December 2001

Time came early this month to separate our pregnant cows from their calves and "dry them off" in readiness for their new calves due in February. We herded them all, easily with the aid of a wheelbarrow full of hay (!), into the yard and managed to get the mums into one area and the rest into another. There ensued a great deal of bellowing for the next 3 or 4 days and nights as they called for each other through the walls. They settled down and are happily munching their way through copious amounts of straw, silage and haylage and we await with anticipation the arrival of the little ones, calving boxes at the ready.

One of the steers is often seen sporting a large stripe of red blood across his shoulder. When he was in the field we assumed he kept catching himself on barbed wire (we'd been close enough to ascertain that this was nothing "serious"), but when it was appearing in the yard we thought closer examination was called for. We have a crush, a sort of strong cage which the cows (ideally) walk into. Their shoulders get caught on gates which lock so that they cannot move around too much whilst in there. Not our ideal piece of equipment but a practical one for examining these very large and amazingly agile beings. 199, as we currently know him, was curious but didn't want to put his head through the gate... and as we haven't been feeding them barley, he doesn't know what treats a bucket might contain so we had nothing with which to entice him. It's amazing what a bit of rescue remedy sprayed around will do. He'd gone in and out a couple of times, but not far enough... and after the rescue, although he didn't put his head through the gate, he did get far enough in for us to close the door behind him so that I could wash him down and check what was causing the bleeding. It turns out he has a small wart-like lump right on the top of his shoulders. I guess he rubs it sometimes and it bleeds. Well we were relieved to find it was nothing more than that and will look for some homoeopathic/aromatherapy treatment for it.

One of the delights of living out here is the space and in particular the vast expanse of sky that you can see. In the early part of the month there was a lot of cloud, which meant things stayed pretty mild on the ground, but just before Christmas we had a week of very clear, bright nights, coinciding with the Solstice. The stars are beautiful, the moon was full and huge, the siiver light shone across the fields and everything glistened with heavy frost. It was truly breathtaking.

So, why were we wandering around the fields in the dark? Our new arrival, Brandy, a 9 month old dog, found wandering the streets by a friend of ours who is the dog warden for Swindon was taking us out to play before bed. She has joined our family and we are all so enjoying getting to know this little being. Her story tells of being roughly treated by someone, somewhere and she is learning to trust us and is having the time of her life with our friend Jules' dog Mouse who comes to visit regularly. Although his legs are much shorter than hers, he still gives her a good run around!

Lorraine spent some time with a local farmer plucking turkeys before Christmas. As we are planning to have some (free range of course) on offer next year, for those of you who'd like a change from beef, it was good to get some first hand experience of how this works. Quite a challenge to get the birds to end up the sizes that match the order book! We will need to get the little ones in May-ish time in order to grow them slowly as we like to do things here. Well, if you're interested in a free range Turkey from us, let us know sooner rather than later, we're taking orders for Christmas 2002 NOW!!!