Tag Archives: geese

A new arrival (inanimate)

Posted on by
Reply

Something new and beautiful has entered my life:  I bought a piano on ebay on Saturday!  I spotted it mainly because it’s made by a local firm and has mellow golden woodwork which came out rather nicely in the photo.  It had a reserve of £50, and when auction time approached I prepared for battle.  But – get this – none came!  Absolutely nobody but me wanted this piano and I secured it for £51, which seems an amazingly good deal when you think of the workmanship that’s gone into it – the wires and felt bits and wood bits and everything.

You may already realise that I’m new to this game.  When I was growing up, an elegant grand piano lived in an unregarded corner of the drawing room, but the only time it ever gave tongue was when the cat walked up the octaves.  Fun but not cultural.

Anyway, my new piano arrived in a van yesterday, ushered in by a muscle bound bloke called Will and his mate, who needed a cup of tea afterwards and said they had never realised pianos were so heavy.  Will added that pianos made him come out all over because he used to have lessons from a bird who looked like a witch and shouted at him.  Note to self:  find a teacher who looks friendly and speaks quietly.

The only tiny detached bee’s leg in my honeypot of joy is that, although it looks delightful with its marquetry and brass pedals, my new piano sounds like nothing on earth.  When everybody had gone outside, I lifted the lid and reverently pressed a key.  It didn’t work.  I tried another and was rewarded by a strange echoing twang.  I tried a third time and the cat gave me a reproachful stare and stalked out of the kitchen door.

Ultimately I aim to fill the house with gentle music, and hold impromptu concerts for family and close friends.  In the short term something needs to be done about the honky tonk/wild west saloon vibe.   Second note to self:  find a piano tuner.

Next time I write I’ll tell you about the recent stirring events in the hen run (will they never settle?)  In the mean time I’m going to have another amateur bash at the piano, and hope that this time the geese don’t line up against the window and yell at me like they did this morning when I attempted a basic scale.

Stinker Pinker

Posted on by
7

Just before we departed for Morocco, Porous our gander died flamboyantly of natural causes in a mound of grey and white feathers, next to the water trough and surrounded by grieving wives.  He had bitten almost everybody in the neighbourhood in fifteen busy years, but I mourned him most sincerely.

This was mainly because Porous liked me.  It’s always heart-warming if an animal expresses an obvious preference, because there is no hidden agenda.  Porous would chase muscle-bound builders over the wall, but keep me company if I pegged out washing in his orchard, chatting with quiet intensity about the day’s events.  I miss him very much.

But the vacuum he left needed filling and as soon as we arrived back from our travels I looked for a new gander, which proved surprisingly difficult.  I was offered goslings, but the geese wanted a proper chap, tall and strong, not a fuzzy baby.  Then I heard of a man who knew a man who might be able to help, and when I rang his number he said that he had a gander which he’d sell to me if I drove over that evening.

It had been a busy day and I didn’t really want an hour’s drive (each way).  But the geese looked at me with enormous bereaved eyes, and so I heaved a sigh, packed the dogs into the car and set off.  When I arrived at the address I had been given (a motley collection of sheds) I was presented with a pig feed sack with a hole cut in it, out of which stuck the neck of the most battered gander I have ever seen.  He’d been in the sack a long time and (to put it delicately) the sack was awash.

I placed him carefully in the passenger footwell, which had the best rubber mat, and drove home as quickly as possible.  The gander stared at me, the dogs stared at the gander, and the car filled rapidly with strong eau de gander – by the time we reached home our eyes watered and the gander was christened Stinker Pinker.

It was lovely to cut Pinker out of his horrible feed sack and let him limp off into the soft green grass of the orchard.  He headed straight for the trough and had a long, long drink and bath.  He’s missing most of his feathers and has been sprayed with blue dye, but the geese think he’s wonderful which is what matters.  I haven’t got an idea of his character yet, but I’ll keep you informed.

 

Early Signs of Spring (smallholder version)

Posted on by
2

I recently read a lovely little bit of prose about ‘Early Signs of Spring’.  There was a lot of stuff about shy tendrils of green and early dew-kissed violets.  We do have those here of course, except that they get eaten by the sheep as soon as they emerge, especially the dew-kissed violets.  I can’t think why the latter keep coming back year after year, when they only last a nanosecond once flowering.  It’s a triumph of optimism over experience in the plant world, but I’m so glad they do it because they are divinely pretty before Foxy spots them and liquidates them.

