A quiet day in the country

Tracey has gone to stay at her Mum's to help with her Dad who is still in hospital so I have been left to run the farm by myself. The bonfire from yesterday was still going but that was nothing compered to the conflagration Bethan and I started by mid morning.

When JJ and Kay came up to stay we cleared the hedgerow that kept the garden in eternal darkness. The branches were piled along the lane as at the time we were too busy to clear them properly. These have now been annoying me for a few months now, you can see in the top picture. Today was the day that all changed. For once Bethan was persuaded to come outside after I promised her the sky wouldn't fall in and the strange yellow ball in the heaven was nothing to worry about and she set about the task of clearing the lane with manic enthusiasm.

By lunchtime we, well mostly Beth, had removed the offending branches from the ditch and they were burning furiously on a bonfire by the barn. Our efforts were appreciated by Daffodil our pet Ryeland lamb as each pile of branches moved revealed a nice fresh patch of grass for her to devour. Job done Beth and I had bacon butties and I was wondering what to do next when Steve the electrician appeared in the lane with his little boy. This child knows no fear and once I get his parents permission I might publish a set of pictures of an angelic looking child trying to tug a bramble out of an angelic looking shitland ponies tail. Messing with the dangerous end of Trevor is ill advised at the best of times, however this spectacle was being played out some twenty feet up at the base of the cliff at the back of Rock HQ. Had Trevor done an impression of Buckeroo the little lad would have followed a trajectory like Tigger on acid and may, if lucky, have had his fall cushioned by landing on a fat one armed bloke taking photos. Steve would have been equally unable to assist solve his son's plight as he was carrying a cup of tea and a mug of chocolate milk. If the child survived he would at least have something to take the taste of hooves and blood away.

Why was Steve visiting, well he was lending me a chainsaw.

Me, alone on the farm with a chainsaw, what could possibly go wrong?

I started the beast and remembering the words of Tracey my beautiful and oh so patient wife before she left "Don't do anything I wouldn't do" I decided that what she would do before attacking the trees by the stables with a borrowed chainsaw whilst balancing on a broken ladder using the chainsaw one handed Tracey would practice. So I shouted Bethan to come and help and set off up the lane to prune the Sycamore that blocks all sunlight into the corner of Willow rise. As you can see from the bottom picture the footpath was only blocked for a few hours.

I decided to leave the trees by the stable.


For now.

Equinox blues

It doesn't seem right but only a few weeks after noticing the leaves are turning to autumn shades we are now at a point in the year where day and night are equal length and from tomorrow we rush headlong to winter. Longer nights than days mean either we stumble around outside in the dark or we stay inside and do jobs indoors waiting for springtime. There is a lot to do, currently I am reading up how to make bacon and butcher pigs.

Its a strange time at The Rock, Ben is about to go to Cyprus where his regiment is stationed for two years. Hopefully he will be home before Christmas and not in Afghanistan. Bethan is about to go to Canada, only for a fortnight but its still a big step for her, mind you she has had experience of solo foreign travel, she lost her passport and instead of flying out to Antigua with her brother to meet Tracey and I she spent two worrying days in the passport office at Newport before getting the vital document that allowed her to join us in the Caribbean.

On top of those anxieties its a year since I fell off the gallery landing in the workshop. We were talking about it last night, how I spent 8 and a half hours on the operating table as they tried to sort the mush out that was my left arm. Thankfully the surgeon was a very skilled one and a year on its returning to some sort of normality. One more operation should remove the last of the metal and pins and then I should be able to start Physiotherapy.

So today I have been ultra careful, no walking under ladders, no crossing the paths of black cats and no driving Rene with the volume on the cd player at 13.

I took a walk before dinner with Apollo who as you can see is keen on making friends with the two horses on the hill. We collected a rucksac of apples without being shouted at or being accosted by naked hermits. I managed to get home despite a sense of forboding without hurting myself. It was almost dark by the time we got home, you could smell autumn in the air, roll on the spring.