Silver Dream Machine

This caused quite a stir amongst the militia on the weekend, the arrival of this dream machine. It wont surprise you to find out that it isn't ours but belongs to a friend who spends a lot of his time in the driving seat of Apache helicopters. He is a quite a brave chap, not for what he does by way of occupation, but for bringing this up our drive and then parking it where it was left at the mercy of the critters while we ate lunch. Last time a friend brought a new car up the lane and parked it she returned to find a goat sat on the roof, she wasn't impressed and hasn't called round since.

No, coffers at Rock HQ wont stretch to such machinery, we are looking for a practical vehicle to use on the farm, as an aside its a sign of age that you see a car you last remember being driven in by your dad in a vintage car line up. He had a dark blue Cortina MKIII like this yellow beast, one front wing I seem to remember was painted blue is a sort of match, close enough for a shepherd, with blue animal marker.

Perhaps an old tractor would be a useful addition here, or another old Land Rover, this isn't a Land Rover, its an Austin thingy. I am persuaded that an old small tractor would be useful here, or fun, or another sign of age, that I hanker after an old useless piece of machinery. Perhaps this is how these strange types who sit by old steam engines that are pumping water endlessly between buckets at country shows are created. I have for a while collected or taken photographs of old tractors, I will have to be on my guard.

And then there is this specimen, a Silver Machine, perhaps the militia man who owns it was a Hawkwind fan (Silver Machine), or a David Essex fan (Silver Dream Machine), or perhaps he has too much time on his hands.

My new hobby

Speed fencing. Not the skipping up and down waving one arm in the air trying to poke an opponent with a "foil" (give me a broadsword any day) no, this is trying to repair damaged fences while keeping animals the right side of broken fence.
The fun started yesterday afternoon, the pigs were exploring the garden, again. Pam and Bridget made a real bid for freedom and ran off down the track to see the Technohermit. They would have made it into the wilderness save for the lure of the magic feed bucket, that and Technohermit dancing on his bone pile shouting "pork for tea". Suitable chastised the Mangalitzas were put back in the pen, along with their three little piglets who had also joined the escape club. Doing the Sherlock Holmes bit I wondered how they had managed to get out of the garden garden having jumped the fence, they had got out of the garden because I had let them out. But the garden garden, the patch devoid of life thanks to plague of goat, that showed no sign of disturbance, and the gate was shut. By half seven in the evening, when thoughts turn to cheap red and excess calorific intake, a strange grunting from the helipad confirmed that the pigs had a different way of escaping. Guinevere and Morgana were still in the pen, being well behaved Berkshires so they got a free go at the tasty treats put in the pen to coax everypig back. The hole in the fence was easy to find, it being massive, and thanks to some very deft hammer work by yours truly the three strands of barbed wire kept the beasts in their place. I also managed to complete task without striking self with hammer and without being bitten by inquisitive pig.

This evening the jobs list showed that I needed to inspect the fence at the top of Willow Rise. William has somehow managed to be in the yard two mornings in a row, if it was the Pgoor then all the ponies would be there. William had found an exit. I had to do the same and make it an ex exit. I soon found it, in fact the whole fence at the top of Willow Rise was on the floor, barely able to keep lagomorphs (live and learn! thanks) at bay let alone curious ponies. Despite the assistance from one of my little helpers who having black and white vision failed to see large yellow bucket in path so hit at some speed thus distributing the 1000 fencing staples contained therein a considerable distance. He of course sat and watched while I retrieved them, next week hes going to throw a ball to see if I can do other tricks.

Pretty soon the fence was upright once again, the exit had ceased to be, it was an ex exit. For now.

Rock Recipe

First is an infrequent series of favourite recipes here at Rock HQ. This is leg of lamb stuffed with rosemary and garlic.
Dead easy, get a leg of lamb, in this case its Ryeland Lamb (Bee) cut a series of one cm groves into meat, rub whole leg with Olive oil, put sprigs of fresh rosemary in cuts, add a few slices of garlic per cut, season with salt and ground black pepper corns. Roast in a basting tin for two hours at 180. Should fall off the bone. Use the juices to make a nice gravy, add a splosh of red wine to it or some red currant sauce.
Serves six or makes one nice big sandwich.
Plate in bottom pic is larger than top pic, the meats not shrunk that much.

Common as muck

Now as an anorak I love military vehicles and hanker after owning one, one day. I did have an ex army light weight Land Rover which was about as much use on the smallholding as a castrated male goat, so that was sold, but one day I will own a WW2 vehicle. So it was a nice surprise to see a small collection at the Norton village "Fun Day", especially this Dodge weapons carrier.

The kindly old gent who owned it showed me and lil t around it while Tracey, my beautiful and oh so patient wife watched from a safe distance. The vehicle was probably a Normandy invasion vehicle, and after the war the Americans didn't bring much stuff back so this one was sold to Norway, who some 25 years ago got fed up with it and sold it with three others. The kindly old gent bought this one and did a bit of work on it and here it is. Some 250,000 were built, not many left now, common as muck, abused, left to rot, converted to cranes, all sorts.

