Down on the Farm

SATURDAY

Well, that was an absolutely ideal Holiday day, was Friday. The sort we all wish for and really never have. A day in which I did Absolutely Nothing. Nothing at all. I didn’t leave the house. I barely set foot out of the lounge room!

We are down on the farm at Beaworthy, near Okehampton in Devon. The weather yesterday was absolutely awful. Howling gales, relentless rain, swirling and nasty. We abandoned our plans for a walk on the beach. Am prepared for all weather. I have brought my weatherproofs and my gumboots and walking shoes and two sorts of hats and everything. I am also prepared for seriously inclement weather. I got out my current stitching project and stitched the day away. It’s going to be a garden sampler. I have now finished the peas and made a start on the lavender planter. Plus we ate. Porridge for breakfast. Ham and cheese buffet for lunch. Roast gammon for dinner. And cakes and tea throughout the day. Definitely no weighing of me for some weeks to come! Mike and Rosie had to go outside from time to time – there are animals to feed. Though no chickens this time. The last one was eaten by a buzzard quite recently :( Must remember when our chicken run is being made to put a lid on it. We too have buzzards. Rosie’s sister Sandra pottered about with Rosie and sat about and read her Harry Potter book. Even The Builder, unusually for him, sat and played on the computer and chatted to Mike and did Nothing At All.

I think the weather is expected to be slightly better today. I might actually step outside!

We came down on Thursday and had a remarkably good run down. We stopped in Clay Cross on the way to buy calendars and things, then ambled off to the M1. We were delayed by traffic, rain and fog for a bit; that cleared and, apart from a hold up at Bristol, trundled without impediment down to the West Country. Mind you, I am enormously grateful that we didn’t want to go into Bristol. The slip roads off the M5 in both directions were at a complete standstill and backed up for miles! Can’t think what the attraction could possibly have been in Bristol at half two or so on a Thursday afternoon. Sales, I guess, but it seems a funny time for people to indulge in the sales.

We were indulging in the sales on Wednesday. I managed to murder my cake mixer at the cake party a couple of weeks ago. Into Currys then to see what’s there. Ah – a food processor for half price. £50. Good one. Oh – and look at that dinky little LCD television. Very cute. Integrated DVD player. Let’s have that too. It can go in the dining room and the pink/green/yellow screened TV that’s there now can go upstairs into the spare room. Mind you, it’s been quite well behaved over Christmas. The screen has been clear the whole time, I think. Got home and started unpacking. That food processor has sooo many bits an pieces. Not just the cake mixing bit, but a whisk, a blender, a grater, a grinder, a juicer, other bits that I can’t identify. Excellent. £50 well spent! And I’ve tested the cake mixer. Clarissa came around for afternoon tea and I made a lemon torte with it. And very nice it was too.

It was good to see Clarissa. Haven’t seen her since she left SHU and moved to Leeds Met. We took a tour around the estate, drank tea and ate cake, chatted. Nice, leisurely afternoon.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, The Builder and I have been planning the new orchard and plotting the allotment. Mike has a large pile of horse manure which has been rotting for several years ready for us. We have come armed with rubble sacks. I hope the weather tomorrow is sufficiently calm for us to bag it up. It’s practically rotted down to potting compost! Need more; the planned asparagus bed would really enjoy this sort of growing material

SUNDAY

The intention was that we should be up this morning, bright and early, shovelling the muck heap into rubble sacks. Half eight, we thought. Woke up at 06:45 and decided that it was much too early to be creeping around and making tea. Went back to sleep for an hour or so.

Woke up again. Yoiks! It was quarter to nine!!!!! Check to see if The Builder is still breathing. Fortunately yes! Despatched him for tea. By half past nine, so a mere hour late, we were outside with Mike merrily shovelling 7 year old horse much. It’s so well rotted that it’s almost back to a rich, friable loam. The van is full of 30 rubble sacks of it and there’s about a third of the heap let. I’ve also got a couple of bags of last night’s offerings to add to the compost heap. Excellent. We are now showered and cleaned up and waiting for breakfast.

I did manage to leave the house yesterday. Twice! In the morning Mike, The Builder and I went into Okehampton to do a bit of shopping. I’ve not actually been into Okie before, just past through in the car. It’s a pretty little town with some interesting shops and a castle which I think might pay further investigation one summer. Okehampton was bathed in sunshine, a little oasis of good weather surrounded by cloud. As we came out of Waitrose the rain was just starting, heralding the onset of the storms which were forecast for later. We came back, watching the rain and clouds rolling in from Bodmin and Dartmoor, and drove round the water board access to see Mike’s new pond and bridge without necessarily having to get our feet wet. Then back to the farm to discover that Jeanette, Matthew and Rebecca were going to be later arriving than anticipated. Hmm. An early, alternative tiffin then and lunch when they arrive.

