But nature persists, and on the 12^th of April I saw the first swallows, and then on the 16^th heard the first cuckoo. Regular readers will remember that, if I was in charge of the Spanish Inquisition, I’d make all my victims listen to a cuckoo for a week. They’d confess to anything after that.

But back to the weather. It makes our glamping business here at Swallowtail Hill excitingly challenging. Sarah, who as you know has unnatural upper body strength, now has unnatural lower body strength from plodding through the mud carrying sacks of logs, cleaning equipment, small children, dogs and boxes of linen. She is in the middle of transferring glamping operations from the house to the barn where she has installed a full range of freezers, washing machines, storage cupboards, sinks, ironing boards and about 500 sets of bedding. What was once my domain – filled with MAN STUFF (tractors, spanners, bits of wood I know I will need one day, mysterious tools I have yet to find a use for, boxes of mixed screws, oil drums and power tools that don’t work) is slowly being taken over. Its manliness is under threat.

Where will it stop?  I’m relegated to a narrow central aisle and a workbench at one end, and I think it only a matter of time before she gets her hands on them too.  Will I find curtains and scatter cushions appearing?  Is the barn going get a full Laura Ashley makeover? She’s even got one of the new sheds as her private preserve. A woman with a shed! This can’t be right  – can it? Maybe I need to start a campaign, enlist some support from other men who find their important, private, bloke spaces, dens and territories taken over without so much as a please or thankyou.   Or I could fight back and move the lawnmower into the kitchen, mend tractor parts on the dining table and bring my range of power tools to the bedroom (yes there’s a joke in there somewhere).

At least we’ve got a spare tent. If I ever find myself totally squeezed out, I can go and live in that.

Anyway a cheery upshot is that one of the remaining cockerels now has a name. Glamping is in full swing, which means twice daily zoo time for junior Glampers, headed by Sarah who marches about patiently explaining anatomy, eating habits, mating, offspring production, relative intelligence, temperament and relationship to human food. And answering any of the other, often wildly imaginative questions that crop up. The solo cockerel is now called Alan, thanks to a young Glamper who gave everything a name that didn’t already have one. I like to think that because he wears a shiny russet coloured cape of feathers, struts about proudly, and has a fine voice, that she named him after Alan a’Dale, but I suspect Robin Hood doesn’t feature in her literary canon. Nice name for a cock though. Alan will soon be joined by survivors of the sex-fest next door.

A hosepipe ban was announced about a fortnight ago, just in time for the Easter holidays, so it immediately began raining, and it hasn’t stopped since. This has been refreshing for the landscape, but challenging for the Glampers, almost all of whom still appear to determinedly smile through it all as they plod up the hill laden in mud caked wellies. We all said things like ‘well, a typical English Easter eh?’ and ‘Only in England eh?’ as though somehow the plucky bulldog spirit of Dunkirk will pull us through. I haven’t seen Sarah out of rubber clothing for over a week now. So I suppose it has its compensations.

Alan

Snuggles – or Fugly – lives with the bantams, like Lucy did until the recent fox related tragedy. But you couldn’t cuddle Lucy, so there is a possible upside to this new arrival for our glampers – a rabbit to cuddle as well as feed. Maybe we could charge for that, and Fugly would become a profit
centre.

Simultaneously, Tonka woke up from three months hibernation. This called for gradual warming – tough when the outside temperature ranges from sub-zero to 60 degrees (in real money) in 24 hours. Followed by a bath – which he loathes – and the expectation of a long pee, which he hasn’t performed yet. I am slightly worried because he seems to be wheezing. But then he’s over 40 so perhaps he knows what he’s doing. He certainly woke up in a bad temper and has no idea who I am. So I get attacked whenever I go in to offer him succour, food, water and comfort. And believe me, a tortoise can deliver a very sharp bite.

Finally Hilary went into season again (or hog, as us farmers know it) signalled by yet another escape. She ploughed through two fences and came to find me, hoping against hope for love. The only way to get her locked up is to run like hell, followed by half a ton of cantering randy pork.

The last straw in all this is that Sarah buggered off to Switzerland for three days to celebrate a friend’s 40^th.  I expect her first reaction on returning will be to let me know that the housework is well under par, the dogs are itchy because I’ve not been feeding them the right food, and would I mind having a bath.  But I have a secret plan – take her out to have a cuddle with Snuggles/Fugly. I’m sure her heart will melt and all will be forgiven.

Snuggles / Fugly

Sylvia and Mildred have moved into the house. They are our two elderly bantams. Tiny and about 110 in humay years, they need residential care or they’ll simply freeze to death. So they are parked in the hall outside the shower room, with a fire-guard to stop the dogs from getting too interested. After two days, they got used to it, and now wander around quite happily – we found them perching on the bookshelf yesterday, but I’m not sure they were reading anything. They have to be the luckiest bantams in the world. Seven years old, long since stopped laying, and living with central heating. Next to them is Tonka’s hibernation box. He’s due to be woken up now, but what’s the point in this weather?  I thought briefly that Sarah would suggest the pigs and goats came in too, but I’m not sure where we’d put them. I suppose the pigs could lie in front of the kitchen fire, and the goats could jump about on the furniture.

It takes double the amount of time to feed and water everyone in this weather – it seems that as soon as we’ve finished the morning rounds that it’s time start serving dinner – barely worth taking our wellies off in-between.  How anyone manages in Lapland is beyond me – I expect they use a team of dogs pulling sleds laden with feed and water supplies to farm animals living in distant fields.  Don’t tell Sarah – she’ll either a) instantly go on online to see where she can get a  team of dogs and a sled or (more likely) ask me to build her a sled (now!) and spend the day training Dottie and Mabel to pull it.   One thing I can be certain of – I’m sure the Laplanders don’t invite the reindeer indoors as soon as they look a bit chilly!

Sylvia & MIldred Move In

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?