week in the Dales.

The photographs were all taken on the return journey. The top photograph shows Arkengarthdale in the far distance. There is much more snow up there because, of course, it is much higher than we are here. The next shot shows our Dale and the fields. There are sheep out - they easily find the grass through the covering of snow (they are also fed with sheep pellets although quite often at this time of the year they don't bother to eat them. The rooks love them!)
The third photograph shows the top road into our village. This is an old turnpike road - the Richmond to Lancaster Turnpike Road of long ago. It was along this road that the old cattle drovers used to drive the herds of cattle. The farm in the photograph - it straddles the road, the house one side and the buildings the other - is called 'Halfpenny House' from the days when the drovers paid to keep their cattle there overnight and have them fed and watered. The final photograph is of our village in the snow
The temperature has not risen above four degrees all day and now that the sun has gone down it is already freezing again, so the roads will become skating rinks. In the past three days there have been three accidents at the top of our lane - luckily no-one hurt but three cars completely written off. If you are in an icy, snowy area - take care.

Snow!

2011-12-05T13:40:00.001-08:00

It has snowed here in the Dales for much of today - heavy snow showers. It is bitterly cold with a biting North wind and all the cock blackbirds in the area have gathered at our bird table (always a sign that it has turned cold).
This bad weather has coincided with a visit from my 25 year old grand-daughter, so we shut ourselves in the room with the wood burner and enjoyed a lovely long chat. Bliss. I so rarely see her that it was a great joy as it always seems as though she has never been away.
Now she has gone back on the train - her father came to take her to the station - I have switched on the electric blanket - the farmer is making the Ovaltine and Horlicks and in 5 minutes time we shall be snug and warm for the night. Night-night - sleep tight to all of you - and keep warm.

Weather and plenty of it!

2011-12-04T06:36:00.000-08:00

We have been 'up the dale', as we do every year at Christmas, to a farming Christmas dinner (no calling it lunch round here!!) in Hawes. All these rosy-cheeked farmers and their families - lots of children with equally rosy cheeks and with plates piled high with food- no standing on ceremony - just good plain food and a lovely atmosphere.

This year, for the first time, it was a carvery. Roast turkey, cranberries, stuffing, potatoes three ways, roast parsnips, mashed swede, carrots, sprouts, red cabbage and good, wholesome gravy.
Plus Yorkshire puddings, although I did give them a miss. I have to say that it was delicious. To follow there was Christmas pudding and rum sauce. Could I manage that - well - in for a penny in for a pound, so yes, I had that too, followed by coffee and mints. The mince pies we brought home in a paper napkin because that was just a bridge too far.

On our way there the snow clouds were gathering over the fells (not a spectacularly good photograph but it gives you the general idea). When we came out I was seriously in need of a sharp walk before driving back, so we walked the half mile or so to the Wensleydale Creamery - the real home of Wensleydale cheese of Wallace and Grommit fame. There were lots of people there - eating in the restaurant, walking round the shop, eating in the coffee bar - it is always a popular place.

The half mile walk back to the car was a race against the snow clouds which we nearly upon us. The farmer went on ahead (he walks more quickly than I do) and had the car open by the time I got there. On the way home (it is a mere 15 miles from door to door) we came through snow, sleet, hail, pouring rain and bright sunshine in turn. That is really the nature of Pennine weather I suppose but I was jolly pleased I had chosen to wear my new pure wool Scottish cardigan, bought for just such a day as this.

No more food for me today (at the moment it feels like no more food for a week, but I expect that feeling will go off).

A Book Launch.

2011-12-03T06:22:00.000-08:00

Castle HillLast evening I went with a friend to a Book Launch in our neighbouring town of Richmond. There is a tiny book shop called Castle Hill Bookshop and it was held there. Wine and nibbles, the poet herself there to chat to and to sign copies of her book.

The weather was awful - wet, cold and windy - and dark of course. But I must say her friends and the local literati did her proud. The shop was packed to the gunwales and there was a real buzz.

Her new book (she is an established author and poet) is called 'The Dancing Sailors' and after a while the poet (Ann Pilling) read from her collection. I loved the poems and it was interesting to hear the thinking behind them.

A jolly evening was had by all.

No blog today.

2011-12-02T06:43:00.000-08:00

Isn't it odd how blogland seems like family. I have been blogging with John Gray (Going Gently) for a long time and like other of my long-term blog friends - we seem to have become very close. It is therefore with great sadness that I read this morning that his dear brother has passed away - only hours after I mentioned his illness yesterday. I feel incredibly sad and feel as a mark of respect to his memory that I don't wish to blog today. Just to send love to John and the family.

Christmas cheer.

2011-12-01T11:16:00.000-08:00

Let's have a change of mood eh? Christmas is coming and the turkey's getting fat - so today my daughter-in-law and I paid a visit to our local nursery so that I could buy my Christmas plants. I do like to fill the house with plants over the next month.

I bought a poinsettia, a bowl of hyacinths just peeping through their mossy bed and two beautiful cyclamen - a pink one and a white one, They are so beautiful and it is a joy to walk round the greenhouses just to look at the cyclamen en masse, so I have attached a photograph of one row of cyclamen - there were many rows like this; and I have just been into the sitting room to take a photograph of my poinsettia. In addition, they made me up a lovely holly wreath for my late husband's grave - they didn't have one but made it up while I waited. We are so lucky to have such a good nursery in the area.

The two nurserymen who run it have been on the go for years - I have been going there for twenty years at least and of course, they have grown older as the nursery has too. They are always cheerful and always have a joke. This morning my daughter in law asked one of them how he was as he passed us. His reply? 'Well I think I must be alright because I woke up this morning!'

Another Christmas cake has just come out of the oven (number four). One of my cakes sat awkwardly in the tin and came out of the over with a slope on it! I decided we could eat it early, cut it in half and gave half to Dominic last night. (he is a fruit cake addict). After I had given it to him he suggested I could have instead iced it as a ski slope and found a model skier to put on the top. Good idea but too late as the knife had already been wielded.

Now the house has plants all over and everywhere smells of Christmas cake - what could be better to welcome in December? Light snow is forecast for the weekend in the Pennines and we go out on Sunday for our first Christmas dinner. So, to finish the rhyme I started with...
Please put a penny in the old man's hat! (in other words let us all remember that it is a time for giving and there are so many charities that need our support). I try to choose a charity each Christmas and this year I have decided it will be the Motor Neurone charity - of all the blogs I read the one I consistently enjoy is that of John Gray - Going Gently - and it is a charity dear to his heart.

Follow on from yesterday.

2011-11-30T01:01:00.000-08:00

It was a local who was the perpetrator of the attack on the 84 year old, and they have already caught her. The old lady is out of hospital too.

I think reading Dominic's reply, that I must have given a totally wrong impression of what I felt yesterday. Of course - having worked with disturbed, socially deprived and less-able children for most of my working life - I know only too well what goes on behind closed doors in any community; I also know that town or country makes absolutely no difference to that. Our local paper is full each week of cases of petty crime, domestic violence etc.

This is what I was trying to get across - and I don't expect Dominic or anyone else of his age or younger to really understand. However much you think you know about old age, however well-prepared you think you are for it, until it hits you you have no idea what it is like. You feel exactly the same inside, you have the same thoughts and aspirations, if you are sensible you either don't look too closely in the mirror or, if you do, you accept the wrinkles and think of them as 'lines of experience'. But what is most difficult to accept is that physically you are weaker. Knees are usually arthritic, you don't walk as quickly, you are totally unable to defend yourself. Anyone over 75 will know that carrying a shopping bag, opening one's purse to pay for something in a shop, putting the change back into the purse and putting your purchases into your shopping
bag is a major operation. This is what makes the attack seem so unsettling - and has nothing whatsoever to do with Conan Doyle's remarks, which I am sure were as true then as they are today.
The fact that they have quickly found the perpetrator has cleared the air. I have two old friends of 87 - both steam round the town every day - their sticks tapping on the pavement. One has just lost her husband of 60 years; when I gave her a hug and said I was sorry the other day she said 'I'm not the first person it has happened to.' The other one still works in a charity shop one morning a week although she lives in sheltered accommodation. When I saw her last week and asked her how she was and how she passed her time, she said, 'I don't let myself get down, if I begin to feel miserable I just muck a cupboard out!' But both are frail and if it had been them I don't know whether either of them would have survived and if they had they would have taken a while to get their spirit back.
I had no intention of suggesting that the 'dark shadow of decay' had arrived and I agree about stupid fast drivers and Health Service cuts - all very valid points. All I am saying is that I shall definitely be holding on to my handbag a little more carefully in the future and I shall certainly not walk down the one or two lonely little cut-through alleys in the town. I shall stay firmly where there are people about and continue to meet my ageing friends (and my young ones too) but that maybe I shall be a bit wiser about it all. Hopefully the ripples created have settled quickly but I am sure there are a few ageing ladies who are feeling just a little undermined at present and we must allow them that feeling.

A Sad Day.

2011-11-29T06:56:00.000-08:00

Our little market town is very small. Everybody knows everybody and the difficulty of shopping there is that every other footstep you take you meet someone you know and stop for a chat. We have always said how lucky we are to live in such a crime-free area. Admittedly there are burglaries and farm thefts galore but still we have always felt safe in the town. In fact, my son roars with laughter when I say that I am 'going into town' as it is such a tiny place it is little more than a village. It is often like stepping back in time and everything is peaceful. Until yesterday, that is.

Yesterday in broad daylight, at around ten oclock in the morning, an elderly lady of 84 was attacked in the town's toilets and she was hit over the head with a hammer four times and her handbag and stick were stolen. Later the handbag and stick were recovered, minus the money of course. What somehow makes the mugging much worse is that the perpetrator was a middle aged woman.

I'm sure that anyone who lives in a large town and is reading this will be thinking 'welcome to the real world' - but I think most of us up here did think that maybe we had escaped it. It is obviously not so, and I for one am greatly saddened.

I am still waiting to hear which elderly lady it was who was attacked. For many years I was President of the local Womens' Institute and although I came out of it when I married the farmer eighteen years ago, I am familiar with most elderly local ladies and I really do not wish it to be any of them - or anyone else for that matter.

Sad day indeed.

Scrimshank.

2011-11-27T06:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, I was just preparing to bake another Christmas cake, when my daughter in law rang to see if I would like to go to a Craft and Food Christmas Fair at The Station, Richmond.
Readers of my blog will know how much I enjoy going there anyway and I am never one to turn down an invitation to go out rather than do a job at home.

As usual there was a terrific 'buzz' there. Children were eagerly waiting to go into the cinema to see The Sleeping Beauty; the stalls were all busy with browsers and buyers. There were hot mince pies, ginger wine, cheeses, game and other meats, handmade soaps, jewelry, preserves, sweets and much more. We had a wander round. I bought two bottles of the excellent Glendale Ginger Wine. Then we had a cup of coffee in the restaurant.

