The last supper

Most of the day has been spent preparing for tomorrow when we take the pigs to their final destination.
A friends father has lent us a trailer which we collected, my prowess at reversing has yet to be tested, no doubt tomorrow morning at the abattoir I will have to confess to the watching crowd that I am a trailer virgin and have never ever in my driving career successfully reversed a trailer. I predict that after providing much amusement eventually someone will come to my aid and show me what a real man, or woman, can do and reverse the trailer so its precious cargo of Berkshire pigs can be unloaded.

I do feel bad, about the pigs not my inability to reverse, keeping any animal on a smallholding forces you to make a real connection with it. Carrying rucksacks full of apples over the hill for the last few weeks shows a real commitment to ensuring they have an interesting diet, it will also I hope give the meat even more flavour. Its essential any animal you have is tame and used to being handled, otherwise they can become bad tempered, aggressive and a real nuisance and sitting with them while they scoff the apples has proved entertaining and kept them friendly.

I tagged them this morning, they are so used to having me handle their ears while they are at the trough that they didn't even flinch as the tagger did its job. So far, its so good.

Its all in place.

All we have to do tomorrow is get them into the trailer, last years pigs had a weeks training for that, this time we are just going to get them to follow the bucket and a trail of apples to a tempting breakfast at the end of the trailer. It should work and we are not pressed for time as Tracey and I are both on holiday, so tomorrow, unlike the pigs, we have lots of time on our hands.

Poor pigs.

Total Commitment!

Here we can see Geisha showing total commitment to stealing more than her fair share of hay.

Having eaten half her body weight she crawled away to a quiet spot in the garden and slept it off.

Its been a quiet day at Rock HQ, the weather was awful this morning, high winds and heavy rain, a typical summers day really. When we dared to go outside the horses took most of our attention, William has chewed his stable so we put up new boards to line the inside walls. This went very well until I demonstrated an extraordinary inability to saw anything like a straight line and pretty soon a straightforward job became an arduous chore that eventually ended when I nearly put a screw through all the wiring waiting to become live once Steve completes the electrical system. Not wanting to cause any more damage I went to see the pigs and fed them some apples and apologised for plotting their demise in 48 hours time.

Beth came back from Canada, obviously she had enjoyed her experience but has decided that there is no place like home.

For once she is absolutely right!

Walking to Jesus

Quite a day.
Yesterday was a gloriously sunny day, today it blew a gale and rain lashed down endlessly, so all in all a very good day for a walk.


We set off from Pandy and it headed towards Hay-on-Wye along the Offas Dyke path.


Just as I was telling Richard and Jim that we were going to cross the path where American Werewolf in London began, and that we would probably see bits of werewolf nailed to pub doors in this are we found this grisly sight welcoming us as we began our 28Km route across the Black Mountains.


It rained non stop, everything got wet, you couldn't hear conversation as the noise from the rain beating on your hood drowned it out, but we were happy.


Even crossing the really desolate lunar landscape we remained cheerful. Right up to the point where we joined the road where the main characters of the AWiL jumped form the sheep lorry and began their epic and doomed trek to The Slaughtered Lamb.


Jim known for his wit had a sense of humour failure following a cheap bar of chocolate, now named the bar of doom. These are similar to the coins of doom, chocolate flavoured money he ate on our walk in February, see MTB girls blog for that one. He is now banned from cheap chocolate. Anyway he harangued the world in general for cheap shoddy goods as his walking sticks failed to deploy properly and promptly collapsed when he put any weight on them. Thus instead of saving him 20% effort he had expended time an energy carrying them across the hills, and now when he needed them most they were useless.

Nothing was going to lift his mood. He fumed as he walked the final leg. Richard and I tried to distract him by pointing and laughing but it was to no avail.

It was then we saw him.

Jesus.

Approaching through the mist, heading straight for us in all his beardy goodness.

Jesus.

He drives a dark green Subaru.

He doesn't give lifts.

The homecoming!

If only I had been able to get the camera operational quicker you would have seen this sheep running from the bottom of the lane faster than Usain Bolt when she saw us.

This is poorly sheep, see stranger from a strange land a few weeks back who turned up at deaths door in the goat house and was then waited on hand and foot by the humans at Rock HQ until she was fit enough to be turned out into the field. Once there she demonstrated how much better she was by vaulting the fence and disappearing into the bracken, only to turn up two days later hiding in the pig pen.

Once again she was fed and watered but vanished and we thought she had long gone to join the other residents of sheep skull lane.

Until this morning when a solitary sheep appeared at the bottom of the lane quite clearly watching the morning routine. I thought she was just another feral sheep looking to gather any scraps left over by the marauding Ryelands, or worse waiting to attack the haystack.

But no, like a scene out of a Lassie movie, but with a sheep as the main character, not a dog, she gave a bleat of joy (or hunger) and ran up the lane to get a breakfast.

The Ryelands didn't mind, they got a second breakfast in the process.

Sucking on a horse sized pill!

You need moments like these sometimes when smallholding, Apollo attacking his new horse lick treat, aniseed flavour this time. I don't know how long they are supposed to last, William's has lasted nearly three weeks, this greedy foal got through his last one overnight! By the looks he intends to finish this one in record time too.

It cheered me up no end watching him, driving away the dark thoughts I have towards the foxes on the hill. At the start of the year we had around 70 poultry, a mixed up bunch of Turkeys, Geese, Ducks, Chickens and Bantams. As I posted last nights episode of life on the rock face I went out to put our birds away and found we were deficit one goose and one hen. That means this week we have lost two cockerels, one hen and a goose, one of the very geese I risked life and limb fetching from the hill in darkness Tuesday night.

