- Location
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Can’t recall what’s happening today outside the front gate, and I’m too busy to notice anyway. The rams have been at it for 3 weeks – just over one cycle, so we’re dropping members of the ‘B’ team in with various groups. These boys have been sat on the reserve bench have various reasons. Some are homebred, and I tend not to use homebred tups unless I can step them sideways, or they’re outstanding. Mind on the other hand, when ewes go back out on the hill, they at least know where they are, and stand a good chance of staying upright once they’ve found the few ewes still needing their special attention. Others might’ve been relegated because of aspersions cast over their feet or some other functional failing....usually accompanied by a wince when I recall what they cost in the first place. If I’m really on it, one or two of the A team might get picked up and rescued from ‘overwork’. The Blue Faced Leicester is top of that list, seeing as he’s still very much alive…which isn’t ‘a given’ by any means.
On matters bovine, we’re down to the last few spring calves to wean – one group are still with their dams in a favoured combe. Meanwhile, a bunch of autumn calvers have shelled out several Angus babies. I’m feeding pretty much everything now, concentrating on shifting a barn full of round bale hay so I can house these new arrivals with their mums. Most of this batch of hay is fine chaffy stuff which got baked, so I’m spending a lot of time with eyes full of the wretched fines. It was bad enough having to endure the discomfort of the stuff at harvest, but I’m getting the double whammy now feeding it in gales.
With cows come in off the common, and needing to ship across to their winter lodgings, we’re TB testing a mob of the hairy boisterous great lumps this week. Fingers crossed.
The sawmill has been steadily busy for some time, with continued orders for western red cedar, oak and chestnut coming along. Alongside, we’re cutting material for our own ongoing repair and renewal schedule. I’m at that time of life when I want to set things in order, and generally tie off some of the loose ends. There’s new rooves, fresh cladding, concrete laid, and new troughs and feeders put in situ. Keeping on top of such infrastructure stuff is a never ending list at the best of times, and I’m working on the premise that I’ll be a long time dead.
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Oh alright, I suppose we’d better touch on some wretched popularity contest that’s going on today.
I’ve never voted anything but Conservative since I first shared a pasty with my local MP Sir Peter Mills, in Clartycombe Market canteen when I was an odious spotty oik. But this time, I’m less certain. It doesn’t help that my MP is that smug barrister bloke Geoffrey Whatsisface. When lefties suggest that wealthy Tory politicians are out of touch with their electorate, it would be harder to find someone more fitting the description. Camp Coaker have only had cause to trouble Geoffrey the once, when our middle sprog was at Brymore –that fabulous school in Somerset that teaches Agriculture and Horticulture alongside the regular curricular. And this was the problem. At the time, the school was struggling to stay out of OFSTEAD’s red zone because agri and horti don’t count as proper subjects. This was despite the school manifestly doing fantastic things, and turning out a steady stream of capable level headed kids who also knew which end of the cow the slurry leaks out of.
So my beloved booked in to see the man, accompanied by our eldest. Explaining what she thought was a massive shortcoming in the OFSTEAD yardstick, Geoff pooh-poohed her concerns, giving an insipid party-line explanation. Then set off discussing classics with our eldest –who, it should be said, was never destined to go tilling the soil or scratching a cow’s rump. He wistfully bemoaned that more schools don’t teach Latin nowadays.
So never mind his not exactly having covered himself in glory as Attorney General, more to the point he dismisses the idea of teaching kids how to produce food, but clings to teaching them a defunct language with precious little use outside the rarefied atmosphere barristers breathe. There, its chief use is seemingly to bamboozle ordinary folk and protect the livelihoods of a small group of ‘special’ people.
Some days I’m minded to ask myself what goes on in his constituency, and whether he knows which end of a cow is which. You know, I think I might be voting differently for once.
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Anton's articles are syndicated exclusively by TFF by kind permission of the author and WMN.
Anton also writes regularly for the Dartmoor Magazine
On matters bovine, we’re down to the last few spring calves to wean – one group are still with their dams in a favoured combe. Meanwhile, a bunch of autumn calvers have shelled out several Angus babies. I’m feeding pretty much everything now, concentrating on shifting a barn full of round bale hay so I can house these new arrivals with their mums. Most of this batch of hay is fine chaffy stuff which got baked, so I’m spending a lot of time with eyes full of the wretched fines. It was bad enough having to endure the discomfort of the stuff at harvest, but I’m getting the double whammy now feeding it in gales.
With cows come in off the common, and needing to ship across to their winter lodgings, we’re TB testing a mob of the hairy boisterous great lumps this week. Fingers crossed.
The sawmill has been steadily busy for some time, with continued orders for western red cedar, oak and chestnut coming along. Alongside, we’re cutting material for our own ongoing repair and renewal schedule. I’m at that time of life when I want to set things in order, and generally tie off some of the loose ends. There’s new rooves, fresh cladding, concrete laid, and new troughs and feeders put in situ. Keeping on top of such infrastructure stuff is a never ending list at the best of times, and I’m working on the premise that I’ll be a long time dead.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Oh alright, I suppose we’d better touch on some wretched popularity contest that’s going on today.
I’ve never voted anything but Conservative since I first shared a pasty with my local MP Sir Peter Mills, in Clartycombe Market canteen when I was an odious spotty oik. But this time, I’m less certain. It doesn’t help that my MP is that smug barrister bloke Geoffrey Whatsisface. When lefties suggest that wealthy Tory politicians are out of touch with their electorate, it would be harder to find someone more fitting the description. Camp Coaker have only had cause to trouble Geoffrey the once, when our middle sprog was at Brymore –that fabulous school in Somerset that teaches Agriculture and Horticulture alongside the regular curricular. And this was the problem. At the time, the school was struggling to stay out of OFSTEAD’s red zone because agri and horti don’t count as proper subjects. This was despite the school manifestly doing fantastic things, and turning out a steady stream of capable level headed kids who also knew which end of the cow the slurry leaks out of.
So my beloved booked in to see the man, accompanied by our eldest. Explaining what she thought was a massive shortcoming in the OFSTEAD yardstick, Geoff pooh-poohed her concerns, giving an insipid party-line explanation. Then set off discussing classics with our eldest –who, it should be said, was never destined to go tilling the soil or scratching a cow’s rump. He wistfully bemoaned that more schools don’t teach Latin nowadays.
So never mind his not exactly having covered himself in glory as Attorney General, more to the point he dismisses the idea of teaching kids how to produce food, but clings to teaching them a defunct language with precious little use outside the rarefied atmosphere barristers breathe. There, its chief use is seemingly to bamboozle ordinary folk and protect the livelihoods of a small group of ‘special’ people.
Some days I’m minded to ask myself what goes on in his constituency, and whether he knows which end of a cow is which. You know, I think I might be voting differently for once.
-------------------------
Anton's articles are syndicated exclusively by TFF by kind permission of the author and WMN.
Anton also writes regularly for the Dartmoor Magazine
