We are all very bored with the snow and the cold now. Red’s cock-a-doodle-doo is hoarse. The doodle-doo bit is almost missing. He sounds a bit pathetic – so I’m giving him a special vitamin tonic in his water to try and help. Vera – the other cockerel has taken this opportunity to make fun [...]
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By The Demon Butcher of Beckley
Lights flickered in the farmhouse kitchen. Snow swirled outside. A Little Owl shrieked as it veered between the ice-laden branches of the great oak. Somewhere, a wolf howled. Well, that bit’s not true. But this is…. Uttering tiny grunts as she swung the hatchet, a light sheen of sweat on her brow, wiped swiftly with [...]
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By The Sheep Lose Their Wool And Two Rabbits Lose Their Lives
Nature is fickle. She offers up three unexpected lambs – and Sarah is almost embarrassingly besotted with special needs Frank – then slaughters George and Mildred, the oldest surviving rabbits. In between, all adult sheep got sheared, which included the resentful Shetlands who had been busy trying to shed naturally. This made them look as [...]
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Boys’ Bits
Thought you might be amused to read the following transcript of the conversation I had earlier with Glenn (our friend and former shepherd). We were in a field at the time and if anyone was walking down the public footpath on the other side of the hedge they may have wondered what was going on. Sarah: “I [...]
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Lambing Malpresentations (or – what to do when a lamb gets stuck coming out)
So I was in the middle of a field looking for Victoria my missing sheep and I spied her in the distance by the hedge, clearly in labour. I got a bit closer so that I could see how far along she was and run through the checklist of things that could go wrong and [...]
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This is the story of a rural life, lived by Sarah and Christopher on their 40 acre Wealden farm, near Rye, which they share with assorted animals, wild flowers, trees, an eclectic array of locals and the odd visitor who thinks it's an idyll. Sometimes it is.