One stall was selling 5 bird roasts for Christmas - very Victorian I thought - the birds being pigeon, mallard, pheasant, chicken and turkey - each one stuffed inside the other, finishing with the turkey. They looked appetising but I am afraid I could not eat pigeon, mallard or pheasant =- I prefer to see all three wandering loose in the fields.

And so I arrived home too late to make a Christmas cake. It also made me think of that 19th century word 'scrimshank' which meant doing anything to evade work. I knew I had written a poem about that too, so I searched through and found it. So here today is another of my poems:-

Scrimshank.

The dust lies thick
where the sun falls:
but it also falls
on the apple blossom
on the old tree
by the window.
I touch the blossom,
smell the Spring
and watch the bees
(those models of work and efficiency)
and the dust lies thick.

The weeds grow fast
in the garden -
groundsel, chickweed,
fat hen and the
ubiquitous dandelion.
I bend and touch the
yellow flowers.
I cannot destroy
a hundred suns.

Someone should clean
the windows.
The sun shows up
the smears.
But there is a
gossamer web and a
busy spider -
I cannot disturb
her work.

We are out of milk,
and butter,
and bread.
But the road to
the shop has
stupendous views of the
Vale of York.
The sun is hazy and a
faint mist rises
and the trees are etched
in charcoal.

I stop
and sit
and look.
The jobs can be done
tomorrow
or the next day
or the next.....

Enjoy your weekend.

2011-11-26T06:07:00.000-08:00

The first batch of ladies have arrived.

2011-11-26T05:57:00.000-08:00

They came this morning, walking over the three fields between our farms and so gratefully coming into the barn full of fresh, clean, sweet-smelling straw. They have already settled in - as you will see. Some of them are nibbling at the silage but most are lying down taking a well-earned rest after their walk. After all - they are all pregnant so need to take a rest now and again.

The farmer is off shooting with the syndicate today. Tess and I walked up the lane after lunch, accompanied by the black cat who succeeded in almost tripping me up on the return journey in the way that cats do when they want milk. I just happened to notice this lovely little beech tree on the lane. It is the only left with reluctant leaves still hanging on it and shining in the sunshine. Everywhere else is now bare and leafless. It is a year today since we had that really heavy snowfall and winter came with a vengeance. So far no hint of similar weather this year thank goodness.

The run-up to Christmas phase two.

2011-11-25T06:40:00.001-08:00

The Christmas puddings are made, cooled, re-wrapped and put in a cool place for storage. Now for the Christmas cakes. I always make four or five - some as presents and usually two for us.

I have just put the first one into the oven and it is one for us and one I have not made for a few years - a tropical fruit cake. It has pineapple, papaya, melon, mango, cherries, orange and lemon peels, sultanas, ground almonds, crystallised ginger and lots of Highland Park whisky in it. As I write it is cooking in the Aga, so keep fingers crossed that it comes out well. I shall not ice it, but add a topping of glazed nuts and cherries. If the fiinished cake looks reasonable I shall post a photograph to this blog tonight, to go with the one of the mixture in the bowl above.

Anyone having a Thanksgiving Day - have a wonderful day.

A Journey

2011-11-24T11:18:00.000-08:00

Today I have driven over to meet my god-daughter for lunch in Sedbergh. I love this journey and I have taken you with me on the drive through Wensleydale many times.

One of the interesting things about living in the Pennines is that the weather can change in just a few miles. It was a lovely sunny day here and it remained so all the way (it is thirty miles) but within five miles of leaving home it was obvious that there had been torrential rain overnight. The roads were swimming with water, the water was cascading down the hillsides and the river was full to overflowing. We had had no rain here.

Sadly I drove past a dead badger on the road. It is always sad to see such a beautiful animal killed by a car. Road kill is a fact of life up here - pheasants, rabbits, even the occasional hare I am afraid to say and now and then a roe deer, but it is a long time since I saw a badger.

I allowed myself an extra half hour to look round Westwood's Bookshop in Sedbergh one of the best second hand bookshops in the country and one of the most comprehensive. I managed to find an Iris Murdoch which my son has not read so that can go in his stocking for Christmas (if you are reading this Dominic, skip this paragraph).

Then, so that I got home well before dark (I am not good at driving in the dark), I set off to come back home. I stopped just long enough to get you a shot of the beautiful Howgills looking in quite a sombre mood, but livened up by a few shots of sunlight. And that brings me quite neatly into another of my poems. There is a hill near home called Scarth Nick and the view from there is spectacular. This is a poem I wrote about it:-

The View from Scarth Nick.

A spotlight shines
on Friesian cows
and, for an instant,
they are
Prima Donnas
holding centre stage.
Then a cloud
switches off the light.

A golden poplar,
lit from the side,
gets a starring role before
the light goes out.

There are bit players,
the barns,
the sheep,
the sometimes sparkling water
of the beck,
a red car that - for a split second-
catches the sunlight.

But for today
the cows
and the tree
are the stars.
Tomorrow will be
a different play.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T10:57:00.001-08:00

Very busy today - out for coffee with American friends over here for a few days and then out for a Poetry afternoon. As usual, we had a good, eclectic mix of poetry -RS Thomas,Betjamen, Tennyson, TS Eliot, DH Lawrence - to name but a few. I read some new poetry from the book I had for my birthday - An Anthology of New Poetry published by Carcanet. It is the most civilised afternoon and I always come home feeling refreshed.

But this does all mean that I have had little or no opportunity for find a blogging subject - so the blog today is to wish all my American blogging friends a very happy Thanksgiving Day tomorrow. May you all have a wonderful time with your families and friends and delicious food to eat - and may it be the start of a good year for you all.

My wonderful farmer.

2011-11-22T10:33:00.000-08:00

Today has been a really busy day - Tesco this morning, as usual on a Tuesday. Then out for coffee this morning to friends in Richmond - a lovely chat and a chance to meet (albeit just a peep round the corner at the top of the stairs!) their new Bengal cat. Friends after lunch and then the washing out of the fridge and the putting away of the food.

Tomorrow will see the first of my Christmas cakes being made - I make a series for various friends and relations. The first one tomorrow will be a cake full of glace fruits - pineapple, ginger, mango, apricot etc. I had forgotten about it until I came across the recipe in my book and found I made it last in 2005 - so tomorrow it will be resurrected.

So, that means there has been no time to think of a blog for today. But - as you so enjoyed my poem of yesterday I thought I would post another one today. Before I post it I will tell you a little story (although I do know that any poem which needs an explanation is by its very nature a bad poem).

When the farmer and I first met, twenty years ago, I was a widow and he was a bachelor farmer who farmed and lived near to where I lived. The local footpath went through his land and each day I would take my dear little pug Algy (now long gone to that lovely pug heaven in the sky) across these fields on our walk. Often I would meet the farmer and we would have a chat - usually about something to do with the bird life, or the wild flowers, or the stock in the fields.
Eventually we began our 'courtship' and I would still walk and we would meet and talk. Sometimes he would be busy elsewhere and I would not see him. But so that he knew I had been round the fields I would leave him a message. I would gather some wild flowers, wrap them in grass and hang them on the electric fence wire, where I knew he would find them when he fetched the cows in to milk. Here is the poem:-

Message on a Wire.

There is a stillness in your field.
Not a silence -
(for the mistle thrush sings
on the topmost bough
of the hawthorn).
(And the beck finds its voice
as it slips over the stones
in the South eadow).
But a stillness
from long ago,
when the grass was first sown
and peppered with wild flowers
in their season.

One day in July
that still ness would be broken.
The grass would be mown,
tossed, dried in the sun,
smelt and carted away to the stack.
Then the stillness would return.

Men who care for fields
feel that stillness,
soak it into their bones,
become that stillness,
protected, cocooned
within the confines of their walls.

I walked across your field today.
I could leave you a message
on your answer-phone.
Or I could leave
two buttercups,a herb robert
and a cuckoo flower, tied
with a strand of grass and
hanging on the wire.

Either way and you will know.

The Hotel Awaits.

2011-11-21T10:47:00.000-08:00

Any day now the ladies-in-waiting are due to arrive. Their accommodation is ready - good clean, sweet-smelling straw, clean, filled water trough. They were due to come on Saturday but never arrived, so we must await their coming.

The ladies-in-waiting are twenty-seven in-calf heifers. I look forward to their coming. It will be nice to have the yard filled with curious faces again when I go to get the car out of the garage.

A friend has asked me to fill a notebook with my poems for her to keep. Since I have been taking my drugs (it is a year today since I was ill, incidentally) I do not seem able to do anything creative. But it was interesting reading through them. Most have been posted on my site before, but a long time ago. So I thought I would leave one for you today.

This one was written for the farmer. Hope you like it:

'A Man of Few Words.'

No smile
or word of greeting;
just a raised forefinger
on the steering wheel.

No word of praise
or complaint;
just tacit acceptance.

No eulogies,
no promise of undying love;
just the cuckoo-flower,
the hazel nuts,
the subtle tail feather of the grey partridge,
brought in the afternoon
and given with few words,
but saying more
than any gaudy bunch of roses.

Christmas begins.

2011-11-19T08:02:00.000-08:00

I have never understood why people buy their ready-made Christmas Puddings. They are so easy to make (thanks to Saint Delia), take no time at all and fill the house with the spicy smells of Christmas. A mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, rum, stout, barley wine, oranges and lemons sneaks into every corner of every room, so that you suddenly catch a whiff unawares.

I suppose having an Aga makes the cooking easy though - they just go in overnight tomorrow night in the bottom oven and cook away all night. When I think back to my childhood, the kitchen used to be full of steam as each pudding had its ten hour steaming - so perhaps that is why people buy rather than make!

Another lovely day here after a foggy start, but now - at 4pm - the cold is coming down and the fog closing in again. I have just lit the stove and the hearth is piled with sweet smelling logs - so that is another smell to tickle the senses and spread the message that Christmas is coming.

Tomorrow anyone who calls will stir the pudding mixture for good luck - because tomorrow is Stir-Up Sunday. All have a metaphorical stir please - it will bring you good luck for the whole year I hope.

Autumn Quiet

2011-11-18T06:25:00.000-08:00

Walking up the lane after lunch today I was struck by the quiet. It is a still day; all the leaves are stripped from the trees; all that is left in the fields - apart from the odd one or two hardy heifers still out - is sheep and at this time of the year they make little or no noise.

In the bare hedgerows birds flit in and out - maybe a little flock of long-tailed tits working the bushes and twittering between themselves; maybe a cock blackbird sending out his alarm call at our approach. But of the rooks there is no sign today.

