Year: 2021
Hawthorn Hill Nature Diary: December 2021
As I drive home hundreds of birds break across the darkening road. Twilight has softened their shapes. I cannot hear their sound. They have the feel of crows though. 400 at least, perhaps, as the moon picks out clouds and the shape of wings against the coal and blue sky. If I believed in god […]
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Farm Bathing – How Hard Work on the Farm Keeps Me Sane, Healthy and Fed.
It is good to work. The rhythm and lift of a scythe or an axe. The weight of hay on a forks end as you pivot the handle with a palm and lift it into a loft. The spade as it cuts bright slabs of clay from the soil. The turn and pitch and sway […]
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Hawthorn Hill Nature Diary: Nov 21
Early morning. The valley gathers the skirts of mist about it, folds of it cloaking the further hills, the valley rift a dragons breath.
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Kindness, quietness and the goodness of people.
The quiet tongueless stories of people who shaped their world and the people in it, and who still shape we who have inherited it. I feel the same about kindness.
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We Harvest Our Lambs, Work With Neighbours, and Learn
It is dark. The trailer ramp clatters and rings. The whinge of it as it swings open. The rams are gathered. Mostly. My hands are aching. The worst of the work is still to come.
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Harvesting Willow and Slowing Down with a Broken Arm
My broken arm has slowed me. Tied me to the farm and it’s surrounds. I cannot leave to pick up trailers of hay. I have rams in the barn. In recovery, and hungry. So, I crisscross the farm harvesting forage. Have done for a month. I travel the same paths, crest the same hills, walk […]
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Late Night Walk With Bats on the Farm
My youngest, one hand contained in its smallness entirely in the curl of mine, the other, pointing, tracing the half seen flight of a thing in the sky. My eldest following, twiddling dials, yelping with excitements. All of us giggling and laughing as the fluttering wings of things wheeled feet from our faces
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Hawthorn Hill Nature Diary: October 21
The month begins with the bee loud sound of the ivy. The day is bright. Warm for October. The ivy wrapped trees are covered in flowers.
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Why Farms Were Less Lonely in the Fifties
We came round to a farmer over the hill. Out the road. Past seventy. His tractor rigged with strings and pulleys, hoists and straps for getting in and out, a place to stow his crutches
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Tree Sap Syrup
I’ve a mind to make syrup from tree sap on the farm. I’m combing the hedgerows and woodlands for good sized Alder, Sycamore, Beech, Poplar and Lime
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