I’ve got a few Early Signs of Spring of my own and here they are:  every one of them is infallible.

1.  Tulip gathers all the clean straw in the goose shed into a vast pyramid and lays a huge white egg in the epicentre.  This is shortly joined by others, equally precious.

2.  Porous realises he’s going to be a Dad again and clears all other lifeforms out of the orchard so he can pamper Tulip in peace.  I’m allowed in because I feed them, as long as I don’t linger or look at the Eggs.

3.  All the dogs decide that the only place they want to be is the orchard, having ignored it all winter.  The days suddenly fill with the slapping sound of Porous’ orange rubber feet and his furious honking as he chases dogs, and the dogs wild cries of joy as they zoom out of the bottom gate and reappear at the top one and repeat the process.  Indie is particularly adept at this particular Early Sign of Spring, such a quick learner for a whippet puppy.  He appears in the orchard, ambles casually up to Tulip and the Eggs, and when Porous charges up in a froth of fury, goaded on to madness by Tulip’s wild screams of indignation, Indie slams into fifth gear and effortlessly accelerates away.  Then he does it again.

4.  The bantams, who haven’t laid anything since October, simultaneously come into lay.  Suddenly their (capacious and appealing) nest box fills up with small white and pink eggs, and then they make a group decision that Tulip’s nest looks nicer and they all want to lay their eggs there.

5.  Tulip discovers bantams sitting on her throne of honour, flips, and drives screaming bantams out of the goose house with rude shoutings and gestures.  Many feathers are shed.

6.  Scarab the cat (why? why?) chooses a moment when Tulip and Porous are outdoors grazing, goes into the goose house to admire the Eggs and gets trapped when Tulip returns.  Tulip freaks, tells Porous that there is a Mountain Lion looking at their babies, and everybody concerned rushes around the orchard yelling and gesticulating.

It all happens every year.  It’s all happening now.  At least I know that Spring is just around the corner.

Indie. A pirate.

Posted on by
3

Apart from Flat Whippets, I haven’t written about Indie for a while and this is an oversight because he is quite something.  For a whippet he is most unusual, as he is afraid of nothing and he is never cold.  But then there is his alter ego – the Black Moth, a pirate.  And for a pirate he is completely typical, swashbuckling around the place looking for treasure to pillage.  Yesterday’s booty, for example, was the whistle out of the Aga kettle:  he seized it from the kitchen worktop and sailed off into the garden with it where he presumably made it walk the plank, because it was never seen again.  Now the kettle has no whistle, and keeps boiling dry.

He is growing into a very beautiful whippet, shining black with white extremities.  The overall effect is of a dog wearing immaculate evening dress, including white gloves all round.  Training goes in leaps and bounds:  he is intelligent and knows what is wanted, but the question is whether he will bend his proud spirit to do what is required.  Pirates are like that – they don’t do mindless obedience.

We’re coming to an agreement that hens and sheep are off limits when it comes to piratical activity.  Geese, on the other hand, he sees as fair game.  When the Black Moth sees geese heaving over the horizon, he puts his vessel on war footing, loads his cannons and he’s away.  You can practically see the cutlass between his teeth and his gold earring glinting as he prepares to board the enemy.  The geese are well up for it, every one of them a scurvy varmint.  Then we have the grand naval battle, with Porous (gander) firing all cannons at the Black Moth, who leaps, laughing, out of the way and then swings in out of the sun on the rigging, his cutlass dripping with the blood of the unwashed.  Anyway, it’s very noisy and usually ends with the Black Moth insolently chewing up a cast-off feather just out of reach of the hysterical geese.

Indoors, he tends to put off his piracy (apart things like the kettle whistle, just to keep his hand in) and is a delightful chap to have around the place.  He is polite, clean in his habits and excellent company.  He confers style on a chair just by lounging on it.  The Labradors regard him with mixed emotions: they are very fond of mild mannered Indie, but when he hoists the skull and crossbones, they retreat to their baskets and don’t venture out until the Black Moth has hung up his cutlass for the day.

