Bailer Twineology

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This gate is modern but not up to the specification required to withstand a rampaging pensioner in a six-ton digger. It should be taken off and straightened (by a pacified person in a mended digger) and rehung by newly welded hinges on a brand new post without a rotten bottom but….

It’s winter, it’s cold, the ground is very wet and it’s getting dark etc.

So, in the short term we are thrown upon the traditional method…

Bailer twineology…

Actually its a’fusion’ technology — using nylon twine in the traditional way — although don’t forget that nylon has memory (which is more than you can say for the farmer) — It remembers how to undo itself so you should lock the knots — ironically that means reef knots and not Granny knots!

Substitute lower hinge

Gate shortened, opening enlarged — substitute fastening

God-knows-what-knot

The farms around us are particularly tidy and I fear that they are losing the ancient skills!

Here is a detail from a grade two listed traditional sheep fold — note the use of growing, self reinforcing, timber and many different technologies — all with their own integrity!

Corner of Grade two listed sheep pen!

We try to keep these skills alive in a modern context such as the algae-prevention modification of our rain water harvester!

Wrapping the white plastic tank in black plastic prevents algae growth.

I am most proud of my four-minute-cratch (patent pending).

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It was erected in four minutes in a hail storm when snow was forecast. I am particularly pleased with the use of grass collection bags from the lawn mowers to stop the sheep getting their feet stuck and injured when trying to climb in the ends. The back is formed by the fence, the front is a hurdle and the top is half the oak door of the old pig sty, all held together by, guess what? Bailer twine!

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Humour, Uncategorized

Sunday Craik – the pity of it all

God spends quite a lot of time in the pub — sometimes he’s there when he’s supposed to be at chapel — that’s what I say to friends who ask where we are bound on a Sunday afternoon when the good folk are heading down the valley to the chapel.

Yesterday there was an added incentive (for the pub, not chapel) — Liverpool were playing Man. City in the League Cup. It’s not that Alan supports Man. City (he would warm to anyone in competition with Manchester United — it’s an underdog thing. The landlord is an avid Liverpool supporter which adds to the fun enormously.

‘Can we have the Rugby on?’ asks Alan as we arrive.

‘There isn’t any!’ snaps the landlord.

‘Wasps are playing against ‘Quins on BT Sport,’

‘Can’t afford BT Sport with the pitiful amount you drink!’

‘Do Wasps have a ‘B’ team? asks Ikey, ‘Bee team’, he repeats, at which point a man in an overcoat, a knitted Balaclava and thick scarf runs into the bar and sexually assaults several ladies, it is the muffled titter running around the room — a tribute to My Dad — it was the only joke he knew! No one takes any notice — they never did.

The landlord asserts himself by switching on the commentary. That way he can follow the action despite all the distractions we can throw at him like the full glass of Stella I knock across the domino table due to the excitement of a penalty — it misses Alan almost completely.

As the match progresses the joy of winding up the landlord is irresistible — people who normally have no interest in football whooping with every Man City tackle and berating the ref for every decision that favours Liverpool — carried on a wave of affectionate teasing — warmed by our own mass action. But Liverpool were never meant to lose.

If we want any more beer we had better shut up — during the penalty shoot-out there is a respectful silence — we have probably already gone too far. The instant the winning Man City goal hits the back of the net the sound is switched off and program turned to Countryfile and someone says how Adam is a ‘really good farmer’ so everyone, relieved to change the subject, can discuss why he never has mud on his boots and where the puddles might have gone and why doesn’t he get a move on and swing that lamb.

Sheep farming

Gladys is a metaphor

You remember Gladys —

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Left for dead but, given half a chance, she grabbed life by the teat and refused to die.

She’s still with us.

She is at the bottom of the pecking order but is fearless and curious (or bemused). She is always last. She’s the one that is missing, when one is missing — caught in the fence, or with her head stuck in a bucket, or wound up in brambles, or trapped behind the gate, or stuck in the mud, or on the wrong side of the stream. I’ve told you before that if you turn a sheep upside down it stops working, shepherds call this ‘being caste’. Gladys falls over and becomes caste and frightens me to death, thinking she’s dead with her legs in the air. I turn her over and off she trots.

