Hawthorn Hill Nature Diary: Jan 22
Mature willow curl their gnarled way to the sky. They seem to grip the very air and twist themselves around it to grow.
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The Beekeeping Diaries: #1 Learning to Keep Bees
There is something wonderful in working with something so different and alien that any of the ordinary oddities of character get lost in the massive gap. It will, I think, be the same with bees.
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Winter, Firewood Season and the Wonder of a Blackbird
he blackbird couple that hunt the drive. They will turn the same leaf ten times over in a week. The pair will hold this territory for their lives perhaps. Much as they hold to one another. For life
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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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