September 13th
There is a faerie frost. The kind that touches the long grass in the pockets, and as I walk up the shadow track to the hens, inspires the imagined flight of a thousand sparkling folk disappearing with the rising sun,
The pellucid light cyan sky enchants my eyes, which in turn, and mysteriously, mutes my ears to the burr of traffic close by, and imprisons me in a silent morning reverie, in this rather noisy, practical place.
Feeding and releasing the birds into such a morning is a joy, their bonnie brown fluster to the water hopper, their skittish skip across that chilly grass, Faf’s wary fact check around his domain. It’s hard to imagine that a year ago they were mostly imprisoned, and saw no daylight at all.
The goats are argumentative and snuffly in the chill, and Cliff parades his splendid long wool jacket to the other two boys, who, being half dairy breeds, are less commodiously clad. Do you remember those ‘afghan’ coats we used to wear? I think I had a burgundy cord one from C&A. (Never mind the coats, do you remember C&A?) They had non specific fluff around the hood, the sleeves, and all around the front facings? I loved that coat. Cliff feels much the same about his.
September 23rd
The rain has been torrential all day and the barn has already begun to flood again. The entire day, it has rained.
Up and out into the darkness, because we needed to move a fence, and we couldn’t let Diva out until it was fixed.
The onrush of the water has lived, rent free as they say these days, in our heads all summer - inasmuch as we have had a summer. We cannot exist another winter as wet as the last without some upgrades.
Our poor goats survived the flood only by being on 2ft high deep litter beds - unintentional but, as it happened, life saving. Much of our hay did not survive. We waded around in stinking water - it was dire.
Our plan was to get a digger and several tonnes of crushed concrete and lift up the floor of the barn, as well as filling in the swampiest bits of the track. We tried several contractors but no one will quote, so we will have to do it ourselves.
Meanwhile
How do you create the sense of that silent off grid cabin in a new build mid-terrace on a housing estate?
It’s slightly easier in winter, because the curtains are closed, and the reality of the external view is shrouded in darkness. We don’t and can’t have an open fire, or even a wood burner. It’s a physical impossibility in this house, which is one of my great regrets (although the last year in our rented farmhouse, with fire as our only heat source was cold, and tough.)
I have instead, the fakest of fake fires. I don’t believe in high quality fakery. A dupe is a dupe, so my £60 plug in job is good enough. The absence of the smell of wood smoke is a hard pill to swallow, though. I’ve tried the candles, they fail. The playing of quiet folk music can help, but of course the authentic soundtrack would be silence - not next door’s TV or wall bouncing teenager.
All of this is contemplated without bringing out my spinning wheel. I wonder if I’ve been caught in the ‘better fake’ trap in some areas, in a way I’ve studiously avoided with the fire, and failed to live the authenticity of the quiet cabin in my head. Maybe the trick is to mimic the sky - enchant one sense to still another. In the same way that ice blue morning light deafens my ears to the road, perhaps the burr of the wheel, dropping the fallacious flames into background blur, could be my wood smoke.
I am collating and curating these meanderings, as I wonder if somehow, I can bring them together in a place where my fellow illusionists will find them.
September 25th
Facebook, for all its failings, hosts some splendid women’s farming and smallholding groups, and this week, one topic has clearly dominated - if it’s going to be this wet, it’s got to cool down! Those of us above a certain age have been lamenting the necessity for wet weather gear, when the mercury still tips the upper teens.
It’s too hot for waterproof trousers!
My wellies are leaking, which foreshadows another assault on the bank account, and I don’t have a waterproof coat that is not also warm. On Wednesday, it was so warm and yet so absolutely torrential, I opted for the lighter version, but its qualifications in the school of waterproof are definitely poor fail at level two, so by the time I’d even discovered that the pony was out, all the lambs were out, and the hen diaspora was at pretty global from a bird point of view, I was already too soggy to turn back and review my choices.
Having two species out of their spaces at the same time presents a very special challenge. I could get either in, in a heartbeat, by the shake of a bucket. Unfortunately, that’s non selective. So if I shake a bucket in the lamb’s patch, the pony’s going to muscle her way in, and frighten the lambs from their own sweet home.
Conversely, if I shake the bucket up by the pony’s stable, she will sashay in without a backward glance, but that will be her first mistake, because nine sodden woolly teenagers will be on her heels.
Thankfully the hens are not bucket orientated, or it would be like the Ark in there.
Eventually, I got them all home and not dry. But by that time I’d abandoned the jacket, and was dripping through all remaining layers.
It feels a month - though it is barely ten days - since the sharpness of frost, the bluest of skies, and the swallows, playing wildly and scurrilously in the bright canopy above me, before perfidiously gathering on the wires, preparing in plain sight for their desertion.
The equinox has passed, and winter is on her way.