She’s not wrong.   Annathevet is not only a good friend and exceptional vet; she is cursed by the fact that she has to deal with me professionally on a regular basis.   This means she has to let me ‘help’ her as she goes about her work here at the farm because I harbour secret fantasies of being her capable veterinary nurse.  She is very patient with me – I can do all sorts of unsavoury medical procedures competently because of her training.  She is also tolerant of my addiction to veterinary manuals and research papers on the internet – she even spells out the big words when she is making a diagnosis so that I can Google them correctly after she leaves.  This works fine when she is looking after my chickens, pigs, goats, sheep, ducks, rabbits and cats.  But not with the dogs.  Because of course then, she has to cope with my high levels of neurosis and anxiety too.  

On this particular visit she was at the farm to x-ray Dottie’s legs and determine the cause of a persistent limp.  While she set up the x-ray machine I began panicking about the need to sedate Dottie but Annathevet calmly let me wear the protective lead overall (how exciting!) and kept reminding me to breathe while she was sorting out the dog – who of course was fine.  After a cup of hot sweet tea for the shock I was fine too, and as a special treat I let her teach me how to empty Mabel’s anal glands – such fun!  

Annathevet then casually commented that she’d spent much of the previous night in A&E.  It transpired that on a house call two days previously the homeowner had asked if she could free a stray cat that was stuck behind their boiler. This kind of request isn’t unusual for Annathevet – her problem is that she’s too competent by half.  If she turned up to treat your guinea pig and you said ‘while you’re here would you mind rewiring the house, upholstering the sofa, cooking a gourmet dinner and teaching the kids to speak Chinese?’ – She’d just get stuck in.  Anyhow – I digress – in removing the stray cat (a feral Tom with giant cojones and an attitude to match) she sustained a major bite to her right arm which proceeded to swell up to Popeye proportions rendering her rather unwell with septicaemia.  When Annathevet feels ‘off colour’  you take it seriously (this is a woman who I think just bit down on a leather strap while giving birth to her two children).  So she took herself off to hospital (of course!) and demanded a massive dose of IV antibiotics – laughing off the Doctor’s suggestion that she should be admitted – and before you could say ‘catshavefilthymouths’ – she was straight back out on her rounds. 

The poor girl has had quite a week. But don’t worry – I’m going to cheer her up.  No we’re not going out for dinner. Nope, not a trip to the cinema either.  I’m going to let her teach me how to artificially inseminate the pigs!

Annathevet is camera shy - so a pic of Dottie will have to suffice!

The physical craving for greasy carbs on this particular day is fortunate because one of our regular houseguests – Suzanne – likes nothing better than to fry stuff. In fact it’s debatable whether she actually comes to visit for the New Year celebrations at all – or whether it’s just for the opportunity to play at chip shops.  I’m not kidding – this year BestFriendLisa joined in the frying and we dubbed the pair ‘The Chip Shop Chicks’ – I think they may have started writing a business plan for opening their own chippie, such is the happiness it brings them.  It seems that the big attraction (and the part that causes most squabbling) is the chance to lift the frying basket when the food is ready and shake off the excess oil like a professional.  They even took on chip-shop-alter-egos while frying – Stacey and Pauline.  Worryingly, Suz commented that she quite likes the thought of having to wear one of those little hats with a hairnet on the back and a white overall (that solves next year’s Christmas gift). 

Of course the rest of us just sit back and eat – this year it wasn’t just chips – over the course of several hours it was homemade scotch-eggs, crispy celeriac, and potato croquettes with cheese inside. Pauline and Stacey started to get a crazed look in their eyes going through the fridge to see what else they could roll in breadcrumbs and dunk in hot oil, so after a while we had to call an end to frying time before they got too over excited and we had to go to A&E with dangerously high cholesterol. 

Obviously it goes without saying that on January 2^nd we have to go on a detox diet as we have put on pounds / broken out in spots  / reek of chip fat, but it makes for a fun start to the New Year! Maybe the Chip Shop Chicks should be allowed to open their first branch here at Swallowtail Hill during the summer so that our campers can at least eat chips if they can’t get their bbq campfires started?