A cock pheasant, set up by Tess, flies off into the field with his alarm call. Then silence descends once more. Yesterday, as I drove out of the drive into the lane, fourteen cock pheasants in solemn procession stalked up the lane, followed by two or three hen followers. They stopped when they saw my car. I wasn't away long and as I stood preparing lunch in the kitchen window they stalked down the drive, picked away at debris under the bird table and then wandered off again.

Coming back from our walk Tess's tail began to wag and I knew that she had heard one of the farm cats sitting in the hedge waiting for our return. Sure enough, as we reached him, Blackie marched out in front of us, tail in the air, trying to trip me up, making sure I got the message that he wanted some milk. He knows I am a soft touch.

Our cotoneaster horizontalis is covered in small, beady red berries - they look to me just ripe for the picking. But - like the berries on the top of the holly bush - they will not go yet. They always seem to be left until there is a really cold spell, when they disappear overnight.

Muntjac

2011-11-17T00:56:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I went to Ripon for my hair appointment. Coming back down our lane at lunch time, suddenly a muntjac loped across the road in front of me. It came out of a piece of scrub land, crossed the lane and went into the field on the other side. I didn't stop to get a good look at it. I was quite a few yards further on before I realised what I had seen (it is not uncommon to see roedeer) and by then it was too late, there was no sight of it.

I am absolutely sure it was a muntjac - although it is the first I have seen in the wild. It was smaller than the roe deer, a different colour and - most importantly - its front end was lower than its back end -i.e. it did not have the straight back of a roedeer. We do get roe deer in our fields quite often but this was something quite different.

Quite an exciting end to my morning out I would say.

Wuthering Heights

2011-11-16T06:23:00.000-08:00

Well, the farmer and I went to the cinema to see Wuthering Heights last evening. We are so lucky to have the Station Complex at Richmond, with its artisan shops, its delightful cafe and its two cinema screens, each seating one hundred people.

On Tuesdays there are three screenings on Screen 1 - one at 1.30pm for senior citizens (£4.50 entry), one at 5pm and another at 8 pm. We usually go to the 5pm screening, leaving home at 3.30 for the twenty minute drive, parking (not always easy), ordering a sandwich tea and two pots of tea and then sitting relaxing for an hour before wandering into the cinema. We did this yesterday and sat chatting to a most interesting man on the next table, so it was a really pleasant hour. When we got into the cinema there were only 17 people in the audience, but once the lights were out this didn't matter, except that the lady behind me spent a large part of the film trying to open sweet papers quietly about a yard from my hearing aid!

As to the film, well the jury is out. I am hoping that somebody who reads this has seen it, so that we can discuss it in a bit of detail. It is many years since I read the book and I purposely didn't read it again before last night, although of course I know the story - don't we all.

Although it is set on those bleak Yorkshire Moors above the Bronte village of Howarth, it was actually filmed in Upper Swaledale - quite near to where we live, so that the scenery was in many ways familiar territory.

Some things it got over very well - the primitiveness of existence up there, the cold and the mud in Winter, and - of course - the central 'love' story. But there was very little dialogue and an awful lot of shots showing bleak moorland, grey sky, branches tapping on windows, pouring rain and howling winds. Everyone seemed to be wet through and frozen most of the time and yet, miraculously, they would be dry inside moments later.

It has occupied my thinking a large part of today - perhaps that is a plus too, but really I don't think it was all that gripping. Anyone out there like to add a comment?

Busy weekends.

2011-11-14T10:54:00.000-08:00

It has been a busy weekend, which is the kind I like best really.

We have a rather pukka local auction house and every now and then they have a Catalogue Sale of really super items. The sale is later this week and yesterday was the first viewing day. It is always nice to go and have a look at the lovely jewelry, furniture, china, clocks ( about twenty grandfather clocks, two of them I think could be called great-grandfather clocks as they were enormous) etc. We had a good wander round, admiring so much of it - particularly the silver. But when we got home we decided that there was not a single thing that we would like to own - nice to look at but that's all.

Later in the day we had various visitors to eat up the cake I had baked for the tea party. I have to say that the chocolate fudge cake was delicious, but note to self - do not make it again, it is irresistable and fattening. A bad combination.

Today I went to our Station cafe and arts complex to look at an exhibition and to book for Wuthering Heights at the cinema. The Yorkshire Post newspaper gave it one star and said it was a very poor version; the Times gave it four stars and said it was excellent. I will tell you what I think after tomorrow night.

To finish on a bright note. How can something so scary and creepy crawly that we all dislike (OK I admit I dislike) produce a web in the privet outside my kitchen window that catches the dew drops in the early morning and manages to look like diamonds?

Sod's Law

2011-11-12T06:48:00.000-08:00

Another shooting day on our land today and after a complete week of greyity (yes, I know - I just invented the word) the sun has shone all day, just as it did on the last shoot. Quite a lot of the pheasants have ended up under our Scots Pine trees, carefully negotiating the fairy rings of toadstools which seem to have sprung up overnight with the damp weather. Clever pheasants - I think maybe it is the law of natural selection - those who are clever enough to evade the guns by scuttling up the hedgeside will survive and breed and hopefully teach these skills to their offspring.
Maybe it is wishful thinking on my part.

I have spent the morning baking as we had friends coming for afternoon tea tomorrow. Now they have just let me know that N is not well and they can't come. The next e mail was from other friends to say can they pop in this evening and see us - so I shall not have to think what I am going to give them to eat for supper. Still, get well soon N. The trouble is that as one gets older things seem to take more of a hold, as Arija says in her comment to my last post.

I don't know who it was who said that old age is not for wimps, but by golly it is very true.

An exciting parcel.

2011-11-11T11:03:00.000-08:00

Isn't the internet wonderful? It is particularly so for people like me who are 'getting on a bit' and who live in quite an isolated spot. Daily I have communication with twenty or thirty people, all of whom seem like old friends

A few weeks ago I was chatting to Margaret of Thousand Flower Farm. Looking at the farm on Google Earth I see that I hardly know the meaning of isolation, compared with the area where Margaret lives. And yet, like me, she tells me that she gets so much companionship from the internet.

Margaret weaves, knits, grows fruit and vegetables and flowers, makes rugs - and sells these things at local markets. One of the things she makes on her loom is potholders. I said I wished I could pop into the market to meet her and buy a potholder. And lo and behold, this morning two potholders woven in the colours of my kitchen, arrived through the post.

So this is just to say thank you so much Margaret for making my day. The potholders are absolutely lovely - sturdy,colourful and a great addition to my kitchen decor. I don't think I shall dare to use them, they are much too nice.

On a completely different note - today is Remembrance Day and at 11am this morning a group of us gathered at our little town's War Memorial to pay our respects. It was a short, solemn occasion but very moving; made moreso for me by the fact that there was a class of young people from the local Comprehensive school - not only did they behave impeccably but they were also visibly moved by the occasion. Top marks to their teacher for bringing them along and top marks to him/her too for allowing them time afterwards to nip into the sweet shop and buy something - they deserved it.

Saving for a Rainy Day.

2011-11-10T02:04:00.001-08:00

'Saving' is not a very fashionable word at the moment - there doesn't seem to be a lot of point in saving (even if you can afford to do so) when the banks are in such turmoil and offering such poor rewards. But there was a time when saving for a rainy day had real meaning.

As I look out of the window this morning, it is thick fog. In spite of there being quite a breeze blowing, all it is doing is blowing the fog from place to place. It is the kind of fog which, up here, usually only goes away with a good heavy rain shower.

Here in the Dales we have always been mostly grass land and I dare say there would often be jobs for the farmworkers to do indoors on wet days. There were cattle to feed and clean out and milk etc. But on arable farms, once it rained the men had to go home for the day = hence the expression 'saving for a rainy day'. Also the reason why they all had vegetable gardens and all tended them after work every night. Imagine working on the land all day, coming home, eating your dinner and then going out until it was dark to work in your garden. But they needed the produce to supplement their meagre wages.

In the days I am talking about almost everyone in the village would be a farm worker; maybe a road man (the road man in the village when I was a child was called Joe Hardy. If you saw a blocked drain or if there was water on the road, you went to Joe's door and told him and soon he would be there with his barrow, seeing to it. As kids we used to go specially past his house on a Monday to see his long combinations hanging on the washing line!) and then the 'posher' people, like the vicar, the doctor and so on. But, by and large, all were farmers or farmworkers.

I have now lived in our village for twenty-seven years and even in that time it has changed. Now the farmer (who was born here - and his father before him) hardly knows anyone. A lot of the old inhabitants have died and their children have moved away - sometimes to better jobs but often because the village has become 'trendy' and houses are too expensive for them to buy. Also there has been quite a lot of new building.

I expect this is probably the way with all villages these days. The trouble here is that because we are perhaps too far away from large towns to become a commuter village, many of the occupants are now retired. The school closed some years ago (before I arrived) and there is no village shop. The pub has changed hands a few times but the new owners seem to be trying all kinds of things to attract customers - they had a Hallowe'en Party and a Bonfire Party and they run a Quiz each week.

But there is our monthly coffee morning, when the hall usually has a few children dashing about on the little bikes provided for the Play Group who meet there a couple of times a week; there is a Village Study Group who meet weekly in the winter and walk fortnightly in the summer and there is a thriving art group and camera club.

All so very different from the days when my father-in-law was a lad. He used to speak of going over the fields in winter with his milking stool strapped on his back, to milk the cows in the barn - before going to school.

It is all a mixed blessing isn't it? Sadness that many of the locals are no longer able to afford to live here (low cost housing is a long time coming), yet when we think of those working men struggling to make a living and dreading the odd wet day when they just had to hope that they had married a careful housekeeper who had a bit put by in the old teapot on the mantelshelf to tide them over until the sun shone again. I am hoping it soon shines again here.

A delightful book.

2011-11-09T02:49:00.001-08:00

I am reading a most delightful book - Helen Simonson's 'Major Pettigrew's Last Stand' - and I am enjoying every word of this gentle story. I really do not want it to end. Isn't it lovely when you find a book that is so enjoyable. Great literature it is not - but readable it is - very. Do be tempted to pick it up on a cold, damp Autumn night and read this heart-warming tale by the fire - and enjoy.

Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.

2011-11-08T07:20:00.000-08:00

Going into the shed early this morning to pick up the bags for my weekly Tesco run, I caught sight of this 'machine', which has been in the shed for many a long year. In case you are wondering what it is = it is a fiddle drill.

Returning from Tesco I determined to look up seed drilling and do a bit of reading about it. I found that the first seed drill was invented by Jethro Tull, who lived from 1674 to 1741. Before that date seeds were sewn by men scattering them - men who worked in all weathers, men whose only protection from the weather would be an old sack fastened over the shoulders, men who gave real meaning to the words of the old hymn -'we plough the fields and scatter......'