We now have 9 hens, 4 ducks, 2 geese and three cockerels, and most are now shut in the goat house where they are safe from predation. They might not be so happy but at least they will live.

Unlike the fox should he ever cross my path.

Wild night for a goose chase!

One of the many pleasures of keeping animals is that they are unpredictable.

Quite what has got into Brandy the big Brecon Buff goose the last two nights is any ones guess and while I like having him around he has nearly provoked his demise and slow roasting with potatoes and seasonal vegetables for running off into the darkness rather than walking serenely into his sleeping quarters.

Two nights ago he provoked a rebellion amongst the geese and led them up the hill to settle down for the night amongst the sheep. Rather than risk the fox taking them, and the wrath of Tracey for not finding them I dutifully trudged through the mud up the steep slope with a torch that cast as much light as a dieing match trying to sort through the assorted white shapes in an effort to find the misbehaving geese.

Finally they were persuaded back to the duck house whereupon Brandy sprinted down the lane in a last bid for freedom. Eventually he was apprehended and suitably chastised for his misdemeanours.

Now once was perhaps understandable, a nice night out under the stars instead of confinement in a stuffy shed but two nights in a row is almost unforgivable, especially as there was fresh clean bedding for them. Not feeling at my best last night after my attempt at running I have to admit to suffering a massive sense of humour failure as Brandy once again shot off as fast as his webbed feet could carry him instead of going to bed in the prescribed manner. I barely managed to catch the brute yet alone have the energy to carry him back up the lane to the duck house.

Slamming the door on my fingers in the darkness I gathered my sense of humour from the floor, brushed it down and after a few deep breaths in the howling gale that had started an hour or so earlier returned to the welcome glow of Rock HQ, fought off the five very attentive Berners and struggled up the stairs to bed.

Despite being very tired I didn't sleep very well, the wind battered the cottage and I lay fretting about the two Ash trees pictured above falling on the house, car or worse still on our horses. We are planning to cut them down but it would be just our luck for them to fall meantime.

Morning dawned and as we went about our rounds in the wind I cleared some branches from the lane that had fallen. Trees were missing leaves, the windfall apples were too many to carry and too many for the pigs to eat in one go. Buckets were blown around and the washing on the line had to be retrieved from the vegetable garden. It had been quite a night.

The Ash trees had survived.

One did look a bit different though.

A large crack has appeared in the one tree, Ash is a very brittle wood.

Felling them now is not a precaution its a necessity.

Busted!

Gerty hastily trying to get to the right side of the fence. The tunnel discovered, their escape thwarted they go back to eating apples.

And plotting.

Six days to go.

No entry!

Physically I am in a lot of pain, emotionally I am drained.

Quite a day, it began at 5.30 getting ready to take Ben to RAF Brize Norton to catch his plane to Cyprus. I excelled myself by forgetting my proof of identity so was not allowed past the gate which meant that instead of being able to wave him off from the departure lounge after a coffee I had to unceremoniously dump him and his baggage in the car park leaving him to struggle to the transport the other side of the gate.

As I watched him go it suddenly dawned on me that this might be the last time I ever saw him, he is after all intent on being in harms way and by the latest will be deployed in a warzone by next spring. If the rumours prove true instead of returning to the Rock for Christmas he could be sent out early. So as he staggered across the tarmac to the waiting RAF guards I must admit to being quite emotional about it all.

I then had one of those conversations that defines military intelligence. I was parked in a one way system, unable to figure out how to join the Queens highway I walked over to the guard who was currently being obtuse to Ben and asked the way out.

"You have to go through here sir" he said helpfully and far too cheerfully for my liking.

"What through the gate?" I asked

"Yes sir, through the gate and around the roundabout and back out through here sir" he pointed to the barrier behind him while we both watched Ben struggle manfully onwards.

"Through the gate and into the camp that I am not allowed onto as I have no ID."

"Yes sir, stupid isnt it."he grinned.

So I drove through the barrier, past Ben struggling with his bags, around the roundabout where he was to catch the transport and back again, as I passed him the second time he smiled and I shouted goodbye, the guards returned to menacing delivery drivers and I began the long drive to work.

Work was its usual challenge and my colleagues sensing I was emotionally vulnerable very helpfully told me to grow a set and tormented me with chips while I stuck steadfastly to my healthy eating regime.

Beth, who is in Canada then contacted me, she might be coming home early suffering from acute homesickness, hardly a surprise when you consider how fantastic it is living here, she is even missing the dogs, I didn't tell her that there are a few more than when she left.

Physically in pain, well just a bit. Today was the day I decided to go for a run, for the first time since my accident some proper physical exercise and the first time on a run for around four years. I did surprisingly well, managing a mile at a steady pace with my long time running partner Simon, who is now exacting revenge for all the times I tormented him when I was superfit, before blowing my lungs out of my backside after a particularly taxing stretch of hill. Luckily we were running cross country and the general public were spared exposure to a fat bloke puffing and waddling along with his friend laughing, I mean encouraging him to keep going.

Back at the ranch I managed to stop myself from crying from the pain long enough to have a coffee and pretend all was well. Next Tuesday we are going again and I hope to be able to make it all the way around Worzel Wood before dieing.

Now, I need my bed, which I would go to if only I could manage the stairs.