Pauline (Suz) and Stacey (Lisa) aka The Chip Shop Chicks

]]> http://www.mudinyoureye.co.uk/2012/01/05/swallowtail-hills-chip-shop-chicks/feed/ 1 http://www.mudinyoureye.co.uk/2011/12/22/donkeys-and-the-law-of-sheds/ http://www.mudinyoureye.co.uk/2011/12/22/donkeys-and-the-law-of-sheds/#comments Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:33:07 +0000 Christopher http://www.mudinyoureye.co.uk/?p=676 There are 53 animals at Swallowtail Hill, including the humans, and not including the bees. You can imagine the grocery bill. One of the humans – the female, as she is referred to in the pub – suffers from obsessive compulsive hoarding. Of animals. So in spite of the occasional tragedy, their numbers inexorably increase each year. It came as no surprise therefore when Sarah announced that she thought we should get a pair of donkeys.

I thought we’d got over this, and that Sarah was cured. I had successfully fought off the three year campaign to get horses. Llama’s made an appearance, but not for long. There was a moment of madness when she suggested Water Buffalo would be a good idea (“we could make our own mozzarella!”). And Alpacas reared their heads briefly until I pointed out how much they cost to buy, let alone feed. And people steal them. Now I know what the long animal conversation silence was about. She was gestating donkeys. Her pretext is that they would make lovely means of transport for our glampers. What’s more she had the idea that we could operate a donkey tuck shop – load the beasts with cakes, jams and chutneys, incense sticks, cuddly toys, and jewellery, then walk them down to the tents and Meadowkeepers like itinerant desert pedlars, and sell, sell, sell.

What she has not taken into account is the Swallowtail Hill Law of Sheds. This says that sheds fill up as soon as you build them. Even if you’ve got nothing to put in them, build one and almost immediately it will be full. We have 14 sheds, and two barns. All full. I am planning a 15^th because I just know it will be needed for stuff we’re not even aware we need yet.

You may wonder what the connection is between donkeys and the Law of Sheds. Donkeys need a shed. So here we have an example of actually planning to get stuff before I’ve even built a shed to put it in.  That’ll be shed 16 then. And guess who gets to build them all?

Meanwhile Christmas is almost here – warm, sunny weather, early signs of daffodils coming up, next year’s bracken pushing through the leaf mould! Enjoy yours.

Now we have a lot of mists. And it’s still very warm outside. All this is very weird. The grass is still growing, leaves are still on the trees, there are even flowers shoving timidly through the soil. A friend of ours has primroses in his garden. So it’s no surprise that the papers report greenhouse gas levels way above even worst case scenario’s from a decade ago. If you live in the country, it is extremely easy to see climate change in action.

Our most recent contribution to sorting the problem out has been the installation of solar PV panels on our barn roof. Just as the government announced a radical cut in the feed-in tariff. That said, it’s really quite rewarding to look at the digital display racking up the watts pouring in through the roof, and whizzing back down the wire to the grid. (How that works, I simply cannot fathom. How can electricity go in two directions at once?). What’s alarming, of course, is that we’re generating any electricity at all in this way at the end of November.

So, if Swallowtail Hill becomes the sea-girt island we often speculate about rather sooner than expected, we shall at least have a year’s supply of vitamin C bottled up and ready to eat, and we can also get completely shit faced watching the sputtering of the lights fired by our very own electricity.

Tonka

So what kind of a year has Tonka had?  Well we finally found him a summer residence that he liked.  You may recall that in 2010 Christopher and our good friend Graham built Tonka a state of the art tortoise house.  We felt that this was what he wanted.  We did a lot of research as to the most appropriate homes for tortoises and created a very spacious residence adjacent to the greenhouse.  It was quiet, south facing, with a grassy area full of wild plants to graze, a small pond for wallowing, a glass covered corner to bask in (sort of a solarium), a wide entrance leading into a secluded part of the greenhouse where his heat lamp hung, and a dark cosy bedroom.  He hated it. Instantly.  We tried to get him to adjust to it. I even spent time sitting in it talking to him while he got used to his new surroundings.  The therapy didn’t work; he still preferred living in our conservatory. 