The Orchard Field

Posted on by
6

I’m spending a lot of time in the Orchard Field at the moment, poulticing Slip’s foot.  It’s not a field we use very often, as the other fields have better access to the road, the stables, the stream etc.  The plus point about the Orchard Field is that it has no mud, because it’s been empty over the winter, so is the perfect place for a horse with a hole in his hoof to convalesce.

Slip’s had a foot abscess, poor chap.  It was undeniably painful and not helped by the thigh-deep liquid mud in the gateways of the main fields, but he’s made the most of it because he is a flower.  Harry, who’s tough as granite, would have risen above the whole thing long ago.  Slip, on the other hand, still lifts a trembling limb in the air and hobbles theatrically about on three wobbly chestnut legs every time I visit.  It’s a different story when I’m watching him quietly from afar, he hardly limps at all when he forgets about himself.

Anyway, back to the Orchard Field.  It’s lovely.  Because I’m around so much, the predators are keeping their distance and I’m letting the hens out of their muddy hellhole of a henrun to strut and amble in the grass.  They are thrilled, and they all have bright red combs to show that they are laying eggs which they cleverly secrete where I will never find them.  Until, that is, the day that I’m strimming around the base of an apple tree and hit a long-abandoned nest and the air fills with stinking gloop.

The geese are well chuffed too, because they now have access to the big tub of water I’m keeping filled for the horses.  The geese leap in with glad cries and swim about, looking like enormous grey and white bathroom ducks.  It’s not a habit I encourage because it grosses the horses out to have geese swimming in their drinking water (which I can understand) so I’m constantly having to empty and refill the thing.

Most of all it’s the wildlife that I’m enjoying so much.  Because the field is so little used, it’s got a busy population of the sort of people who like a bit of privacy.  This morning there was a covey of partridges picking their way under the wall, and there are several magnificent pheasants that seem to regard the field as their own personal fiefdom.  I often hear and see buzzards flying overhead, and I can understand this because the field itself is a carpet of small furry squeaky things.  It’s all go in the Orchard Field, and because I spend a long time standing motionless under Slip’s furry stomach fiddling about with the poultice, the local population forget I’m there and I become part of what’s going on.  It’s great.

CL Xmas Fair – there and back again

Posted on by
10

Well, I’m back!  The Country Living Christmas Fair was quite amazing – I’ve never seen so many Christmas tree decorations/silk scarves/cinnamon candles etc and (this is important) so many people buying them, in my life.  I’ve been to plenty of Christmas Fairs in my time, but this really took the biscuit.  And of course it was great to be part of it, and siphon off some of the happy shoppers to come and listen to me burbling about my book, and the people and animals that made it happen.

It’s a lovely thing to be able to talk about something close to your heart, and have an audience who laughs with you, and shows genuine interest in the pretty pictures up on the screen.  If any of you are reading this, thank you for being there and special thanks with extra gold stars to the brave souls who asked questions afterwards.

But when I had finished my talks, and signed my books, and threaded my way out through the exit with a steady stream of people carrying Christmas presents for the masses in bulging carrier bags, and trundled along on the tube and then leaped onto a train at Paddington, and finally got home – my, it was good to stand on the bridge over the stream and just let the sounds and scents of the countryside wash over me.

Home brings you back to earth, too.  I was still on a bit of a high, as I stood on the bridge, but there were the geese to shut in.  And the hens.  And the sheep to find in the darkness and check.  And Slip wanted an apple, and Harry bit Slip because he wanted one first so Slip needed his injured feelings soothed.  And the dogs were pleased to see me, but reminded me that it was actually their supper time.  And for the cat too.  And when I was slow with supper, Scarab brought a mouse indoors instead and let it go.  And then we had a mouse hunt around the kitchen with the mouse leading and going like the clappers pursued by me and the dogs (Scarab had lost interest in the mouse when he placed it on the floor:  he was just making a point anyway).  I opened the kitchen door, and the mouse shot through it and into the night, and by then the glamour of London was a distant memory.

So I’m back and it was fab.  And to coin a phrase (John Denver?) “gee but it’s great to be back home!”

 

 

Snow! (aargh!)