Then I got muddy. My boots got very very muddy. You couldn’t see the spots at the bottom of them! The rain had lifted in the afternoon, so Mike, The Builder and I went for a wander around the new underground reservoirs the water board are putting in. They’ve bought part of the farm and are hiring another field for access and for putting the soil heaps from the excavations. It is very very VERY wet round there. Very wet. And not a little muddy. But the reservoir structures are really quite fascinating. Had I realised we were actually going in, I would have taken my camera. There’s no work going on at the moment, for the Christmas and New Year holidays, so there was nobody around. But I’m fairly certain that, even if Mike is allowed to wander around the site, he isn’t supposed to take visitors into the actual construction site! Still, it was very interesting and I did enjoy wandering around in the mud and wet. And even when the rain started again, I was still all right. My waxed jacket and tasselled hat kept me nice and toastie warm.

I also have lots of seeds. Mike’s son in law acquired thousands and thousands of packets two or three years ago. They are out of date but should still germinate. I really must go through them and my existing seed box when we get home and see what we still lack.

More food. More wine. General chatter and so to bed. Another quiet day. They are very pleasant are quiet days, but I am beginning to get bored. Had we been at home in very inclement weather I have lots of things set aside to do. Sort out the photos, sort out the pile of papers, sort out The Builder’s accounts. Can’t do those here. Not used to sitting about doing nothing!

Nearly time for brunch. Here’s to the very last day of 2006. Wonder where the year went. I quite clearly remember it starting, in a blaze of excessive heat, fire bans and fireworks, only two or three months ago.

Tuesday

We had one heck of a storm on Sunday afternoon. Absolute deluge. And a swirling, twirling, spiralling wind. All the little birds, generally legion around the feeders, had completely vanished. I’m not surprised. I was rather glad to be under cover myself.

And if I had three Christmas Eves last weekend, I’ve more or less had three Sundays this weekend. Quiet, gently lit afternoons in front of the fire. Reading and chatting and lazing. Rosie made late breakfasts and roast dinners (apart from Saturday which was lasagne). I was a tad bored on Saturday afternoon, it’s true. But once I realised that I was having a sort of Groundhog’s Day of Sundays it all became quite pleasant. And, of course, this Sunday was New Years Eve. Even better.

We played a strange sort of Uno after dinner. Uno Extreme, I think it is. If you can’t go, or when certain cards are played, instead of picking up the discard pile, you have to press a button on a machine. And sometimes no cards come out. And other times whole streams of cards spew out and pretty much cover you. Was rather fun. And very satisfactorily filled in the hours until midnight.

They had a fantastic fireworks display in London, over the Thames. The Eye was turned into a vari-coloured giant Catherine Wheel. Was really spectacular. Not that we were in London, of course. We watched it on the Beeb. Even Rebecca was still up. Not bad going for an 8 year old.

Despite a late, late night, The Builder and I actually managed to be up on time for our planned 9 o’clock departure back to Tupton. We do, after all, have a van full of much sacks to offload when we get home. And we rather fancied being ahead of the New Years Day traffic. And, despite the early start to the day (by recent standards, at least), Mike still managed to rustle up bacon and scrambled eggs and toast for us.

And so home. We had an amazing run. After stopping for fuel just before joining the M5 after Okehampton, we didn’t stop once. Not even for traffic lights (The Builder ran all the red ones :-p - No, no; there weren’t any!). We didn’t have any weather to speak of apart from skirting around the edge of a very ferocious looking rain storm near Worcester. There was an absolutely magnificent double rainbow, but we didn’t catch much more than the tail edge of the storm. And we hit some quite strong winds on the M1. But nothing too dramatic. And we were home in 4.5 hours. The Builder can’t have been speeding. The van was filled to the gunwales and couldn’t go beyond the speed limit. Nice one. So The Builder unloaded all the muck while I made pea and ham soup for a late lunch.

Then the weather found us. Lots of rain. Lots of wind. We retired indoors for the evening and are watching our way through Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on the new telly with integrated DVD player. Very nice.

The Builder went back to work today. I did not. I go back tomorrow. It was something of a shock to have the alarm go at 05:00! And I had forgotten to reset the timer on the central heating. I reset it last week because I couldn’t see any point in having the house warmed for two hours before anyone got up. I have now put it back. I also can’t see any point in heating the house for two hours after everyone has left.

In the event, The Builder only worked a half day. They were let out at 12:30. He’s shifted all the manure from the driveway down to the kitchen garden. And I have made a tiny, tiny start on clearing it. I’ve cleared some of the bramble and plastic from the “orchard”. Harder than I was expecting. The brambles have grown over, under and through the plastic. The plastic is disintegrating. Knackered now. And my back is very, very cross. So is my knee. And my wrist. Not to mention my shoulder. I’ve been and had a bath and am now having a restorative gin. It’s going to take time, this garden, I fear. Oh well. Slow and steady…… On the other hand, once the brambles have been dug out and I’ve finished moving the plastic, that side will be ready to receive fruit trees. The other side is going to be very much more like hard work. I have found rocks and bricks and general chaos while I’ve been wandering around today.

Happy New Year, everybody. I hope 2007 brings us all prosperity, health and general excitement and adventure.