So this summer we tried again.  We built something smaller, right outside our front door.  Very square in shape, much less interesting, one bush to hide under, couple of stones to bask on, no inside area.  It’s much noisier and busier – the dogs spend hours sticking their noses through the fence to sniff him and wonder what he might taste like and the postman says hello to him every morning.  Tonka loves it.  He took to it straightaway.  Turns out it was all about the postcode.  Tonka is like one of those annoying couples on Location, Location, Location who start out saying they want to live somewhere with five bedrooms halfway up a Welsh mountain and end up realising that their dream property is actually a former council flat in Haringey.   However, one can’t stay cross at a tortoise for very long.

So Tonka has had a good summer and now it’s time to prepare for the big sleep.  He had his last meal a week ago and is now into the necessary fast before hibernation (they can’t hibernate with any food still in their system – it can turn toxic and kill them).  He’s been wormed, weighed, bathed and health checked.  So by the beginning of December he’ll be ready.  Obviously it would help if the weather played ball too – it’s difficult to convince Tonka that a three month snooze is a good idea when it’s still so mild.  Once he’s bedded down for the winter Christopher and I will begin our winter game of ‘where shall we put the reptile tonight’  (stop sniggering – it isn’t THAT SORT of game)  – the box with the tortoise in it has to be kept within a certain temperature range – not too hot or he’ll wake up, not too cold or he’ll die.  We discovered last year that very few places in our house remain consistently within that temperature range.  So his box will get moved about a great deal and houseguests over the festive period may find themselves sharing a room with him (we don’t charge extra for this).

So far we have managed to get to this stage in proceedings without a row.  That’s me and Christopher, not me and the tortoise (although obviously Tonka and I did have words when he relocated from the greenhouse). This is mainly because Christopher is satisfied that Tonka is a now a happy tortoise.  Past arguments were usually about Tonka’s state of mind and general well-being but now all of his needs have been addressed Christopher can relax safe in the knowledge that the tortoise is content.  It is slowly becoming clear to me that I am now so far down the pecking order in our household that even the tortoise has greater status.

Sarah explained that it was part of her Forest Schools Leadership training. Every Friday she goes to the woods with half the local village school. They learn how to carve amulets out of branches, to make charcoal, identify leaves, and, it seems, to make pixie shelters. That would explain the bundles of branches thrown against trees which I had assumed were simply Roy (our friend and occasional helper) ‘tidying up’. These were the boys’ shelters. The tiny ones were the girls’.

Once she is qualified, she will get a certificate. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not (I don’t mean the certificate, just the fact of qualifying). It’s hard enough running the farm, and the glampers, and trying to hold down a job without becoming an outside school. Already it is verboten for me to go anywhere on Fridays (Forest Schools Day). What if this turns into a full-time school? I’ll be forced to spend the rest of my life shut in the farmhouse.

It’s a good thing for the nippers though. They get to spend an afternoon in a wood, doing proper learning, but outside. If my education had been like that, it’s possible I might have got a certificate or two of my own. 
 

Pixie House?

But I stopped all that when I realised I had all the medical trauma I needed in real time, and real life, right here on the farm. And this week has been a stellar production. One terminally broody hen sitting on no eggs and sporting a temperature that ought to turn her into roast chicken; an uncatchable cat who looks as though she’s been in a knife fight with Steven Seagal; a nanny goat with a pronounced limp which came about because she reacted badly to her annual vaccination; a ewe at risk of fly strike; a boxer dog who, for no perceivable reason threw up all her breakfast and is now moping about looking miserable; a border terrier with an abscess, and a wife with early morning frozen shoulder.

Sarah is, as you may know by now, keen in giving injections, so I expect all this to be cured by her wielding her needle. I don’t know how we’re going to deal with her shoulder, but I wouldn’t put it past her to grip a leather strap between her teeth and plunge a needle into her own arm. What I wish though is that she would dress the part. I quite like her in baggy, soiled jeans (she doesn’t know it but her builders bum is quite the most attractive thing I’ve seen in a long time), ankle length wellies, a stained T shirt and un-matching socks. But if she slipped into a nice piece of linen, some nylons, a starched pinny with an upside down watch, and her hair bunned up under a little cap then I might recapture some of my lost youth.