When a stray dog approaches their field and the young sheep run together uphill (that’s the way to go) — Gladys runs the other way.

In Nature, she’s the one that would be picked off by the predator. That’s her role, her niche — she’s the sacrificial lamb . I’ve told you before — sheep are biblical.

She’s different. She’s the loner — the innocent — the vulnerable adult (just). It’s my job to look after her. She’s top of my list.

She is the unpromising success, the unlikely survivor, the loveable underdog, she is Kettering Town winning the FA Cup and a cat with nine lives.

SONY DSC

Travel

Soggy Situation

There were three days last week when it didn’t rain all day (think about your syntax) — when it rained, but not all day! Otherwise there has been precipitation, all day, every day since the end of October. That is why this blog has been so quiet of late — incessant moaning about the rain when you have chosen to live in a temperate rain forest would be tedious.

As wave after wave of weather drives down the valley smudging the view and the streams and rivers roar, it’s hard to get excited about the waterfalls when the lens of my camera is wet and the image fogged, is that just condensation or camera-wobble due to shivering, anyway the shutter’s jammed — will it ever work again.

Last moment of respite from the deluge — in the Autumn.

There is a beauty, a vividness, in all this wetness, but lately it eludes me.

In the face of impending seasonal affective disorder we thought we’d have a little holiday, so off we set (not to somewhere warm and sunny) to Rossendale and Darwen in Lancashire — the home of the dark satanic mills of yore!

Darwen photographed by A F Buck in 1948 — note the air pollution!

We stayed in Hurst Green and mooched around Rossendale, to old haunts, now-derelict pubs of youthful exploit, new housing estates where cotton-mills and shoe factories had stood last time we visited. We were visiting the county archive, researching this rapidly disappearing industrial heartland and it’s characters, perhaps 10 years too late, but the archive was very helpful. In the evenings we were cosy in the Shireburn Arms where the food was excellent and dawn in the Ribble Valley was stunning.

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We’re home now and guess what? It’s raining!

Hill Farming

Predator Proofing

Last night, late, we arrived home from a weeks holiday in Cornwall so, only now, it is safe to mention the feverish activity that preceded our departure for the far south-west. It’s not that we feared cyber initiated incursions during our absence; it is that we do not believe in tempting fate.

Fox by Julian

© Copyright Julian Dowse and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Now we are back I can risk telling you that we were predator-proofing. We struggled in the torrential rain to make the poultry fox-proof and badger-proof before entrusting them to a friend to tend daily. We erected 8 ft high double fences with embedded roof slates buried and wired around the base and heavy scaffolding poles also fixed at the base to discourage tunnelling. Alan vetoed the purchase of electric fencing — God forbid — that is plan ‘B’. Phase Two will encompass the netting roof which will be necessary when we have chicks — to keep out the magpies and buzzards (but I haven’t mentioned this to Alan yet).

Poultry run

The cats had not left home this time and were in-doors waiting for us on our return — the one dubious benefit of heavy rain.

I immediately donned my wellies and went out to shine the repaired torch through the chicken-wire window of the new coop. The chickens were on their perch, one with its head cocked quizzically to one side and a brown egg smashed on the floor beneath her — ‘point of lay’ but still hasn’t got the hang of it quite.

The ducks were also on the floor of the coop, carefully preening the last of the day’s mud from their feathers in a scene that reminded me of our bathroom on a Friday evening when our five children, then teenagers, were still at home.

Outside the coop in the new predator-proof poultry run something strange has occurred — a 25 foot square enclosure of pasture has undergone some sort of cold fusion. There is, it seems, a complication of keeping predators out and it is keeping poultry (especially ducks) in. In one week, two ducks have carefully liquidised the chicken run.

Puddle Ducks at work

Carefully ducked ground

They meticulously probe the soft soil for grubs and wriggly things, repeatedly washing their bills in any standing water they can find — puddly land becomes a morass in no time — they are very conscientious!

