8th blog for the competition.

I had to deliver two papers to friends the other side of the village this morning – one parish related and the other an order through the W.I. for garden bulbs for next year.  The warm weather has changed the trees and hedges in the three days since my cycle ride on Saturday.  Like children’s ‘colouring in’, there are now big patches of fresh green everywhere.  Although our ditches are all dry I did find one lush with wild watercress.  A group of ducks I’d never seen before were in one field.  They were black and white with red beaks and as yet I have not found them in our duck reference books.  I returned along a different footpath, one of the many linking up parts of our village.  They are regularly ‘walked’ by members of the W.I. and this one today opened onto our harbour inlet.  We have a joke that the tide is always out but this morning it was in and the water looked amazing in the bright hazy light.

My ride took me past the two dairy farms in the village, with the cows all out on the grass.  I was reminded of our first farm animal at Applefield 8 years ago.  Maggi was a newborn calf, not much bigger than our old Labrador.  She grew up with him and Jack the terrier, joining in family walks and orchard teas.  Unfortunately she thought she was human and her adolescent moo got so loud when the house lights went off at bedtime, our neighbours appeared at the gate complaining they were being kept awake at night.  So, sadly she had to go back to her first farm to learn how to be a cow again.  Her moo could be heard from afar for two weeks, but she did settle down to becoming a good mother!

7th blog for the competition.

My mother who is 95 has 14 grandchildren and 17 great grandchildren, some of whom have linked up here this week. We didn’t feel too sad that the pig field was empty as the garden was full of children. The still green lawn leading to the animal fields changed to a playground of brightly coloured bikes, trucks, scooters and prams that come out of the Wendy house ‘garage’. It was good to see the garden through children’s eyes; they enjoyed the sandpit even though it was full of woodlice and nothing like a garden catalogue. The decking by the greenhouse made a good racing track, and it didn’t matter that grass and nettles are peeping up through all the cracks (not like it looks in DIY leaflets). The boys liked digging the earth hole that the dogs started behind the buddleia where nothing else will grow. The day ended with boiled eggs fresh from the nest, baths in the downstairs bathroom and a little more garden fun before everyone drove away. The nieces and nephews and their families all give us a feeling of connection going right back to the 1950s. There is a ‘sameness’ but with new bits which is continually fascinating.

Our village is made up of five hamlets linked by lanes and one main road. This morning it was my turn to clean the church and I cycled across the fields where there is a new cycle link pathway. It is a lovely approach to the church with wide space all around and the sea about a mile to the south. The hedges are full of blossom with bluebells underneath. A few people were tending family graves in the churchyard, linking up with their past family members. My paternal grandmother is buried there so the children in our family are the 5^th generation visiting my sister’s cottage in Church Lane.

When I got home this morning Lizzie was keen to try out the link path, so we left Alexandra, still held up with her cough, and went back to the lane where it starts – a short car trip as it is too far by electric wheelchair alone. For Lizzie to set off along such a beautiful track out in the open country was wonderful. The opening up of country ways for wheelchair users is so important and it would be a dream for our girls to have more links connecting the countryside in this way.

6th blog for the competition.Easter weekend began with decorating the church on Saturday morning. We have a flower team of 22, and we each choose different parts of the church to decorate for the festivals of Easter, Harvest and Christmas. At Easter the children make a garden on the floor of the north transept and all the flowers come from the village gardens.

At home we’ve been out of doors nearly the whole time and the garden has been visited by the Easter bunny who left colourful cardboard eggs with Easter animals inside. We also had the traditional family hunt for tiny eggs hidden round the garden.

Monday was pig departure day, and their blossom-edged field now looks sadly empty, though we hope not for long. Lizzie and I joined family on the beach for lunch, glad to be conveniently out for the pig load up. On the way back we had the rather alarming experience of meeting the trailer travelling in the opposite direction. We felt terribly sad and had to think forwards to the delicious bacon.

On the farm the earth is already caked dry. One of our ponds is nearly empty. We have to be careful of the hens who wander onto the mud for snacks. One evening last year we saw one lying dead, stuck in the middle. Dan splodged over to pick her up and she surprisingly twitched a tiny sign of life. So we rinsed her off and wrapped her up tight in a towel, and I nursed her by the Aga for the rest of the evening, rubbing her feathers. Just before we went to bed she opened her eyes but was totally exhausted, so we left her in the cat carrier with a heat pad and some water to drink. Next morning she was up and clucking happily at the mesh door and had very kindly laid us an egg!

5th blog for the competition.

There are callers every day at Applefield. We have helpers that come for Alexandra and Lizzie, then there are all the usual deliveries that come to our gate – as well as the postman, we’re lucky to also have a milkman, newspaper man, helpful dustmen, oxygen deliveries for Alexandra and our prescriptions delivered when needed. The animals’ food gets delivered and there are often visits from friends in the village. None of this happens on Good Friday which makes the whole day feel different. After a morning service at church, and coffee with my sister’s family under their huge white blossom tree we have had time to relax in our own garden, our pace matching the animals who sit, stroll, nibble and doze each day while we go about our busy lives. It is amazing to hear how the birds sing when Applefield goes still, and entertaining to sit and watch the geese having their daily wash in the old bath. One of them has detached herself from the gaggle and is looking thoughtful about life. This evening the ducks were alarmed to find her sitting in their hut on their eggs. She had to be turfed out back to the goose house.