Posted on by
5

I was feeding the animals at an early hour yesterday when it suddenly got (even) colder and (even) darker and started to sleet.  This was bad enough, but then it began to snow, great white blankets of the stuff.  The hen said ‘blow this for a lark’ and went straight back to bed.  The geese seemed unaffected, their orange rubber legs must contain some sort of antifreeze, and they trundled around the orchard as usual looking for apples beneath the snow.  The sheep seemed quite pleased, it reminded them of their ancestral roots in the Shetland Islands.  And the dogs did the goofy Labrador thing, and jumped about with snow on their noses being cheerful.

But I thought “OH NO! NOT ALREADY!!”  I’ve never got used to winter.  I know that it’s the time when the earth can rest, and we can rush about in bobble hats throwing snowballs and singing cheerful songs, but I just hate being cold.  My experience of winter is that the fields turn into mud, and the water troughs freeze, and my fingers want to fall off.  I love spring/summer/autumn but you can keep winter.  For two joyful years we lived in Australia, and there they just missed it out completely.  In Melbourne we went from autumn to spring in one easy movement, and it felt great.

I rushed indoors and lit a woodburning stove and put on my seasonal Nordic jumper, the one with knitted stags in it, and tried to get into the winter vibe.  But then the sun came out, surprisingly warm, and melted all the snow.  The hens re-emerged, the geese chased the hens, the Labradors had more jolly fun jumping in puddles and I felt too hot in my Nordic jumper.

We’ve been reprieved for the moment.  But only for the moment.  Winter is on its way alright, and I’ve got my annual desire to emigrate back to Oz which only wears off in March.

Chutney (with help)

Posted on by
4

I’ve been making plum chutney.  I’m not a naturally gifted cook but I back myself with chutney – for some reason it turns out nicely, as does Christmas pudding and (surprisingly) cup cakes.  Anything else I cook tends to be singed or strangely liquid.  I find chutney satisfying at every step of the process, so I happily headed out into the orchard to begin gathering the raw materials.

The geese rule the orchard and were most accommodating when I approached the apple trees.  This has not been a great year for apples and they had eaten all the windfalls.  So they encouraged me up my ladder and then waited below, devouring any apples that I dropped by mistake.  On a primeval level I was playing the part of a chimpanzee swinging through the rainforest canopy picking fruit, while the geese were the forest hogs, hanging around in the leaf litter and gobbling my discards.

Then I went into the garden where the plum trees live.  There are even fewer plums than apples this year and also (every cloud has a silver lining) hardly any wasps.  I suppose it’s been so cold and wet that they have spent the summer indoors.  But any wasps that are still around make a bee-line (wasp-line?) for the plums and gorge themselves.  Then they fall off and lie in a plum-soaked stupor underneath the plum tree, which is where Duffy the peacock comes into the picture.  To me, wasps look bristly, leggy and poisonous, but to Duffy they look like a nourishing snack and he just snaps them up.  So I carefully picked some plums, the wasps lay around in attitudes beneath me, and Duffy made a pig of himself.

Next up were the tomatoes in the greenhouse, and here the hens came into their own.  They love coming into the greenhouse, because it’s full of interesting piles of sacks where they can lay an illicit egg in comfort, and interesting trays of seedlings which they can scratch up.  I don’t love them coming into the greenhouse for all the above reasons.  So I collected tomatoes, keeping the door shut, and took them back to the house.  When I next went up past the greenhouse, there was Curly watching me expressionlessly through the glass, waiting to be let out.  Yes, she had been in there and yes, she had scratched in the tray of winter lettuce seedlings that will now never make us nice and healthy in the coming months.  And I just know that one day, a few weeks hence, I will pick up a sack and a rotten egg will fall out and smash on the floor and fill the atmosphere with horror for days.

Still, for the record, the plum chutney is now made and looks most promising.

Preparing for guests …

Posted on by
8

We’ve got visitors coming to stay this weekend. I’m proud of our guest accommodation, which used to be a stable when we arrived here and has now been transformed into a little annex. I superintended my first year’s lambing in what is now the bedroom, and first watched the miraculous transformation of a big fat sheep into a slimmer sheep complete with two woolly little lambs more or less where the double bed now stands.

