Breaking the stay

 It's been another packed month or so on the farm.  We've continued our programme of tree felling in earnest; we've had the contractors in the fields ploughing, power-harrowing, tilling, liming....now fertilising and rolling with some seed thrown into the mix;  the builders have gone and as a result the ED is now installed in his annexe and a distant memory ago we had the Easter holidays where we all went a bit feral.

We've now cleared a triangle of ground in front of the annexe which faces west.  This is our sunset side and in the past week with this glorious weather and wall to wall sunshine we've had the small girl's supper on the lawn every evening while we light our bbq to toast a few tasty local morsels - our tree fella also shoots in the local woods and farmland (necessary culling) and sent us to the local butcher....the venison steaks were all gone but we managed to snap up some lovely venison sausages which were a treat.

Lower East - to the right, ploughed and being limed.

Most evenings we are treated to a magnificent sunset over the valley with pink skies and an orange ball hanging over the horizon.  Now the trees have been felled we can see over the valley and beyond.   

Rain is forecast, and for once we are thrilled as it will water in our lime and fertiliser and help to set the seeds.  The contractors have been very busy and we are grateful not only to their powerful machinery but the advice and help they are giving us.  We took a soil sample from Lower East, our worst field that has been neglected for years, and had it analysed.  This field had been let to go wild and as a result was 6 foot high with brambles, nettles, weed, ragwort and all the things most farmers hate.  As expected it needed some fixing so 10 tonnes of lime has been spread.  We thought this sounded quite a lot but it was a mere pinch to the contractor who took about 4 minutes to zoom around the 5 acre field spreading the lime far and wide.  It is now being power-harrowed, then fertilized, seeded and rolled, and we are crossing fingers the brambles don't fight back.  We avoided spraying weed killer in the autumn, mainly as I don't like the chemicals - hopefully it won't mean our efforts will be thwarted.  One agronomist we spoke to has said we'll be wasting our time if we don't spray...watch this space - we're gunning for a nice green meadow to take a good hay crop later in the year. 

 Our Easter holidays were wonderful.  For a start the weather was superb and just about every day we were outdoors having fun and doing stuff on the farm.  Two days were previously arranged and booked; a trip to the theatre in Barnstaple to see 'The Tiger who came to Tea' and an arts and crafts day on a farm very locally.  Both were brilliant in their own special ways and we'll hope to be regular visitors to the farm for more pottery and craft over the summer holidays.  It was a very free and open space to be creative, for children as well as adults.  There was an array of crafty things for the children to do with just enough guidance to get them going but otherwise they had a total free hand in their own creativity.  The small girl made an Easter chick in a clay basket and a clay Meerkat; as well as doing an array of painting, marbling, drawing and general funtime.

For the Easter weekend we had a visit from Granny and Grampy which is always welcome along with the cakes, trifles and other culinary yummies that Granny brings along.  We decided that the chocolate police were not coming to our farm over Easter so we enjoyed being highly indulgent morning, noon and night!  We also had visitors from our old life - a close friend from Cape Town came to stay for a couple of nights.  Its always nice to catch up on the current goings-on and I was happy to note that I had no regrets of leaving, hearing all her news of our old homeland.  Easter Saturday was our Easter Egg Hunt - only a few of the small girl's friends could make it but no matter - we all had great fun charging around following the clues and finding the hidden treasure.  It takes me weeks to set the Hunt up - I make rhyming clues to send them from one location to another.  They enjoy it which makes me happy, and so its a win-win all round. 

We went a bit feral during the holidays and had to try hard to remember to do some basic daily things - like brushing hair (the small girl has Rapunzel like golden locks that need daily combing else the knot fairy gets in there and rummages about causing chaos.)  Bedtimes got later and later.  The dirt got more and more ingrained.  Lots of friends came to play.  We had a few sleepovers here.  And we all went camping on our lawn.  I was the only one who didn't stick it out and caved at 2am, cold and fed up....next time I have requested my own sleeping bag and not share it with a wide shouldered over six foot man.  The Ologist and I can do many many very successful  things together, but share a sleeping bag in a tent is definitely NOT one of them.  We all woke up in the night and the small girl and I visited the facilities quickly - she was determined to return to the tent and so jumped into my spot in the sleeping bag with her Daddy while I slipped off to my 700 thread count Egyptian cotton king sized heaven.  I'm not a camping wimp, but I do want to be moderately comfortable and definitely warm...my voice has been heard and the Ologist returned from a shopping mission with two brand new single adult modern sleeping bags.  Oh, did I mention the sleeping bags were possibly 'vintage' in that they had come from the ED's attic during a clear out many, many moons ago.