Compensation!

This morning, bright and early, I counted the sheep huddled by the fence and found one too many — that’s odd!

There was one stray sheep on the other side of the fence trying very hard to blend in with ours — they do so hate to be alone.

In this wet weather sometimes, in the dips, the tension in the wire fences lifts the fence posts right out of the ground and some of the ewes are quite clever at encouraging this process, particularly if there is nice grass on the other side. This seems to account for our new ewe — she has been returned.

Casually hoofed mud — quite different

Climate

Christmas Buttercup!

It’s Christmas Week — it’s still raining and we’ve had record high night-time temperatures. The grass is still growing, albeit slowly and the sheep who are usually complaining that they need concentrate by this time of year are not even bothered to lick the Rumevite block I put out for them.

And now, the first buttercup of spring;

it’s as if the shops were full of hot cross buns and Easter eggs — where will it end?

Climate, Hill Farming

Too rough for ducks!

Our stream in summer

The exceptional rains continue, the ground is saturated, the reservoirs are overflowing and the rivers are in flood. It’s worse further north and it’s bad enough here.

Same stream today!

Last week, unusually for December, I saw a Dor Beetle on the path — moving to higher ground, I thought, ahead of the flood.

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Just in time, as it happened, before water started to spew out of the burrow. In the valley bottoms the water table is higher than the ground so mole hills erupt with water, like volcanoes, and if you stab the ground with a stick it may spurt at you.

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Water is running everywhere. Waterfalls appearing where they do not normally belong.

Impromptu waterfall

At dusk this evening the chickens put themselves to bed but the two ducks were nowhere to be seen. They weren’t in the sodden field, nor in the yard, not under the truck and not in the barn or in the road which has turned into a torrent.

The road

Way to a neighbours house, cut off by stream

The torch wouldn’t work and the hurricane lamp blew out, but somewhere, above the storm, there was a distant quacking. The two ducks had strayed into the wetland (well — it’s all wet at the moment) and become separated and were calling to each other over the stream. As I approached through the aspen and alder, one panicked and tried to cross the raging stream (remember, their wings are clipped), next minute she was in the churning, muddy water, whizzing downstream, spinning and flapping, quacking and squawking. I was downstream of her so, holding on to a tree, I managed to lunge at her as she approached and flip her unceremoniously onto the muddy bank where she disappeared into a holly thicket before I landed, splat, where she had just been. Traumatised (both of us) I carried her home over the bridge and reunited her with her friend, who came running to meet us.

Tomorrow, I think they had better try their new enclosure — it’s too rough for ducks!

Climate, Ecology

Wet, wet, wet!

It’s all down to the Jet Stream. It’s not a media construct, concocted by those who pull our strings to add weight to the recent climate change demonstrations — to boost the low-carbon economy and bolster sales of renewables. In fact the media haven’t even noticed that parts of the UK have dropped from sight — at first just soggy then gone — submerged.

Llangurig church earlier today, in the Upper Wye Valley

I can’t quite work it out — it’s warm and the grass is growing but it just won’t stop raining — I know it’s Wales but it’s poured, unremittingly for three weeks — 260mm and 60 of those in the last 24 hrs — and if it slips any further ( the Jet Stream, that is) it will all be snow and we’ll be living in Canada…

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We’ll need a skidoo and not just new industrial water-proofs.

It’s not just the media that has been pre-occupied with more momentous events — I only noticed when I went out for some milk and had a Dr Gloucester moment. Splashing through puddles in my little car, it suddenly felt as if I were driving through treacle and the outside world disappeared under the wave that enveloped the windscreen. Where was the road?

Today on the back-road from Llangurig to Llandrindod Wells.

It reappeared only to disappear again almost immediately as I realised that I was wearing the wrong vehicle — I went home and changed.

Severn Break-Its-Neck, today, about 3 miles from the source of the Severn.

Alan put on is red woolly hat and we set off in our truck to intrepidly go and be amazed by the awesome power of water.