Today it’s a warm and welcoming place (come to think of it, it was also warm and welcoming when it was a stable, just with more straw in the decor). But as I got it ready for our guests, I was working under difficulties. Who else, as they make up the bed for their guests, discovers an attractive pattern of brown inverted V shapes along the bottom of the double sheet? And knows with hideous clarity that they are muddy beak marks, and the geese have been hanging off the washing again (unnoticed). The marks were slightly too brown, and slightly too many for me to pass off with a light laugh, so I’ve had to make the bed up with an enormous king sized sheet that thankfully was clean and waiting in the airing cupboard.

And who else, while they are whizzing in and out with towels and books (guess what their bedside reading it? Yup you’ve got it – Tales from a Stone Cottage!) has to remember to close the door every time or else an enormous cat will sneak in, hide himself away and then emerge when all is quiet to do his personal grooming on the clean duvet cover, then greet the guests with a purr like a chainsaw and his collection of dried frogs which he has hooked out from underneath the larger items of furniture? I try so hard to find and destroy the dried frogs before our guests arrive – they must hop in unnoticed during the summer when the door is often open, and that is their big mistake – but Scarab will always find extra ones and bring them out for our guests education and amusement.

And who else, when they are picking some late autumn flowers in the garden to make a pretty posy on the windowsill, has to run the gauntlet of a peacock who has decided that Today All The Flowers Are His? And pecks at your unguarded hand every time you try to pick one?

And how many other people, as they begin the countdown to when the guests are due to arrive (and these are much loved friends, but distinctly urban) notice with horror that the farmer next door is just commencing his next round of slurry spreading? And by the time the guests arrive, the air will be humming with a smell so profound that ‘agricultural’ doesn’t really do it justice?

Ah well, I’ve done my best. And I’m just praying that the end result will be classified under the heading of ‘rural charm’. And also I hope that wherever you are, you have a happy and relaxing weekend!

Rain (again)

Posted on by
2

Rain.  It’s always at the forefront of my mind at the moment.  I’m sure I can remember a time when green, trembling Spring developed into glorious warm Summer followed by mellow golden Autumn then by crisp icy Winter but all we seem to get in this particular corner of England is grey soggy sameness.  Whatever the time of year it’s damp, mild-ish, grey/white skies, heavy dew and usually drizzle.

This morning for instance I struggled into wellies, coat, hat to go and do the round of feeding and checking animals.  A horse came past and a friendly voice hailed me, and when I looked up all I could see was a cone of Gortex riding along.  Could have been anybody – all identifying features of both horse and rider were swathed in waterproofs.  It’s like living in a grey-tiled bathroom with the shower constantly dribbling cold-ish water down on us.

The English, bless them, rise to the occasion.  We still plan fetes, garden parties, shows and ploughing matches and either trudge about in them underneath serious hats and umbrellas saying things like “I’m sure they said it was going to improve by teatime”, or if they get cancelled “do you remember five years ago?  It was lovely then”.  But really, by the law of averages, we deserve just a little let up soon.

We have a sort of stream running through the property.  I say ‘sort of’ because it’s a winterbourne – only flows in the winter months.  In between it’s just a grassy ditch in which lambs like to hide and then jump out to surprise their mothers.  Not this year though: it’s run steadily since April.  In a way it’s nice, because as time goes by it looks more and more stream-like and I start to wonder when the first minnows and crayfish will arrive.  But it’s not spring-fed, it’s just a drainage ditch and it’ll never really be a proper stream.  It’s a shame for this year’s lambs.  Without a ditch to play tigers in they were at a loose end until I brought a bale of straw into the field for them.  Then they played king of the castle instead, until the bale gave up the unequal struggle and exploded, and their mothers boringly ate it.

The horse field is mud, and the sheep field is dripping grass, and the hens are on strike because their dust baths aren’t dusty.  The geese love it, and spaddle about in the puddles sneering at all the less aquatic animals.  The dogs are continually getting muddy up to their armpits and coming indoors and shaking messily over everything.  Cat gets wet and zips rapidly upstairs and onto somebody’s bed where he cleans himself thoroughly and transfers the debris to the duvet cover.  And my wellies leak.  Please come back, sun, you are so badly missed!