April 2005:

Taking advantage of all this wet, we started the month planting willow along the edge of one of our fields in the hopes of creating a bit of a shelter belt for the animals... we'll see.

This month there has been a new wind blowing through the farm. Annabelle, our horsey and Insight friend, returned from working in the USA and has moved in. She's interested in developing her horsemanship skills and Mark, particularly, is enjoying riding and sharing the horses here with her. Spirit, our little Exmoor, has taken a shine to her and she's often seen out jogging with him!

I guess with people feeling spring around the corner (somewhere!), Mark's been doing more teaching and Mandy, who was with him during the scare encounter with the hunt has bought a new horse, Bruce, who has joined the herd.

We also have welcomed 2½ WWOOFers. We joined the WWOOF's scheme in December (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms). The idea is that we provide food and accommodation for scheme members who in exchange come and work on the farm with any jobs that are going on. Abby and Jake (the ½ being just 2 years old), along with their dog, Travis, came to give some TLC to the herb bed. Abby tried to make a business in London growing herbs for animals, but the beds got trashed and she got disheartened. Here she has found a place that welcomes her skill and knowledge, where Jake can play pretty safely and the dog can run around with a new mate, Brandy. We did have to do some chicken training with Travis which has resulted in him thinking that chickens are to be avoided at all costs. So hopefully our free range birds will still be safe in the farmyard.

Gloria is a full time WWOOFer and came to see me at Swindon Farmers Market in the middle of this month. She has arrived and brought with her a breath of fresh air. The boot room has been cleaned, a sitting space in the garden has been created, the sapling trees ahve been potted, food has been prepared, sausages have been made, yards have been cleared, and lots of chatting has been done... phew!

There's something very fine about the whole process in the it's nice for both of us to have people to do things with. We are both greatly encouraged and finding life easier, more rewarding and satisfying as a result of sharing our days with others.

I even managed to have a couple of days off the farm! I spent a day with our friend Prudence at her smallholding in Stroud, looking at how she keeps her pigs, chickens, horses and sheep. Nice to see another set up and be able to chew the fat over someone else's kitchen table! I also went to the Stitch and Sew Exhibition at the Bath and West Show Ground to do some spinning on the Silkwood Angora stand. Tessa taught me to spin and works wonders with yarns. She keeps Angora rabbits and spins a beautiful yarn from their wool. This year she was demonstrating the hugest knitting needles I've ever seen! We were also taken over by Points West who chose to do their introduction and links for the local news network from the stand.

After 1 month, we finally gave up on the second lot of eggs in the incubator. A postmortem revealed that several were not fertilised, something must have happened that stopped a few of them in their development at around the half way point, and the rest should have made it but didn't. We suspect the humidity was not high enough, but it worked last time... and if you make it too high the chicks drown in the shells... it demonstrates again, the fineness of the process of life and how nature has organised things to be just so.