Still, I can dream.  

It turned out that even Sarah wasn’t sure which one it was – although it was either Milly or Molly (but not Mandy and not Peter because he’s a boy and that’s obvious, even with no balls). So ha bloody ha! And Milly/Molly had definite foot trouble. So Sarah – who is smaller than a sheep – upended the fat 10 stone animal and deftly got to work on the injured foot while I had to sit on her (the sheep, not Sarah. I never get to do that). I winced and groaned in pain as she dug away at overgrown nail and cleaned out the infection, and she shouted at me for being a wimp. A quick spray of something blue and a massive jab of antibiotics and that was it. But I’m thinking of calling the real vet anyway because I’m worried the sheep (who turned out to be Molly) might need counselling after all the trauma.

Almost immediately, one of the new chickens escaped. It was dusk. We were looking forward to an early night (we always look forward to an early night – 9pm is late for us). The chicks are now about 8 weeks old so they look just like very small chickens and they squeak. Having let them out of their nursery coop, they mingled happily with the grown-ups during the day but one of them was unsure exactly where to go now that night was falling (in the caravan you idiot, with the others). So while the rest of the flock all put themselves to bed we tried to guide the lost chick into the caravan. She was having none of this – preferring to have hysterics and shoot right out of the pen into the pig run.

Now, it’s hard enough catching a full sized chicken when it’s penned in. Catching a pint sized chick, in the dusk, in the brambles and bracken along the hedge, is positively Sisyphean. Twice we almost gave her up to the night and the foxes, and then we’d hear a squeak somewhere further along. Sarah did catch her while I hung about being useless with a net. She was lodged in the middle of our largest log pile over which we had both clambered several times, so it was a miracle we didn’t find scrambled chicken. Back into the caravan she went, and off to bed we went. And she doesn’t even have a name! She’d better be a brilliant layer.

To illustrate this – every day I visit the post office to despatch customer orders from my shop.  Every day I have some light hearted banter with the post office staff who know me as a regular.  The other day I did my post office visit enroute for a trip to London.  In readiness I was better dressed than usual – no dog hair over my clothes, in a dress, girlie shoes, a bit of lippy and contact lenses instead of specs.    I walked into the post office and was greeted as a stranger.  Indeed such was the transformation that the postal worker took the trouble to explain how Recorded Delivery works despite the fact that she’s been selling me this service, daily, for about three years.  A glass-half-full person would consider it marvellous that I scrub up well enough to become someone altogether more glamorous, but being a glass-half-empty kinda girl it’s clear – the honest truth is that I look like a tramp most of the time.  And I possibly smell like one.

I have previously justified the ‘no-care’ look as the only one fitting for a hard working farm girl but we’ve had several junior farmers visit us recently who have disproved this theory.   When families come to camp here on the farm their kids come and feed the animals each day and they do so with great enthusiasm – and style.  Last week I was accompanied on my rounds by a four year old who fed the chickens wearing a white tutu, stripy leggings and pink wellies – she looked great.  There was a very fashion conscious six year old who walked up from the campsite each day ready for farm duties in a sundress, accessorised with a handbag,  gladiator sandals and sun umbrella – and having been warned about the  risk of nettle stings she still braved the pig paddock with bare legs – all in the name of fashion.   

While the animals (and I include Christopher in this category) might not mind if I’m elegantly dressed I would like to avoid sinking further into my rag-bag wardrobe.  I don’t want my appearance to start scaring small children, or for village youths to dub me ‘the Hobo of Hobbs Lane’.  When I got my legs waxed last week even my beauty therapist laughed at my ‘farmer tan’ (just forearms and face) and I’m not going to tell you about my hands (but if you can tell a woman’s age by her hands then I’m about 112).  All this is enough to drive me to drink – except I wouldn’t want people to think my ruddy cheeks are from the booze and not the fresh air. 