I remembered seeing one rotting in a barn some 20 years ago, the kindly old gent thought I should go back and see if its still there. Fat chance we agreed, in the days of ebay etc its long gone. Hardly a thing of beauty at the time this truck is a classic piece of hardware for us anoraks to drool over. I thanked him for his time, only around 60 left in the country he said, might be worth a trip back to that barn! Only 60 left. Imagine that. And here's one at a lowly country village show.

Imagine the sound our jaws made dropping as this one drove onto the field. What are the chances of that? And wheres the other 58?

Passports please!

Rubbing salt into an old wound! The wanderlust of the Ryelands continues!

And then there were three

Our friends the microholders, who are, it has to be said, far more successful than we are at coaxing milk from goats (up to three pints a day and only severe bruising and mild concussion for their trouble) called round last night and bought two baby Mangalitzas for their Good Life in suburbia. This leaves us with three to bring on for a pig roast and sausage fest later in the year. As this is a tale that features the pigs again the above photo has nothing to with pigs, this is in fact the border between two countries, England, a green a pleasant land (ok a few riots have sullied that image of late) and on the left, Wales, another green and pleasant land where Rock HQ is situated. You can see the bracken which has a firm grip on the bonsai mountain, and currently my bionic arm is painfully swollen, hopefully due to overuse of the new blue strimmer yesterday( hopefully as in I hope the pain is due to me being stupid rather than something sinister going on) when I cleared several acres of the wretched plant on our side, Wales, so that our greedy sheep would have easy access to the lush grass that was growing in the shade.

So it was slightly on the annoying side to find the majority of our sheep this evening had crossed the frontier and were cheerfully munching in the shade and totally ignoring the massive open Savannah created especially for them. The fact that my space age arm had shaken loose a few bolts for their benefit obviously did not pray on their tiny minds and I have to acknowledge that gratefulness is not a trait possessed by Ryelands.

Its not a competition

No, its not a competition, and that's not a reference to who can take the best picture of the pigs (although my efforts with a Box Brownie below I think are are pretty good) no this is a reference to the apparent competition between the critters as to who can be the most annoying. Some how the two Mangalitzas managed to escape the big pen and were found loitering with intent in the garden.
The cunning plan to get them to follow the feed bucket was an epic fail as they found the rabbits quarters and spent an interesting fifteen minutes or so terrorising the long eared rodents.
Meanwhile in the big pen the well behaved piggies were rewarded with a couple of buckets of windfall plums and damsons as today's gale brought them down a plenty. The two naughty piggies eventually saw the error of their ways and made it back to the big pen in time for the nut fest, I had been collecting the fallen nuts as well while waiting for them to sort their lives out.
Morgana took the opportunity to hog the bath
and Iggle showed how clever she was by drinking straight from the hosepipe.

In focus, the Pgoor

As today's tale is primarily about Horses it should follow, in a logical world, that any pictures should be of the nags cavorting around the smallholding and getting to places where no well behaved pony would venture. As logic has no part in our form of smallholding, and as brother in law has nice posh new camera it seemed a good idea to post a couple of his shots of the pigs. Neither he or Tracey, my beautiful and oh so patient wife, managed to get pictures of the skip being removed, which was full to bursting and half loaded with rubble so the baby lorry they sent due to restricted turning circle and tree overhangs had a right old job of lifting it, the chains fell off etc, probably quite boring really so I am glad theres no pic to bore you with.
There has been a mystery to solve here recently, starting with the pigs running free a week or so ago. The Sunday before last our guests just happened to mention over breakfast that it was fun seeing the horses trotting by. As the horses should have been secure behind a stock fence and gate this was a pickle and so before I could eat my full cooked English with extra toast and Oxford Marmalade four naughty ponies had to be rounded up, much to our guests amusement. The gate was wide open. Not one that could be opened by an equine we wondered which human had failed to shut it properly, worse still, if we were victim to the Phantom Menace who used to plague these here parts, the Phantom Gate Opener of Old Radnor, or Pgoor for short.
We put the word out through The Oracle that the Pgoor had potentially struck, but we were all a bit vexed as to who it could be as the original Pgoor has been rendered incapable of gate opening through a combination of geography and a continued love of scrumpy.
Last Saturday we were Pgoored again this was after the ponies were observed behind the five bar gate waiting patiently for their breakfast to be delivered through the scrum of Ryelands.

Today I saw the Ryelands go past in a hurry, a bit like a woolly Tsunami. Fearing a rogue canine had entered our domain I reacted immediately. Lack of neighbours meant there were no arrests as I patrolled the perimeter in my boxers and boots. The cause of the stampede was William who has found a secret portal in the fence line so didn't need the help of the Pgoor. Lured by the power of the bucket he relinquished his freedom for a mouthful of oats, and fence repair was added to the jobs list. Just above find the Pgoor. And get dressed.