When I told the farmer this at lunch time, he told me that his father still sowed seed by that method. The thing is that up here there are no arable farms - we are all smallish Dales farms (that is changing now, but that is another story) and the pasture land is never ploughed and resewn. Our ancient pastures still show evidence of the rig and furrow method of cultivation in the Middle Ages and quite a few fields still show the ancient Lynchets.

During the second World War the Ministry of Agriculture (or the WarAg as the farmer called it this morning) decreed that meadowland be ploughed and sown with food such as turnips, carrots etc. At this time my father-in-law bought the fiddle drill. As a young man the farmer used it too. The alternative was to use a sub-contractor supplied by the War Ag.

My goodness me, how times have moved on. Our friend P, who is an arable farmer in Essex, now has a permanent seed drill built in to his latest Combine Harvester, so that when he harvests his wheat and/or barley, he can sow rape seed at the same time. This seed will be covered up by the straw from the harvesting, and when the Autumn rains come, the rape will come up through the mulch of straw and begin to grow.

I wonder what Jethro Tull would make of that.

Incidentally - Tull got the idea for the first seed drills from watching the retraction mechanism of the church organ as he sang at the Harvest Festival.

Here it has never got light today. There is thick fog in a blanket over everything. After shopping at Tesco, a friend took me over to see a milliner. In the early Spring I have the honour of 'giving away' my God-daughter at her wedding and I am intending to wear some kind of hat. I have to say that hats are just not 'me' but I tried on a variety of 'fascinators' and have been persuaded that one of them suits me enough to have it made in a different colour-way. When it comes I might be persuaded to show it to you - depending on what it looks like. I promise you that I shall not look like Posh at the Royal Wedding!

Passing away.

2011-11-06T06:05:00.000-08:00

In the last week three 'almost friends' have died. I can't say they were really friends but yet they were more than acquaintances. All three were over 70 and none of the deaths were unexpected, but still they leave gaps in our lives.

I know from my own experience that when you lose a loved one the world seems to go on as it always did - the radio still carries the news, the birds still sing, everyone is going about their usual business oblivious to the fact that your life will never be the same again. But that is how it has always been.

Remembrance Day is coming up. We have a small War Memorial in our little town and the British Legion will be there on Friday morning at 11am to pay their respects to the fallen. Poppies are on sale everywhere and I see that everyone who appears on the BBC is wearing one - as indeed they should be. I stood with a friend chatting outside our local newsagent on Friday morning. She was selling poppies and an old man came up. She stopped him and chatted to him but he was very confused and we are not sure that he recognised her. After he had gone she told me that he was one of the few remaining veterans of Dunkirk. Of course there will be few left now. My brother was at Dunkirk and had he lived until now he would have been 90 this year. My previous husband was the youngest serving soldier to be on the so-called 'Death Railway' as a prisoner of the Japanese, and he has now been dead for over twenty years.

But sadly of course, soldiers are still dying in the line of duty. Iraq, Afghanistan - will it never stop? And think of all the hundreds if not thousands that are dying in the cause of the so-called 'Arab Spring'.

While we are on the subject of dying - I have not had an up to date figure on the number of deaths in Friday's appalling car pile up on the Motorway - it was seven and rising last I heard but I have no doubt it is more now. Is it just me that feels the speed limit should not be raised to 80mph. Alright, I know that if you are on the motorway some idiot will pass you doing over a hundred mph - but at least he or she is breaking the law. Raising the speed limit to 80mph is just giving everyone carte blanche to go quicker and speed costs lives.

On a more cheerful note - it is a lovely day today. There is a sharp North East breeze but the sun is shining from a cloudless sky and there is a robin singing every few yards along the lane. I know the theory is that they are singing to tell the bird-world that this is their patch, but I like to tell myself that they are singing from the sheer joy of still being alive.

Autumn

2011-11-04T11:23:00.000-07:00

It is definitely Autumn now. Today it is as warm as a pleasant Spring day yet even if I was blindfold I would know it was Autumn. There would be the crisp rustle of leaves underfoot and there would be the smell of rotting vegetation - not an unpleasant smell but one that is everywhere at this time of the year.

Fungi in their hundreds have sprung up overnight under our Scots pine trees - some in 'fairy rings' some haphazardly scattered about the grass. The combination of damp and warmth seems to have sparked them into life.

The journey down to our feed merchants this afternoon meant running the gauntlet of the guns as our local landowner's shooting day happened to be down the bottom of our lane. A lot of the pheasant had come up on to our land - they are welcome to stay there until the danger is past. Most of them were only hatched in Spring and they are still quite small. Eventually the older, wiser ones learn to run along the hedgerow rather than to fly up in the air. It is not done to shoot anything on the ground, so they are much safer there.

On the way down to Masham the fields seemed to be full of pheasants. Many of the fields are stubble from wheat or barley or maize. The farmer tells me that they are likely to stay as stubble until the Spring now - they will be 'well-mucked' and then left over the winter.

The river is low. Although there are heavy downpours in the form of showers, this comes gradually so that no extra water builds up. We passed several bonfires stacked up and ready for Bonfire Night, which is tomorrow night. It does seem macabre to say the least that we should celebrate someone being hung, drawn and quartered by having a celebration bonfire once a year and that we should then supplement it with fireworks to symbolise the gunpowder plot. I am not a lover of fireworks myself - and neither is Tess. Pets are very vulnerable tomorrow night and need a lot of TLC - but I know I am preaching to the converted.

A Childhood Memory.

2011-11-03T02:15:00.000-07:00

Friend W and I are off to Thorpe Perrow Arboretum again today to see if we can catch that elusive Autumn colour on the maples. This will be my third visit, so hope it is colourful this time.

In the meantime, our next exercise for the December Writers' Group is ' A childhood memory.' Now last night my brain was in a whirl by the time I went to bed (too much information I think) and, when I had not gone to sleep at 1am and was mulling childhood memories over in my head, I decided to get up, make a cup of green tea and write down a memory. I offer it to you today - unedited, spontaneous - don't know whether that is the best kind of memory or not.

A Childhood Memory.

The River Witham is a narrow and slow river as it winds its way through the Lincolnshire Fens on its course from Lincoln to the Wash at Boston. During my childhood it played a major part in my life.
Because it was slow-flowing it easily silted up and as, in the 1930's, it was still navigable with corn coming up to the flour mills on Brayford Pool in Lincoln, it was dredged yearly and the silt piled up on the banks, where the new rich soil encouraged a covering of grass, water iris and kingcups. It was our playground.
On those seemingly endless Summer evenings, when it was always still and warm and the air was full of the sounds of Summer, we would gobble down our tea and head for 'the banks',, our cossies wrapped in an old towel. In those pre-polio scare days we would teach ourselves to swim in the warm, muddy water.
We were given free rein. No parents came, but nobody drowned and we all learned to swim eventually. The baptism of fire was the day you crossed from one side to the other - a distance of maybe thirty strokes. There had been a ferry here and the landing stages were still there, making perfect places to hold on to and exercise the leg strokes, or walk out a couple of steps and launch out with a couple of breast strokes.
Our older brothers and sisters would often come down after work. They would dive in with consummate ease and swim up and down, doing the crawl or showing off their back-stroke skills, splashing their feet in the water. We were envious.
One Saturday my friend and I went to the next village along the river, to see her Grand-parents. We often went there at weekends, riding our bikes (very little traffic in those days) and pretending they were ponies, jogging up and down in the saddle - mine was Molly and hers was Bonnie.
There was a ferry here across the river - a hand-operated chain ferry. We would cross on it, have our tea and then cycle back. One day we decided to go for a swim there too.
Messing about in the water I suddenly realised that when the ferry went across the chain was taut. I felt it and began to move along it, edging stealthily towards the far bank.
My friend was chatting to other children. She wouldn't look up and see me until I had reached the other side and would think I had swum across!
Of course, as I reached the centre of the river, the deepest part, the chain went slack and sank to the bottom, taking me with it. My feet went down into the soft mud and my head went under into the murky water. Nobody noticed. I was on my own and desperate.
I floundered, then pushed out for the bank. Making a grab for the side I realised I had made it.
Was I going to go back on the ferry? Oh the indignity of that.
Like the cat who does something silly then, when he is seen, washes himself and pretends that he meant to do it all along, I waited until the ferry had started out then I swam behind it, pushing off. Doing my best breast stroke I swam across. I had made it.
Like the young bird leaving the nest I had been practising for long enough. Necessity was the mother of invention here. I had suddenly found my wings. I was away.

Today has been a busy day.

2011-11-02T11:46:00.000-07:00

This morning it was our monthly Wensleydale Writers' Group. We are in the process of setting up our own web site so shortly you will be able to see what we are up to. In the meantime, today we had a speaker and a workshop on Short Story writing.

We meet in the Golden Lion pub which is a good venue as there is coffee and tea to hand - and often the chef sends us out a plate of scones too.

We did a couple of interesting exercises to get us going. The first was to use the five given words and incorporate them all into one paragraph of writing. The five words were:- elevate, spinnaker elegant, potato and writer. Of course, the addition of the word 'spinnaker' meant that we almost all wrote a paragraph which included boating in some form, apart from our one lateral thinker, who called her dog Spinnaker.

Then we split into groups and each group (of 3) was given a passage from a book cut into pieces, so that we had to put them in the correct order - or at least in an order which made the passage understandable. Then we had to say what we thought the subject of the book was, the genre, when it was written etc. This was a most interesting exercise and again caused a lot of interesting conversation.

The last half hour was spent in discussion about construction. Altogether a most enjoyable session and one which left me feeling pretty tired. Coming home and cooking lunch was also a bit hectic, but nothing like as wearing as what happened after my walk.

Tess and I did our usual sharp walk which always leaves me feeling good. So I embarked on entry onto the Government Gateway site to register some cattle movement. Does anyone else ever get totally frustrated by being unable to achieve one's aim on the computer. It kept telling me that I was doing it wrong without telling me how to put it right!

A friend popped in to see if I would like a ride up the Dale to an art exhibition. Would I like a ride - I'll say! Anything to get away from a very contrary computer.

The exhibition was interesting - a watercolourist, an oil painter and a fabric collage artist - we both enjoyed it and then had a wander round Hawes. But of course, now that the clocks have lost that British Summertime, it began to get dark very early. We came back in the dusk, following a herd of sleepy cows up the road for quite a long way as they went home to be milked.

After tea I had another try at logging on to the correct site and finally managed it! Eureka - once there I put the information on in no time at all. But I must say I am now pretty tired.

Still 9pm tonight sees the wonderful 'Frozen Planet' on television - I think the most splendid programme that has been on for a very long time - so after putting on my blog I shall go and relax - hope you are all doing the same.

PS If you haven't been to John Gray's blog (Going Gently) and seen his adorable new bulldog, Mabel (what a glorious name for a bulldog) do find time to pop over and see her photograph.

Any colour, so long as it's red.