So while I might not be seen feeding the pigs while wearing a tutu any time soon my new rules of sartorial engagement are:

• Christopher’s cast-off clothes are not flattering on you – he stopped wearing them for a reason – so should you
•  You cannot count animal poo on your jumper as accessorising
• Wearing your jeans halfway down your hips (because they don’t fit) does not make you a cool young person, it just gives you builder’s bum
• Wellies are not proper shoes and should not be worn in the high street or on a night out
• Smelling like a goat is not attractive (except to another goat)

Shared Motherhood

Could humans adopt this system?  Hmm, well I guess the egg laying part is an advantage we don’t have.  Much as a pregnant mum-to-be might like to say to her best friends – I feel like a night out on the vino can you grow the baby safely for a few hours – the biology simply doesn’t add up.   Also, while chicks pretty much look the same, small children are more obviously identifiable as belonging to someone even if their parents sometimes wish they weren’t (I’m recalling the mother next to me in the supermarket queue who looked fleetingly tempted to pretend her mid-meltdown two-year old wasn’t hers and do a runner!).  Most mums would confess too, that while other peoples’ kids are nice in small doses, taking them on as unconditionally as their own is a rather different matter.  So I don’t think we’ll be replicating this system any time soon – but in the world of chickens it appears to be one-size-fits-all when it comes to raising chicks.   I should add a note here about the only hen in the coop that didn’t participate in the hatch – as she is performing a quite different role at the moment and deserves a medal for stamina.  You see, during normal service the cockerel…ahem…shares-the-love around his hens but with three of them busy raising chicks he knows they aren’t up for any action.  This means Little Titch is getting more than her fair share of attention – so much so I have needed to buy her a chicken saddle – yes you read that correctly.  Chicken-love is brutal and Little Titch was starting to look cross-eyed and battered. The saddle provides some much needed protection and you will agree that she looks kinda stylish too? My earlier theory about humans adopting this system really falls down here – offering oneself as a substitute lover to keep the husbands of friends occupied might prove testing to even the closest of female friendships. (No offense to any of my lovely friends and their wonderful husbands  – I think I’d better shut up now before I dig myself in any deeper….!)

Little Titch Saddled Up!

I wonder why it is that we call the rite of passage that marks the end of female singledom – a hen party? Why not a ‘mares’ mingle’ or ‘sows’ soiree’  or ‘does’ do’?  There’s obviously something about the hen that we women admire although I can’t say I’ve ever seen a hen on a night out three sheets to the wind on Bacardi Breezers.  The campsite played host to a hen party last weekend. Viewed from afar their style of celebration seemed to be the sort that only a group of intelligent, sophisticated women know how to do.  Yes, that’s right – giggly-booze-fuelled-high-jinx. One of the highlights of their weekend seemed to be taking the row boat out on one of our ponds (while legless of course) and singing songs.   On clearing up the campsite after they departed we were interested to piece together some of their party games.  Cock-fighting seemed to have figured as part of the evening.  The empty box suggested this was an inflatable game and explains the riotous laughter we heard wafting back from the campsite the evening before. 

Back in the chicken coop we’ve had some cock-fighting too.  Every morning Vera the (cross-dressing) cockerel exits his caravan and heads straight to the perimeter fence where Geoff the (bantam) cockerel is ready and waiting on the other side.  They square up to each other and do a lot of showing off – a rough translation of the conversation is:

Vera:  “shove off shorty or I’ll smack you one”

Geoff: “yeah right you flashy git, I might be small but I kick-ass’

Once the show is over (and to be honest none of the hens pay them any attention anyway – so their efforts are wasted) they ignore each other for the rest of the day.  Yesterday however, Vera decided to stretch his wings and landed in Geoff’s territory.  It should be noted here that Vera is a Sussex Buff and is at least four times the size of Geoff the Australorp Bantam.  In terms of a cock fight this is on a par with Mike Tyson taking me on.  In brief, Vera approached Geoff ready for a fight.  Geoff didn’t say a word or pull a fancy move, he just puffed himself up and looked splendid and Vera immediately ran for cover!  What a pansy!   One nil to Geoff.

Vera

Geoff