My 'growing room' is jamming.  There are seeds trays brimming with germinated seeds ready to plant out, or pot on, or place in bigger beds under cover.  We've got the obvious tomatoes, chillies, rocket, lettuce, spinach, beets and courgettes with a few side liners in the shape of a melon and few cornichon and gerkins.  I thought about growing the latter as we all love them pickled and seem to easily eat through a large jar a week.  There are also a few flowers seedlings in there - a free packet of zinnias and some cosmos - both good value garden annuals for their colourful and blousy show. 



seeds in the growing room

Outdoors in the veggie patch we have beans growing, peas planted, onions and potatoes in the ground, and a small nursery of flowering herbaceous perennials growing on and being nurtured until such times as I have a suitable place for them in the formal garden.   

The Ologist harvested a load of hazel a month or so ago before it came into leaf and has built us a wonderful bean pole wigwam.  The offcuts have been used to keep the birds off the newly planted onion sets.  My sweet peas that I planted back in the autumn, and thought would be far too early and never get going over the winter, have now transformed into two towering triffid like planters due to flower any day now.  I shall take great delight in picking them for a jam jar in the kitchen.

The Ologist made a wonderful surprise find in the garden the other day and together with the small girl they have named it The Purple Parrot Flower tree.  It is a magnolia, one of my favourites, and one that I was sad to find we didn't have here on first inspection.  The reason I didn't find one was that it was covered in brambles and closely planted amongst many other hedgerow trees that have now all been cleared.  This, together with a gnarly old wisteria have made my life here complete now!  The wisteria will need some very careful pruning as it has grown into itself and had no clear leader.  It will be a good challenge for me and one that may take a season or two to get established. 

Puppy day arrived last week.  We went to collect him and he yipped all the way home - we wished we'd taken our ear defenders.  Poor little chap had been separated from his brothers and mother and was telling us all about it.  Within a day of being here he settled beautifully and no longer yips when we put him in his crate for a bit of quiet time.  All of 9 weeks old, he is full of life and chewing.  We are all smitten - and bitten and scratched and licked and chased, and loving our new addition.  The other dog is non-plussed, not aggressive in any way, but not playing quite yet.  Once she lets her guard down they'll be away and having fun all day long.  The cats have taught him not to chase them with the obligatory claw bomp on the nose.  He is a Parsons Russell terrier - the long legged version of a Jack Russell.

I have been ringing regularly when the rookies session is on - once a week early evening and it is all beginning to make a bit more sense.  Last week was a bit of a shocker tho' - I broke the stay on the bell.  The 'stay' is a block of wood that helps to support the bell when it is upright.  It is designed to be sturdy, but it is made from Ash so it can break if given too rough a treatment.  The bell I usually ring is the 2nd, and many rookies have been ringing it recently so I was told that it wasn't my fault but that I was the unlucky one to be ringing it at the time.  The rope catapulted towards the ceiling, taking some of the skin off my hands with it at high speed.  Thankfully no further damage was done - apart from my pride of course - but I soon got over that and went back again yesterday to have a great session.  I rang so much that my arms are sore now and I can really feel like I've had a good work out.  This, I'm told, is the plight of a rookie ringer - we pull too hard and therefore end up fighting with half a tonne of bronze - instead of tickling it gently along.

One last photo - anyone know what it is?  The plant was here in a pot when we arrived.  Its a deciduous shrub, with small round fruits the size of a golf ball - it was all wizened up when we found it which doesn't help the identification process. We thought it was dead and have ignored it over the winter.  Sometime during the spring it jumped into life and has these beautiful pink flowers in clusters all along the stem.  Any ideas...?