2011-11-01T07:45:00.000-07:00

Do birds see colour
as they fly overhead?
Do they see the bright berry
flaunting itself in the hedge?
Do they imagine the juicy,
sweetness of summer
encapsulated there?
Do they choose the brightest
and sweetest
and leave the rest?

Or is it
every bird for himself in this
Autumnal world,
where the leaves are falling
and the hedges baring?

Is there no thought at all for
winter housekeeping -
for days when food is scarce
and there are frugal pickings?

These hungry mouths
trawl the hedgerows
with no thought
for one another.

The Last Act of the big day.

2011-10-31T11:31:00.000-07:00

Well - the last birthday act has just been completed: the pumpkin has been carved, put outside and lit and as I write this he is burning merrily with his cheeky grin. Thank you all for your birthday wishes - they were much appreciated. Inevitably when one is near to a big O birthday, one person got it wrong and sent me a big O card a year in advance but I have managed to put that card at the back so that the number is concealed!

The farmer, Tess and I had another day out yesterday in mild, sunny weather. We did a round trip through Nidderdale, across Grassington Moor, into Kilnsey, where we had lunch at the trout farm, then down to Hubberholme church (one of my favourites, where the ashes of JB Priestley are scattered in the churchyard) and along the side of the infant River Wharfe, up over the fells at Oughtershaw and down into Hawes and back through Wensleydale. We had several pleasant walks with Tess too.

As we were riding along I thought what it was that I really liked about Autumn - what makes it such a special season. Here is my list - maybe you can add to it:-

I love our Autumn colours. I know we cannot compare with New England and those wonderful maple trees but really our beech trees put on a magnificent show yesterday.

I love our full, peaty rivers and the bare trees which contribute so much to our scenery.

I love the ploughed fields scattered with white seagulls. We have one at the top of our lane and it is a joy to behold.

I love the slow, steady build-up to Christmas. I always start my Christmas shopping early so I never have that panic at the last minute. But the house gets filled with the smell of baking fruit cakes and puddings, spices, delicious things which I make in advance.

I love the dew and the gossamer webs on the grass when the sun is low and the dew on the cobwebs in the early morning. Later on, if we are really lucky we might even get a hoar frost.

Finally I love those last few struggling flowers which are determined to flower on to the bitter end - the last rose, the rudbeckia, the tiny cyclamen under the bushes. And if you look carefully then you can see the snowdrop spikes already beginning to push out of the ground.

I have just remembered one more - it is wonderful to see the hedgehogs preparing to hibernate for the winter. It is fifteen degrees here today and so they are still out every night, snuffling about under the trees, searching for things to eat, stealing the cat food.

Birthdays are marvellous for reminding ourselves that life is wonderful. I have enjoyed mine tremendously - enjoy yours when it comes around.

My birthday treat.

2011-10-29T06:19:00.000-07:00

My friend called at nine thirty in the morning yesterday, and we were off for our day out. The sun shone all day and still has warmth in it. We went first into Ripon so that she could buy me a lovely print of a hare - such a beautiful one, I shall show you it eventually. Then, after coffee, it was off to Fountains Abbey and Studley Park.

An hour's shop in the National Trust shop at Fountains means that I have done a good part of my Christmas Shopping and then a bowl of pumpkin soup in the restaurant finished off that part of the day.

The sweet chestnut trees in Studley Royal Park are just beginning to turn a lovely golden yellow. A lot of waterfowl have come in for the winter. There were a lot of people about (it is half term here) and everyone was enjoying the sunshine.

A short way away one of the three deer herds (sika, fallow and roe) was resting quietly. Nearer, a stag and a doe mated as we passed - quick affair - over in a minute - but I was only able to get this one shot and the herd is a long way away.

We drove back along the country lanes in the Autumn sunshine. The leaves are turning now and many are falling like copper pennies. Back in our little town my friend came with me to choose the right frame for my hare picture (two heads are better than one) - it is to be ready in two weeks and I look forward to hanging it on my wall (another hole in the wall, remarks the farmer).

Out in the evening for a meal with a group of friends finished the day off nicely. The highlight dish for me was lemon sole stuffed with scallops, garnished with smoked salmon and served in a lemon sauce. Delicious. Wish I had a birthday every week!

On second thoughts, no I don't - it is the rarity of this kind of day that makes it so special.

It's a girl.

2011-10-28T00:32:00.000-07:00

Our Belgian Blue Heifer had a heifer calf, born by Caesarean section quite late last night. Mother and baby are doing well. Sorry about the quality of the photograph but the lights were dim and left on for her all night and the farmer shone his torch which shows on her back - but thought you would like to see it nevertheless. The calf has beautiful big eyes.

She had her first feed through a tube into her first stomach, so that she got that early collostrum. Hopefully, by this morning, she will have fed normally, as she had moved when we went in last night really late, so she is obviously walking around.

I am out all day today and out to dinner tonight, so a pretty hectic day. Glorious sunshine here in North Yorkshire. I know I shall enjoy my day - enjoy yours, wherever you are.

A very grey day.

2011-10-27T06:54:00.001-07:00

It is now three-thirty in the afternoon and it has not really got light yet. The farmer reminded me at lunch time that we put the clocks back this weekend, so it will be dark even earlier. Oh dear, Winter is surely on its way. I suppose I shouldn't complain; if I lived in Northern Norway it would be dark almost all day by now and I don't think I am cut out for that kind of life. Somehow I need the light to survive. But today is just one of the 'dark days before Christmas' which my mother used to complain about.

Yesterday was so different. We had our poetry meeting in a friend's conservatory - light, airy and very warm although the sun was not quite out. I can assure you that there is something very relaxing about sitting in such a place and listening to good poetry being read out and watching the world go by. A flock of Winter thrushes (fieldfare and redwing) swooped over at one point, and - dead on cue - a white pigeon flew on to the roof just as one of us was reading a lovely poem about a white fantail pigeon.

It is sad that poetry is no longer popular as it used to be. Good poetry says such truths in so few words. We had Shakespeare, Walter de la Mare, Congreve, Yeats, Auden, Pam Ayres, Carol Ann Duffy, poets from the Great war - and plenty of others. As there were only eight of us we managed to read four pieces each - and have an interesting chat about them in between. It is such a civilised afternoon and one of my favourites in the month.

Today we have a Belgian Blue heifer close to her first calving. She is pacing up and down the field and has 'bagged up well' as the farmer says. The trouble is that often this breed find first births very difficult and need vet-assistance, so we shall have to watch her carefully over the next few hours.

As it is my birthday week-end I am being taken out tomorrow by a friend to buy my present. I will post it on my blog so that you can share it on Saturday. In the meantime, if you are in this awful dismal weather - keep smiling, the sun is only just behind the clouds.

It worked.

2011-10-26T02:31:00.000-07:00

You will see from today's photograph that the jelly turned out alright. For anyone who wishes to try it (you can do it with rosehips and/or crab apples too) you need equal quantities of sloes and cooking apples - the apples chopped up, cores and all. It seemed to cook down fairly quickly. I put it through a muslin sheet, taking care not to squeeze or in any way interfere with the process (that would have caused the jelly to lose its clarity) and then boiled it up using 1 pint of liquid to 1 pound of white sugar and the juice of a lemon. I have to say that I had to boil it for a long time. Also it kept forming a kind of crust on the top which I had to skim off. Now it is all potted up in small sterilised jars, waiting for cold meat/pork pie/cheese with which to eat it.

The downside - as it always is with these things - was the amount of cleaning up and washing up the enterprise entailed. Everywhere was sticky. I put the muslin in a cold water soak immediately and I must say it has come totally clean and is now flapping on the clothes line. The Aga has been wiped thoroughly although I still keep finding sticky places and the pan has been cleaned.

What does it taste like - several people asked. Surprisingly sweet but with a kick in the tail. Once it has gone down it leaves that characteristic dry/sharpness you get with sloe gin. Whether I shall make it again I don't know - but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Today is a pleasant Autumn day - after quite a violent thunderstorm last evening. This afternoon is our Poetry afternoon - one of my favourite afternoons in the month. I am reading Yeats, Auden, Edwin Morgan and Roger McGough. Wish you could join us.

Misty moisty weather.

2011-10-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

Do you remember the old rhyme we used to sing when we were children:

One misty, moisty morning,
when cloudy was the weather -
there I met an old man
cloth-ed all in leather.
Cloth-ed all in leather
with a hat under his chin.
how de you do and how de you do
and how de you do again.

Well I would not have been surprised to see that old man this morning for it was just such an occasion. Contrary to our expectations, there has been no traffic at all on our lane - the diversion signs occurred further up the main road. So we have been exceedingly quiet. I have been quite relieved for the sake of the farm cats as they are not used to heavy traffic - but I am expecting a pair of new boots by mail order and, of course, I really don't see how the delivery man can get through. So - you win some, you lose some.

But it did mean that this morning, in order to get into town, I had to go the long way round. Every farmer on our lane is muck-leading and every dairy farm still has the cows out. These two things together mean knee-deep mud. At nine o'clock this morning it was so dark and misty that I needed the car lights on. Our neighbour at the bottom of the lane has pedigree limousine cattle and they were gathered round a feeder in the mist - such a lovely sight and I didn't have the camera with me.

There were literally hundreds of pheasant about on the lane. The shooting season is just about to start but the birds have not yet learned to keep hidden (believe me they soon learn once the guns begin to go off in their direction.) Progress through them is slow because they have a habit of running in front of the car rather than getting on to the side. At one point about fifty pheasants flew over the car from one field to another.

I have embarked upon making a batch of sloe jelly. Even the recipe says that it is not always a success. Would you believe - sloes are very low in pectin. Obviously sourness does not necessarily mean pectin. So I have put equal quantities of sloes and cooking apples into the preserving pan (cores, skins and all) and cooked them to a mush. Tonight they will strain through muslin and tomorrow I shall boil them up with sugar and lemon juice. The yield is quite low too but I thought I would give it a try.

The sloes are hanging from the branches of our biggest blackthorn tree - the farmer can never remember it being so heavily laden. We went down the field together after lunch - with Tess - and picked enough (two pounds) in just a few minutes. Tess could not resist going into the wild marshy field belonging to our neighbour. She took quite a bit of getting back and came back the long way round, studiously keeping out of reach of the farmer and sitting quietly by me! I am afraid the pull of rabbits is very strong.

The Visitors are Gone.

2011-10-24T03:00:00.001-07:00

Lovely having visitors who are so familiar that it is like having family around - no rush, no standing on ceremony -just a nice relaxed chatty time.