Everywhere sheep were damp and disgruntled.

Disgruntled sheep often with almost horizontal ears!

In Staylittle (Stay-a-little as it used to be called and which is a much better name) the water was rising.

Rising water

By the Clywedog Reservoir, used to regulate the flow in the Severn, men from the Water Authority watched.

I’ve told you this before, but you probably won’t remember: the Wye and Severn rivers both start within about a mile of each other on a hill just up the road from here. Llangurig is the first town on the Wye and Llanidloes is the first on the Severn.

Wye Valley near Llangurig about 6 miles from source

The Old Mill, Llanidloes

Can you see the top of the arch under the windows where people stand to watch the dippers

Both these towns are very near the sources of their rivers which go on down their respective valleys gathering volume and momentum — we have never seen them rage so much and so soon and so we fear for the communities downstream. Today, while I was taking these photos of the river by the Old Mill, I met the architect who was looking at the flats, converted about ten years, and he told me that he had never known the arch (which you can’t see — but you should be able to see) to be submerged completely before.

It’s all a bit worrying — the rain has stopped now but everywhere roars with draining water.

Thoughtful

A Different Sort of Storm

It is the mating season… For trampolines — a male bowls across the hillsides looking for a mate, tumbles down the bank and leaps over the hedge. He bounds down the slope then soars on a powerful gust, trailing his long netted plumage as he hurls himself down the valley.

Storm warning in Wales! 150mm rainfall forecast over night!

The wind moans high above our house– we are in the lee of the hill. It was built where the sheep sheltered — in the 1840s they noticed those things. I noticed the tall trees at the end of the house flailing about in the turbulence of the mounting storm but Alan wouldn’t sleep in the spare room at the other end of the house — out of the reach of falling branches.

In mitigation for my cowardice I’ll tell you that two branches of Douglas Fir did fall, crushing a steel hurdle but missing the rotting old chicken coop, home to our precious new domestic fowl. The old coop has been gradually sinking into the mud in the last week as the rainfall has reached 109mm. It’s been a dry summer and autumn — ever since I started measuring the rainfall — only 718mm since April (believe me — that’s not much) so we know we are in for a deluge — a couple of meters, at least!

As we obsess about our perennial preoccupation another storm hits Europe… A different sort of storm.

We watch our television and we catch sight of four people hunched over a coffee table at the edge of a crowded room full of milling men in smart suits and the occasional power-dressed woman. We are looking anonymously down on a room at the G20 and upon President Obama and President Putin and two interpreters. Did you see it? Their body language says it all — in a bubble, in a crowded room, they are straining to concentrate, to hear and to really understand each other. It is so contrary to their normal stance that it is shocking.

Here, back in our world, a man is startled by an unfamiliar shadow, he looks up into the great oak tree on the edge of his yard to see a skeleton hanging, draped in a black cape — it is the spent trampoline — like a giant dead crane fly.

Everything has changed.

Candle

Rememberance

Lest We Forget

Click here — An End and a Beginning — for the story of the end of WW2 in Mid-Wales and Japan recently published in PenCambria.

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You remember Gladys —

Left for dead but, given half a chance, she grabbed life by the teat and refused to die.

She’s still with us.

When a stray dog approaches their field and the young sheep run together uphill (that’s the way to go) — Gladys runs the other way.

In Nature, she’s the one that would be picked off by the predator. That’s her role, her niche — she’s the sacrificial lamb . I’ve told you before — sheep are biblical.

She’s different. She’s the loner — the innocent — the vulnerable adult (just). It’s my job to look after her. She’s top of my list.

She is the unpromising success, the unlikely survivor, the loveable underdog, she is Kettering Town winning the FA Cup and a cat with nine lives.

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There is a beauty, a vividness, in all this wetness, but lately it eludes me.

In the face of impending seasonal affective disorder we thought we’d have a little holiday, so off we set (not to somewhere warm and sunny) to Rossendale and Darwen in Lancashire — the home of the dark satanic mills of yore!

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© Copyright Julian Dowse and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

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