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 the same roads, hedgerows, secateurs in hand, harvesting great bushels of willow stems for the two white rams in the barn.
It’s been a slow month. Can’t drive. Can’t use tools, mow, dig, plant or cut wood. But I feel grateful. Autumn is usually busy. Hectic. Harvesting lambs, Sorting the flocks, trimming, gussying up, fetaching a ram, feed, hay, harvesting berries and making preserves, contacting customers…I’ve had to walk where I would run. I’ve spent time watching. Seeing. Noticing. Things that would have passed me by I now see for the first time.
As Autumn has unfolded I’ve watch the red Haws and Rosehips fruit. Seen the fat brassy black pearls of the sloes come too. I’ve seen the ivy flower. The sickly sweet scent of it drawing nectar hunting insects from all across the farm, the orchard bee loud, as loud as a swarm. Clouds of sugar hunters dipping in and out amongst the canopy where the ivy winds.
I’ve seen the Ash Tree let go and litter the roads with it’s leaf. Watched as the Sycamore dropped too. Taken note. The late in leaf poplar still holding on. And where willow can catch sun and is young, I’ve seen it hold its green too. Both are things I will plant this Spring. The livestock love them, and that they are late in leaf a good thing to note. I’ve taken note of the latest in leaf, and from these we will take cuttings hoping their offspring hold leaf well too.
As the ivy flowered, my own bees took flight on warmer days. The hives thronging with bright black bodies. I think I see them here and there, in amongst the ivy clad sycamore and willow.
On the hill, the nest the wasps have dug is raided. I remember nests too in the stone walls too raided in other Octobers. Paper comb and wasps spilled out onto the ground. The wasps grubbed by some snuffling thing as winter begins to think about biting. There are pine martens and foxes on the hill. Sometimes badger.
In the mornings I walk. Every morning. Many mornings the dragons breath lies on the folds of fields and where the shoulder of the valley spills down to it’s floor. Lying longer and later as Autumn gathers strength. Some mornings you can feel that the frost is considering getting round to us here. We are on winters to do list.
The deer raid the orchard for the last apples and sleep beneath the trees. One peers in through the kitchen wind, after the hour has changed. A young stag, rippling flanks, inches from my face. I turn from the washing up and he is there. He turns his flank, walks the garden with his rutting strut and is away.
I am slow. I trundle around with a broken arm. I have time to take it all in. Time to let it settle. I stop with neighbours and we talk. Secateurs in my back pocket. I am always hungry for willow. I watch the same hedges I pass change day by day. Here a spray of feathers that was not there yesterday near where I know both the fox and the pine marten hunt. Pigeon I think, though little is left. I know now why the holly stands tall head and shoulders above the hedges. The hedge cutter won’t trim holly. Surprising what you learn when you have time to talk.
such lovely writing. Your blog is a time-suck! May I ask, what do you do the the willow once its been stripped of its leaves?
Hi Nancy. Thanks for the nice words! We will probably compost the willow branches this year, and use them to make new vegetable beds. But in spring, we will cut up the stems once stripped, and plant them as living willow fences, hedges, or part of our woodland. I also took about 40 stems, cut to 12 inches as I was harvesting, and planted them. Sometimes we dry the willow and store it as treehay for the winter too