For lunch on Saturday I bought a piece of Belted Galloway Pot roast rib. By the time the farmer came to carve it it was so tender that it just fell apart, so we had a pile of bits of beef of a plate on the table and helped ourselves. I cooked it in red wine so the gravy was delicious too. A pile of Yorkshire puddings on the table and a large dish of roasted root vegetables meant that the meal had been very little effort. We had more Swiss chard out of the garden and I found that all the local ladybirds had chosen it as their winter hibernation place. I finally had to go outside and shake it well to try and evacuate them. If we ate any steamed ladybirds we don.t know about it. Somehow steamed ladybird doesn't seem so unpalatable as steamed maggot!

For pudding I tried Rosemary's recipe (Share my Garden on my side bar) for Pear tart. If you fancy a nice easy sweet go to her site for the recipe.

Then we walked at Thorpe Perrow arboretum. The autumn colours are so slow in coming I really think they are going to be non-existent this year. But the walk was lovely. There were hundreds there but the place is so large that we hardly met a soul. We walked round the Bird of prey centre - I find something very sad about these majestic birds caged when they should be wild and free. Maybe a bird feels differently about it - but I don't like it at all.

Today on the farm the giant muck-spreader has arrived and the loose-housing is being cleared and the manure spread on the fields. Cats have been disturbed and are not happy - spending time by the back door demanding milk in recompense (and volubly at that). It is a damp, dreary day and the fields are getting wetter underfoot by the day - so the cattle will be in shortly. Twenty seven in-calf heifers are destined for our housing - coming into nice, warm, clean straw any day soon.

In the field the belgian blue heifers are well in-calf and one looks near to calving. The farmer hopes that it will go 'home' before the day arrives as Belgian blue heifers often have a difficult calving. She has to wait to go home until the Tup Sales are over.

The road into our little market town is closed all this week for re-surfacing work, so any trip into town means a long way round. We we dreading an influx of traffic being diverted down our lane but so far this hasn't happened. We are just not used to traffic noise and would find it very intrusive.

It would be nice to see the sun today but in spite of what the weather-forecaster said yesterday, at present it is well and truly hiding behind a blanket of thick, misty cloud. Message to self - keep all doors and window closed as any time now a sweet smell of manure will begin to drift towards the house on the west wind that is blowing. Wonder how the remains of the Belted Galloway will taste to a background of that!

The Booker Pri\e.

2011-10-21T06:20:00.000-07:00

I have no time to blog today as I am getting ready for visitors who are staying for the week-end. But I do suggest that if you have a minute, you go to yesterday's blog, click on the comments and scroll down to acornmoon. Here Valerie gives us an interesting fact about the Booker that I certainly didn't know about.

It's come round again.

2011-10-19T02:43:00.000-07:00

Regular events always seem to make the year go more quickly - hairdressing appointments, committee meetings - even Christmas and birthdays. One no sooner seems to have passed than the next is upon us. I'm sure that the older one gets the more this is true. I do seem to remember in the far distant past waiting for Santa to arrive seemed an endless wait. Now the Christmas decorations are up on the high streets before they have had time to gather dust in whatever safe place they are put for the Summer.

Nowhere is this more true than in the annual Booker Prize for Literature. Because it falls so near to my birthday, I often get the prize book as a present and welcome it is too, although there have been times when I have been totally unable to finish it (Midnight's Children springs immediately to mind.) Hilary Mantel's 'Wolf Hall' was a masterpiece and a great pleasure to read.

This year's short list was an interesting one because there were two first-time authors on it. The winner was Julian Barnes, and this is his fourth entry - so a case of fourth time lucky for him. But, as usual, there is controversy - the eternal argument between - should the winner be a work of 'highbrown literature' or should it be ' a good read' - and can you combine the two?

There was an interesting programme on BBC2 last evening, when the six short-listed books were all taken to a tiny village in the Scottish Highlands and various inhabitants were invited to read them. I must say that it did not seem to me to be an 'ordinary' village: there were a lot of rather posh ladies in tartan and with double-barrelled names and several men in kilts - and there did seem an awful lot of so-called 'ordinary' folk willing to read these tomes. But it was
interesting and they voted on the winner, which was definitely not Julian Barnes.

The Times Literary Editor, Erica Wagner, has a good commentary on the prize, in which she asks whether the novels on the short list will stay the course and still be read in a couple of hundred years time. Of course none of us can answer that question but it is interesting to note that she quotes two contemporary reviews of books which have really stood the test of time and which are now seen as classics. They certainly were not seen that way at their time of publication. These are the two reviews:

Book a) "sad stuff, dull and dreary, or ridiculous."
b) "there seems to us great power in this book but a purposeless power, which we feel a great desire to see turned to better account."

Book a) is 'Moby Dick' and book b) is 'Wuthering Heights.'

Just goes to show that you never can tell. However, I would like to know what your general opinion is on the overall purpose of the Booker Prize - should it be a book we all enjoy or a book which takes a bit of getting through? You decide - after all you will none of you be here to know what happens to Julian Barnes's book in two hundred years, will you?

Another lovely day.

2011-10-17T06:33:00.000-07:00

Two lovely Autumn days in succession is almost too good to be true at this time of the year. As soon as we had had our lunch the farmer and I set off for a walk at Orgate.

Orgate is a tiny community just above the village of Marske in Swaledale. There is no made up road, just a well preserved track, and rarely any traffic. We left our car in the village of Marske, crossed the bridge over the beck and walked up the hill to the track. This beck is one of the many which flow into the River Swale. On a fine day like this one the beck is a pleasant trickle but after rain it becomes a raging torrent, all adding to that huge body of water that flows down the country and into the North Sea at the Humber Estuary.

In the peaceful fields there is still plenty of grass. As far as I know there is no dairy farm in the village but one field held a clutch of Suffolk rams feeding themselves up prior to their busy time. What sturdy fellows they are - they must carry twice as much weight as Swaledales.

The next field held a lovely black Dales pony. There are not too many of them about nowadays although they are becoming a little more popular. He was a lovely fellow but really too far away to get a good shot and he had no intention of coming any nearer - the grass was far too sweet and tasty.

And so we set off down the track between quite high hedges. Luckily we had Tess on the lead because suddenly - on a bend - we were surprised to see two horses pulling a splendid carriage. There were two people sitting on the front, holding the reins and two more folk standing on the back. By the time I had got my camera out they were disappearing round the next bend but the photograph gives you some idea of what it was like. They must have had a lovely ride on such a lovely day and it did strike me that a hundred or so years ago I would have known exactly what sort of carriage it was!

I talked yesterday about the fieldfares and redwings. Well I hope they come this way some time soon, because great swags of cotoneaster cornubia berries hung out over the track in various places - they looked good enough to eat.

We had a lovely wander along the path through dappled woodland until I realised that we had to walk all the way back to the car - so we turned round and retraced our steps.

Another lovely walk before this week's promised spell of Arctic weather.

Perfect Autumn Days.

2011-10-16T01:15:00.001-07:00

Perfect days at this time of the year are few and far between, but yesterday was a special one here in the Yorkshire Dales.

It was such for the farmer - although not for me in this instance - in that it was the first shoot for the shooting syndicate who shoot the land around our farm. The farmer is not a shooting man but he does like the camaraderie which it offers, so he goes along as a 'beater'. From my point of view they had a good day in that it takes a while for the pheasants to 'learn' to fly when the shooters approach and they never shoot until a pheasant is in the air, so for the first few weeks the 'bag' is small.
Later in the season the cleverest ones seem to learn to come into the garden out of the way - they are always welcome. I don't eat pheasant and I really don't like them being shot so the farmer and I agree to differ.

But this meant that Tess and I were on our own for the day. The weather forecast for next week is horrible, so the first thing I did was a couple of loads of washing. I have visitors for the weekend next weekend (looking forward to seeing you P and D if you are reading this) so it was nice to get it done while the weather was so nice.

And nice it was - wall to wall sunshine, slight breeze - the kind of Autumn day that we so rarely get up here and the kind that- hopefully - stays in the mind all winter to carry one through those absolutely awful days to come.

My early lunch was a large jacket potato which had been cooking in the Aga for a couple of hours -I split it and put in a dollop of butter and a nice slice of cheddar. It was delicious - not the farmer's favourite food at all, so good to eat while he wasn't here. (he took a picnic lunch).

Then Tess and I set off to walk to Red Bank - a mile each way. It was so quiet - I don't know where the rooks and jackdaws were yesterday but they certainly were not down our lane. So quiet was it that I could hear a group of long tailed tits working through the hedgerow, chattering quietly to one another as they went.

We stopped so that I coud photograph some bright red rose hips on the side of the lane and disturbed a huge flock of Winter thrushes - fieldfares and redwings. It is wonderful to see them back for the Winter - they swooped over the lane and off into the stubble field, making their chip-chip noise as they went.

Further on I took another photograph of the dairy cows enjoying the Autumn sunshine. They do love the sun on their backs and looked so contented in the field. But already the field is beginning to show signs of what the farmer calls 'paddling up' - in other words the recent rain has caused it to be so wet that the cows trample the grass down and make it uneatable. There will come a point shortly when they will have to go in for the Winter. A week or two of this lovely weather would be so good, but - sadly - rain is forecast for the beginning of the week.

Coming back through the garden I see that the 'wild' sweet pea given to me by S and N (thank you S and N if you are reading this), and which has given such good service over the Summer, is still in full flower. I do intend to keep seed for next year if I can - it is just a matter of harvesting them at the right moment.

Back home the farmer arrives shortly after we do and tells me that they have seen two foxes during the day - wish I had seen them too. I make a hearty soup for tea (pea, carrot and onion -i.e. the contents of the salad drawer plus a box of dried peas I 'found' at the back of the store cupboard) - I must say it is jolly good - just the soup for a perfect Autumn day.

Have a nice week end.

Warming food.

2011-10-13T03:23:00.000-07:00

Should you ask what the weather is like here today you would wish you hadn't bothered - it is raining, cold (9 degrees), foggy and thoroughly miserable. On a farm these conditions call for warming food.

The farmer is indoors keeping warm by painting the sitting room bay window. We have just taken the curtains to the dry-cleaners. They were washable but they are huge. The dry-cleaning bill is going to be £45 but it is worth that not to have to lug them in and out of the washing machine and find somewhere to dry them in this damp weather.

So now to warming food for lunch. We are going for our flu jabs at 1.30 so it has to be an early lunch. I have made a Spanish dish which I often fall back on when time is short. I don't have a name for it but it tastes good on its own, or on pasta.
I fry an onion in a little olive oil until the onion is transparent then I add sliced chorizo (as mild or as hot as you choose) and cook for a few minutes until the chorizo is beginning to brown. Add next a tin of chick peas and a tin of chopped tomatoes, a desertspoon of sugar and a good grinding of black pepper. Then cook this down until it is nice and thick and leave for a couple of hours for the flavours to meld. Yummy.

I have also made a dish for tomorrow as it is market day, which means we come in and need something to eat straight away. There is usually some cold meat around, so I have made a dish of red cabbage to go with it.

