It is morning on the farm. Feeding time. Crows break from the treetops in an awkward clutter as I rattle my feed bucket on our lane.
There is a raven amongst them. Fiach Dubh, the Black Hunter. I can tell by the sound. Their long flight feathers beat the skin of the air like a drum. Whumpf, whumpf, whumpf.
There is snow today. The first I think of the year. It has held in the fields, gripped by the last of the grass. The lane is clear. The woods are clear. Our south facing fields are clear. But the fields by the house have a carpet of white.
Breaking from more distant treetops are the starlings. They flock above the field and recentre on a distant roost, unsettled by the sound of me. The air bristles with their hundred mouthed chatter.
The thrushes burst through the brambles. Picking over the driveway with forensic care, bent to their task, and, for a moment, unaware of the world around them. My bucket rattles as I pass. They scatter across the boundary field.
The blackbirds toss leaves in circling pairs, never distant one from the other. They have a territory. Where the woods meet the garden and the field meets the road. These margins they defend against all comers. They are my year round companions this pair. Their brightblack eyes cheer me in every season.
The robins greet and follow me to the barn. The sound of the bucket draws them to a perch nearby. I will find them, if I forget the lid, perched on the rim of the feed bin, or plucking oats from a bucket I have set down. I fill my buckets and head towards the fields.
Pheasant are usually a distant thing. We hear them settle noisily into their roost. There is one by the feed trough. She pelts down the field margin in clumsy surprise and bursts into explosive flight. I pick up the trough to bring to the hill field. It clangs and clanks unsettling thrushes hunting the further reaches of the field. The thrushes have moved to the fields today. The ground has heated a little and I think they are hunting insects. Soon the first spring columns of insects will be climbing in the still cold air. Our farm is noisy with insects in summer. A sign, I hope that we do what we do, well, sustainably.
I think of the buzzards I saw in their patient roost on the wet bare trees in a nearby woods. They grappled from limb to limb picking powerful talons from the branches with particular and definite grace. I got close. I could see the trim and precise power in their claws The muscular poise and movement. A power I would call fury because I have no better or more accurate word. There is no common air between us. I am not their concern. I have not seen them on the farm since late last spring when they harried some nesting birds in the dead trees behind our front field.
The pigs swarm across the field for their feed. Bustling, imperious, enthusiastic. Daugthers and sons of mud. They will make of this field a fertile bed for our oat crop, I hope. Their breath makes great clouds. They make of their feed muscle and manure, to feed me, my customers, and my farm.
Winter here is thriving with life. This winter more so than any other. The mild weather sent columns of insects into the air in December, January. There have been no frosts to speak of. Our hazels in the hedgerows have kept their green leaves. It is odd. Perhaps not good.
The goats bay and roar for their hay. Their rack still has a quarter portion. But they are particular. Creatures who insist on your routine, and their own bracing and imperturbable anarchy. I feed them. The mother comes for her scratch, too. I scratch her warm flank. And I feel liking and well liked. It is a nice feeling.
There was one snow. Light. Todays fall. The lightest touch of midwinter here. It shorted the electric fence for the chickens. The pine marten broke in. I know it was her. Because she turns to see me as I open the coop door. Meets my eye. Then ripples under my arm and across the snow to make her getaway. The doorway not 18 inches tall. I am that close. I swear she sizes me up. Go on you beautiful. I am sad for the loss of the hens. But I can’t begrudge you. Winter, and snow brings things cheek by jowl that would otherwise remain separate. She must have been hungry to chance the fence. And smart. It was shorted on one side only. I found her pawprints and test. Dead here, but nowhere else. Clever lady.
To the drive again. There are red squirrel here. I think I see two. Again, closer than I have any right to be. They are lucky the marten is otherwise occupied. But they are fast, and light, and far more difficult a meal for her than hens. I have never seen them this late in winter.
And now to the hill where the ewe flock graze. I have moved them carefully, from scrap of preserved pasture to scrap. We moved them from the woods where they grazed the sheltered weeds and grass, and now, in the back field behind the woods where they tear the last leaves from the ground. I have heaps of hay for them. We feed hay in the morning and the evening when the cold bites. Digesting the hay keeps them warmer. A warming breakfast to meet the day. A warming supper to meet the night. They crowd eagerly around. The lead ewe eyes me carefully, follows me to the field margin, in case I have oats. I do not. The lambs bustle in amongst the flock. The green grazing we have saved has saved them. They were sluggish, slow and dull before we fenced the woods and opened it up for the lambs. Winter has not been easy for them. But these two weeks of work on my part, the daily moves to scraps of green, the harvested brambles, the careful portions of hay have brought them back and now they throng and muster with the flock as barging and eager as their mothers. We all wait for spring. But storms have been and more to come. For these lambs, we will see. It is a hungry season now. Something every animal knows.