I slice half a red cabbage, any old apples lying around (I used eaters which are getting a bit old, but cookers are best) and a couple of onions. Layer them in a casserole dish, covering each layer with a sprinkling of salt, black pepper and balsamic vinegar. Put a lid on the dish and cook in a moderate oven until it has all cooked down nicely. It is better eaten the next day and heats up easily - or it can be eaten cold, almost like chutney.

If I am short of time I cook this as a stir fry instead and if it is getting near to Christmas I add a handful of cranberries.

There has that made your mouths water? A photo of the chorizo dish is above - the red cabbage is still in the oven but might put a photo on later to tempt you. Have a nice day - hope it is warm where you are.

It's the day of the ball.

2011-10-12T07:08:00.000-07:00

October 12th is highlighted for two reasons. First it is my appointment at the hairdresser, so I went down to Ripon (lovely to drive myself there after all this time) in the pouring rain. Crossing the River Ure I see it is banking dangerously and when I get out to take a photograph I find it is making a noise like an express train.

The other reason it is highlighted is that today - as it is every year for the last four years - is the day of Willow's Cyber Ball. (Go to Life at Willow Manor on my side bar if you wish to read more). Anyone can go and can choose any partner, dead or alive, any method of transport and can wear whatever they wish - cost no deterrent.
Those of you who have blogged with me for a long time will remember the delightful Derrick of Melrose musings. He stopped blogging a while ago but I had his e mail address and a quick e mail soon let me know that he would be delighted to accompany me to the ball. So we are going (in our imagination) in his Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. There will be delicious cyber food and the beauty of that is that you can eat as much as you wish without putting on a single ounce. Yes, I know it sounds daft but Willow has made this an annual event and so many participate now that she just couldn't stop doing it - we would all be disappointed at not painting the picture in our imagination.

The things some people will get up to to avoid this awful weather.

The New gates are in place.

2011-10-11T06:28:00.000-07:00

Here they are - the nice new gates. They are finally in place and I have to say, the hens are flummoxed. One of my new pullets, together with Goldie - her mother - managed to squeeze through when the gate was open for a minute. When I went down the yard to photograph them both hens were standing by the gate trying to work out how to get back again! As you can see in the photograph, Tess looks a bit puzzled too.

I am sorry I can't put 'before' gates on as a contrast - I simply have not got a photograph of them and they are by now in that great scrap yard in the sky. But take it from me that these gates are a vast improvement. Apart from anything else, they are more my size and I can open them with ease. Give my hens a couple of days and they will have worked out how to get through/over so that they can eat under the bird table.

The rain has stopped today. There is a strong South West wind blowing and the rooks are swooping low over the fields as they race along. The jackdaws are sitting in the ash trees and making quite a racket and when I went to my friend's house for coffee this morning, the starlings in the tree near to her house were making the most amazing noise. I always say that a ladies' coffee morning is like a tree full of starlings - well here was a tree full of starlings that sounded just like a ladies' coffee morning.

On the way back from our walk after lunch I came across this red admiral sunning itself on our garden wall - soaking up the last bit of warm sunshine I suspect.
I must say it is good to see the sun again after several very miserable days. Going to Tesco this morning, the Vale of York was bathed in Autumn sunshine - makes a change from not being able to see it at all.

To those who asked whether or not the teaser tup got any little titbits before he was taken out - I doubt it because as soon as the first one or two ewes come into season he is taken out and replaced by the Blue Faced Leicester. And until the ewe is in season she is not receptive to mating, and I suspect she would tell him to clear off.

There has also been some discussion - Rosemary on Miss Cellany brought it up - on whether or not it was 'kind' to keep cows indoors all the year round, rather than putting them out to grass in the Summer. This happens a lot in some areas and is beginning to happen up here, as she pointed out after her recent visit. I asked the farmer about this last evening, and this is what he said.

It is impossible these days to make a living from a small dairy herd, so as the small dairy farms go out of business, the farms are incorporated into larger units.
This means that some of the dairy herd have three or four hundred cows in them and while it would be ideal for them to be out in the grass (their natural habitat), if there is wet weather that number of cows soon make the whole field churned up and the grass quite uneatable. Therefore the cows are kept in loose housing with open sides, and often a large fold yard where they can be outside if they choose (but not on grass). The grass is cut and fed to them. It all sounds not quite so kind, but it is a fact that on these farms many of the cows choose to stay inside rather than go out anyway. So you will have to come to your own conclusions - but I hope this helps.

The arrival of a teaser.

2011-10-10T02:42:00.000-07:00

The field opposite is full of pedigree Swaledale ewes. Now that they have nicely settled in a smart young chap has arrived - he is a Swaledale ram - or tup as they are called up here in the Dales.

Sadly he will not get to do the job is expecting to do, because he is just a 'teaser' tup. In other words he is put in amongst the ewes to get them all excited and skittish and bring them into season.

Once this begins to happen he will be taken away and the 'real' tup will be brought in. He will be a pedigree Blue Faced Leicester tup because these sheep are for meat breeding and the farmer wants mules. Mules are a cross between a Swaledale and a Blue Faced Leicester and the progeny will be sold for meat, probably for the Easter lamb market next year (it will be a short life but a merry one for those lambs I am afraid.)

The BFL tup will arrive with his raddle harness on and we shall begin to see the ewes with a coloured splodge on their bottoms as one by one they mate with the ram. The raddle colour will be changed each week so that the farmer will know the order in which the lambs will be born. Anyone who has read 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles has some idea about what is going on!

If I manage to get near enough to take a photograph of the ram I will do so but today is again miserably wet and dismal, so I shall wait until it improves. Have a nice day!

##I stand corrected. Bovey Belle tells me that the reddleman is in The Return of the Native and not Tess. Sorry about that - and thanks BB for putting me right.

Down on the farm.

2011-10-09T02:15:00.000-07:00

The swallows have finally all gone. I am not surprised when I look out of the window and see the disgusting weather - windy and wet. Their going heralds the return of our car to the garage; we can't put the car in in the Summer as the swallows nest in there and make such a mess of the car.

The cattle are still out in the fields. Silaging is finally finished on all the surrounding farms and there is still plenty of grass, so the cows will stay out as long as possible to eat it off. They seem to prefer to be out in any case. What will finally bring them in is the state of the ground. If there is a lot of rain then the ground gets wet and soggy and they paddle it up.

The hedgehogs don't seem to have gone into hibernation yet. Tess seeks them out when she goes out for her final mooch under the Scot's pines. They seem to take absolutely no notice of her and all she does is bark at them. The ones we have here all seem to be fat and healthy. This is hardly surprising as they eat the food we put out for the farm cats and any apples which are past their best I throw out under the bird table for blackbirds and hedgehogs. When they finally go to bed for the winter it will probably be in the hay barn where it is snug and warm.

The new gates are not fitted yet. The posts are in and the concreting of the gate way is completed. Now the farmer is waiting for it all to set really hard. The hens are therefore having an extended birthday as they can come up every day with no need to fly over the gate. For some reason they seem to find sunflower hearts, niger seed and mixed bird seed preferable to poultry wheat and layers pellets. But then, stolen fruit always was the sweetest.

The farmer is already inside for the day and has just lit the wood-burner - it is that miserable outside. When I questioned how early he was he just informed me that he was not staying out in this weather. It is only 10.24 but he has all yesterday's papers to read and the Grand Prix is on shortly after lunch, so he will be happy.

I am baking our own onions for lunch. I bake them in their skins and we eat the insides at the table - like one would do with potatoes - they have not been taken from the groundn long and are still very sweet. Served with pork chops, apple sauce and mashed potatoes they should make a tasty lunch.

Tomorrow the farmer begins to clean out the loose housing - two feet of manure in there from last Winter. It will all be put in a heap on one of the fields to mature and will then be spread in the Spring. The farm cats will be furious as it is by far the warmest place to spend the day - the heat has built up considerably over the Summer. But it is necessary to clean it out and put in fresh deep straw so that it is ready for the day when those girls have to come inside.

Visitors.

2011-10-07T10:45:00.000-07:00

This has been a very busy week for me - friends in for tea and coffee, days out, visitors staying - a lovely, enjoyable week but no time to blog. However, things are now back to 'normal' - so I will tell you about one outing we had.

My visitor S, a friend W and I all went to Thorpe Perrow Arboretum, which I have featured several times before. We were hoping for the Autumn colours of the Acer grove but we were too early and apart from one Acer turning colour the rest have some way to go.

At the entrance there is an avenue of horse chestnut trees and underneath the ground was littered with bright shiny conkers - very tempting - I wonder why they have such fascination.

After our walk round the Arboretum, where the staff were busy putting Hallowe'en lanterns in the trees (they always have Hallowe'en festivities for children) we had a walk through the bog garden, which is already kitted out with scary creatures, and then it was into the cafe for a bowl of hearty cabbage, ham and puy lentil soup. It was delicious and I shall try it shortly.

From the car park you can see Snape Castle, so we decided to have a short trip to look at it. It is only a ruin and it is not possible to go round it as it is attached to a private house. But you can go into the chapel, which has been carefully restored (apart from the celing, which I am sure would once have been splendid) and seems to be the parish church of the village now.

But the history of Snape Castle is fascinating. Until late in the seventeenth century it belonged to the Nevilles of Middleham (who owned the castle there too) and so has an association with Richard III - with both his mother and his wife.

But perhaps the most poignant connection is that it was the home of Catherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII, who lived there when she was married to John Neville, the third Baron Latymer - this was before her marriage to Henry.

Catherine was only 20 when she married Henry and he was her third husband - her first marriage was when she was just fourteen.

By the time Catherine married Henry he was a very large, ugly old man - hardly the sort of chap one would chose for one's twenty year old daughter. But of course in those days women were mere commodities to be married off so that the money and the prestige was kept in a tight little circle.

You need a strong arm......

2011-10-04T08:05:00.001-07:00

....around a farm.

It seems to me, as a late incomer to farming, that everything built on a farm - gates, fences, barns, machinery stores etc. is built to last forever. In other words, built of some heavy metal which is almost impossible for anyone of 'normal' strength to manipulate. Farmers, because they are manipulating it all the time, build up the strength over the years. And even when the said items - gates for example - become old and rusty, they still work (after a fashion) and are left in place as having 'nothing wrong with them.'

Thus the gates at the bottom of our yard have become (to my eyes) an eyesore and - more importantly - too heavy for me to open and close, particularly on a day like today, when the wind is blowing fiercely against them. This means that I can only reach my chickens by going round by the paddock and similarly if I want a handful of parsley from the garden. Frustration has set in.

But miracles can happen and the farmer informed me at lunchtime that the scrap merchant is coming in the morning to collect all the scrap metal which is lying about the place. Before then he intends to remove these two gates ready to hang two new gates he has had made - two lighter gates (and infinitely more attractive).

It really will not make a scrap of difference to the hens that for a week or two there will be no gates in place. For weeks now they have soared over the top of the old gates to reach the bird tables, where tasty titbits of niger seed and sunflower hearts fall regularly to the ground.

I find something very cleansing about getting rid of rubbish - I think the farmer does too, although he is much more reluctant to do it. I frequently throw things away and then wish I had kept them. The farmer, on the other hand, has bits of wood he has kept for years 'in case they might come in useful.'

Are you a hoarder, or are you a chucker-out regardless? I would love to know. One thing is for sure - there is really no happy medium, is there?

Goers and Comers.

2011-10-03T10:52:00.000-07:00

In the barn, the last of this year's swallows have taken the opportunity of stretching and exercising their wings in the spell of warm weather last week. Some of our swallows have had three broods and the last young are almost ready to fly on that amazing journey which starts here on the farm and ends in Africa. The mystery of how they find their way is one of the world's great unsolved ones. I just wish I could tell them in some way to avoid Malta, where they will be shot at unmercifully. They share the barn with Tip, our old sheepdog, and I think he probably misses them when they go as they are a bit of company for him.

As they go then the winter visitors begin to arrive. Friends G and J saw redwings at the coast (and I believe some in G's garden) last week. This is very early. When I mentioned this to the farmer he said he thought he had heard some last week and had looked up to see that identifying swooping flight and a small flock passed overhead. Whether they were fieldfares or redwings he couldn't say, but it looks as though they are already beginning to arrive.

There are plenty of berries for them to eat but it always troubles me that they seem to eat them early giving no thought to the possibility of a hard winter and no food. Don't you find it odd that birds can fly to the other side of the world, and return next year to the same barn that they were born in, and yet they don't have enough sense to leave the berries and look for other available food?

It has been windy today and here on the farm the pine needles have been falling thick and fast. I had friends for a cup of tea this afternoon so I swept up the pine needles before they came. I need not have bothered as they were just as thick by the time they came. When the farmer opened the back door to come in for his lunch the wind blew a cloud of rowan leaves in with him - and this all of half an hour after my weekly cleaner had left.

Tomorrow Tess goes for a shampoo and haircut so it is a busy morning - luckily the supermarket is en route so I can call there as well. Visitors come to stay on Wednesday - so it is all go this week.

Any of you who remember Derrick of Melrose Musings (he stopped his blog about a year ago) will be interested to hear that I have been in touch with him as last year he was my partner at Willow's annual cyber ball. He has agreed to be my cyber partner again this year and has packed his tuxedo as he will be away on holiday. If you want to attend the ball go to Willow's site. You can choose whoever you like to be your partneer Fred Astaire, George Clooney, even your own better half - after all anything is possible in cyberland. When my son comes I will get him to put willow's poster and link on my blog. I have tried repeatedly to do it, but it is beyond me. Have a nice evening.

Everyone's gone to the sea.

2011-10-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

Our glorious autumn weather is set to break tomorrow as rain comes down from the North and the temperature begins to drop. But today is a lovely day and the farmer and I decided to have a day out. Unfortunately everyone else decided the same.

We set off, with Tess, at around ten o'clock to go to the sea on the East coast. This meant going across the North York Moors, which in themselves are very scenic so I had high hopes of some good photographs for you.

By the time we reached Thirsk (about a third of the way there) we were in a continuous line of traffic, all heading for the same place we guessed. We pulled off the road and had our lunch and took Tess for a walk in the North York Moors - very dramatic scenery but not much of a photograph as it is all so vast and the heather is over and is all brown.

It was lovely to see the sea but we never managed to get out of the continuous line of traffic. Every car park was full and there was absolutely nowhere to stop. We went down to Whitby, Staithes, Runswick, Sandsend and Saltburn - and enjoyed the views, with the windows wide open. and saw the thousands of people on the beach enjoying themselves. But we had little choice but to keep going.

However, we did enjoy the ride out in spite of that. We passed within a mile of Denise Nesbitt's village (Mrs Nesbitt's space) but decided not to call as they are deep into remodelling their kitchen and we didn't want to disturb progress.

The countryside was so beautiful with the trees turning to their Autumn colours and the hazy views so Autumnal. Sad that everyone else had decided to do the same thing but we arrived home having enjoyed ourselves nevertheless. And if it rains tomorrow - as it is forecast to do - then we shall be pleased that we went today.

The New Poetry Bus Magazine

2011-09-30T01:35:00.000-07:00

The second issue of this magazine is out. All credit due to the guiding light - Peadar O'Donoghue (Totalfeckin'eejit on my side bar). I got my copy yesterday - it is even better than the first issue. I do urge you to buy it

Poetry Day

2011-09-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

Today has been our monthly poetry day and as usual it has been a lovely afternoon. We are still meeting in W's conservatory and today the sun was so warm that two members had to have brollies up to shelter them from the sunshine.

We had a super selection of poetry - serious, funny, lyrical, modern, old, but all so enjoyable. Poetry was meant to be read aloud and somehow it is so much more enjoyable when it is read out loud than when one reads it to oneself.

Before we began our reading though S told us about the origins of Indian Summer. We are certainly having an Indian Summer here at the moment - days of pure, unbroken sunshine, warm temperatures and early morning mist. Perfect Autumn days and we are making the most of them up here in the Dales.

I think we had all assumed that the term 'Indian Summer' probably referred in some way to the sub-continent of India. No such thing. Apparently the most likely origin of the term relates to the North American Indian, particularly in New England and New York. Here raiding parties would take place if there was a thaw in January because of course the raiders could not be tracked back to their village if there were no snow tracks to follow. Or one other explanation is that when there was a warm break in the weather squash and corn were harvested.

You learn something every month at our poetry group - as well as a nice plate of cakes, courtesy of W, plenty of laughs and chat - and above all beautiful, varied poetry.

New arrivals and old friends.

2011-09-27T06:48:00.000-07:00

The sheep have begun to arrive. They are hefted sheep - this means that they live on the tops of the Buttertubs Pass between Wensleydale and Swaledale and the mothers teach their young to stay in the designated area. They pass this information on from one generation to the next (although one or two always go missing to pastures new). I have taken a photograph to show you but not a single sheep looked up!

A Swaledale is recognisable by its white nose. All noses were deeply buried in the lush green grass; hardly surprising when you consider they have spent months on the slopes where the grass is quite sparse. They will not have seen the like of this before and will gorge themselves for a day or two (usually resulting in a bout of diarrhoea) before settling down for the winter.

On our walk this afternoon I managed to take a photograph which encapsulates all that is going on in farming around here today. This is our neighbour's farm. In the foreground there is grass cut ready for baling up into late-crop silage for the Winter Then, beyond the beck (the line of longer grass) the new green shoots of next year's barley crop are just coming through. Beyond that is a strip of stubble where the corn has been cut and the straw led away. This stubble will be waiting for eventual ploughing in. In the far distance our neighbour is ploughing a big field ready to sow with some crop before the Winter. And beyond that the green fields to the horizon - all of which will house sheep over the Winter.

While we are on the subject, I notice that my calendar for this month has a picture
of a field of corn which has been harvested. The straw has been baled up to be collected and used for feed/bedding over the Winter. However, the caption says 'Hay Bales near Pickering, North Yorkshire'. So here - once and for all - is the difference between Hay and Straw. Hay is grass which has been cut and dried in the sun until it is brittle and golden. Then (very sweet-smelling) it is baled up and stored for feed in the Winter. (Our hay barn is a favourite place for hedgehogs to over-winter as it gets nice and warm. The cats use it as their winter home too).
Straw is the stalks of any corn crop (oats, barley, wheat), left after the ears are harvested. This is baled up and taken to the farm where it is used either for bedding or - often - chopped up and added to animal feed.

Coming back home through the front garden, I notice that the carnation/pink given to me as a present by Rosemary (Share my Garden on my sidebar) has made a nice sturdy little plant before Winter. And the lovely 'wild' sweet pea plant, given to me by N and S (if you are reading this N and S - thank you) is still flourishing and making lots of nice seed pods which I hope to dry so that I can grow my own next year. All over the garden clumps of Schizostylus are in full bloom. I do love their cheerful red colour - it brightens up the garden no end.

##I have just been told off by the farmer because the green in the middle distance (beyond the beck) is not next year's barley coming up, it is grass which is growing well and may very well get another cut if the weather holds - as it is forecast to do. The Times says it will be warmer here than in Hawaii by the weekend. How about that?

The sheep are coming.

2011-09-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

Any day now the pedigree Swaledale sheep will be coming for Winter. The three fields where they will start their stay have been made ready all but the blackberry briars, which are sticking out into the field. One thing is for sure - if there is a thorny briar a sheep will get stuck to it. So this afternoon the farmer is going round the hedges cutting back the briars and loading them on to his tractor bucket ready to put on the bonfire.

Tess and I had a walk round the field - she off the lead for the first time with me. When she was small she used to chase rabbits and not come back when called so I have since always taken her on a long lead. However, today I thought it was time she had a chance to redeem herself and I must say each time I called her she came back and got a stroke. So hopefully she has grown up now and can frolic about in the fields to her heart's content. She always goes with the farmer without her lead but I am not agile enough to go after her if she doesn't come when called.

I think the Little Grey Men (do you know the book of that name by BB?) have taken up temporary residence under our Scots pines - these look just like little elf houses to me. So tonight I shall be looking out for Cloudberry and Sneezewort.

Autumn walk.

2011-09-25T06:40:00.000-07:00

When the farmer set off this morning with his walking group it was pouring with rain and there was a thick mist - I thought that the lot of them were mad. Now ,four hours later, the sun is shining and it is really warm.

Tess and I had our walk down the lane. It is not easy walking as the muck leading season has begun and you do have to watch where you are putting your feet. There is a slight breeze and the early rain has meant that the leaves are pretty heavy and the breeze is blowing them off the trees. The air is full of leaves and the scent of dying vegetation (mixed with the muck!)

On the stone walls the lichen shines golden in the sunlight; the recent damp warm weather seems to have enhanced it. In the distance the tops of the deciduous larches in Forty Acre wood are already showing golden. The air is full of the sight and sound of rooks and there is a very autumnal feeling everywhere. We keep having to step back on to the verge as it is a chapel Sunday and all the traffic comes down our lane to the chapel in the next village.

When we arrive back at the gate I notice that the Cotoneaster horizontalis has produced a lovely crop of red beads to tempt the blackbirds. I do hope they leave them for a while - they make such a cheery picture and once the blackbirds find them they seem to almost disappear overnight.

In the farmyard a family of rabbits has discovered the lawn under the Scots Pine trees - as I stood in the bedroom window this morning five young rabbits were happily cropping the grass and although I suggested to the farmer that they were doing as good a job as a lawn mower, he was not impressed and went into Mr McGregor mode - so watch out rabbits - he is on the warpath!