The 8 hoggetts borrowing our field need dagging; their dirty backsides have all dried in the sun, so when they ran about in the field today they all rattled like maracas much to Jennah’s laughter! She and Kory have been busy spring cleaning the Wendy house, while Sheryl (their mother and our girls’ helper) and Lizzie painted eggs for Easter. We have been outside until after dark, the temperature being a warm 16 degrees.

4th blog for competition.

We woke to an amazingly clear, sunny morning at Applefield and the sun has shone all day.  Lizzie said “spring makes me sad, because I can’t stop it going quickly and it’s already the fourth month of the year going by.”  I was about to say something along the same lines, that it all moves along getting better and better.  One doesn’t want to miss a moment and unless we stop to look at it we miss the opening of leaves, buds and flowers all around us.  It is what Dan calls “heartbreakingly beautiful”.  We are so aware that we can’t stop any of the stages of life in the garden or on the farm.  Amidst the blossoming, our 7 young pigs have ‘blossomed’ so well, they are ready for market on Monday – a month earlier than expected.  We try so hard not to love each batch of pigs we raise too much, but departure day is always difficult. 

We were all sitting at the kitchen table pondering these thoughts, when we noticed Jack (terrier) sitting rather precariously on a stool by the Aga, his eyes closing in serious concentration at our conversation.  He started to nod off like an old man on a train and every now and then he almost wobbled off the stool.  Oblivious to our increasing laughter his dozing went on and off until he actually fell off the stool in his sleep!  We couldn’t be sad after that and Jack took the fall well as he was given lots of hugs afterwards.

3rd blog for the competition.

The start of the Easter holidays has always seemed surreal for its uplifting feeling of freedom, bright colours and fresh air and this good feeling has come in several ways for us all here at Applefield today. Dan (husband) mowed the lawns, so we had that delicious grassy smell again; the hens all came into the garden to check it out and had a drink at the water tub. Hanging out the washing in the orchard is always one of my ‘feel good’ activities and today the ducks were also happy on the pond making soft, splashy noises. Our 3 ducks, black, grey and white who walk everywhere in single file, have been joined by two wild mallards. One year we had 25, but only two have returned this year – they know there are foxes in the wood. Two springs ago a fox came along daily for his duck meal, even mid-morning.

Driving back from the chemist (for cough remedies) I stopped off at the beach for a short walk at the water’s edge. There were children in swimming clothes paddling in the pools as if it were summer, and grandparents enjoying the sun while watching over babies in buggies. On the way home through the village I passed friends pottering in their gardens and more children out bicycling, playing and riding ponies.

Back at home, Alexandra was still working at her cough by lying downhill on a large foam wedge, waiting for her good feeling of getting better. We had a visit from Jennah, full of ‘feel good’ – she has lost the second of her top front teeth. What better than that proud space when you’re 6 or 7!

I went to my tai chi class in the school hall which is meant to make one feel good, but I struggled with one of the moves when your waist, hands and feet are all meant to do different things in a flowing way! Hanging out my washing is much more soothing and it felt really good to have it all dry and folded by dusk.

Here are the links to some photos from George & Jenny’s visit:

http://jennyhong.com/200703

http://jennyhong.com/200703/langdons.html

http://jennyhong.com/200703hongkong/ - when they arrived back.  And there are some from their latest visit to HK at www.jennyhong.com 

2nd blog for competition.

Just when we had all moved outside and opened all the doors, a biting east wind raced across our field and made the doors bang, and papers blow about, so we’re back indoors – though going in and out to various events in the village.  Before the school broke up we went to see Jennah (6) in her assembly and enjoyed seeing the children doing their train dance, reading about wheels and showing off their classroom work with pride as they can now all write and read out their own stories.  It was also her last ballet class this week and Lizzie (daughter at home) finished this term’s work as a classroom assistant.  She also runs an art club from our garden studio at home, and on Saturday the children were able to take home all the Easter things they had made. 

At church we had the traditional giving out of palms with the children waving the arch of branches as we left the porch.  It was also the annual church meeting when some of the village groups report in.  We are lucky as there are plenty including toddlers, Sunday School, choir, churchyard work, lunch club, flower arrangers and church cleaners. 

Several people are still coughing and recovering from spring colds.  Once indoors at home the log fire in the kitchen is alight all day again and our house smells of cold remedies like Friar’s Balsam as Alexandra (other daughter at home) needs help with her cough as she, like Lizzie has Muscular Dystrophy.   We are enjoying hot cross buns toasted in the Aga, and there’s not much room on the sofa as Holly, Jack and Mittens (cat) have got there first!

Life at Applefield is entering a blog competition in Country Living Magazine.  Here is the first entry written by Mummy.

We started March with our smallholding in winter, its colours predominantly brown, grey and green with thick coated ponies, and chickens fluffed up to protect them from the sea winds that funnel through the farmyard.  Our son returned to work in China after a month with us, and as if to help us move on, the garden burst into colour with daffodils, crocus and hyacinths, with geraniums and stock which survived the winter.  We moved outside onto our atrium like patio where we now spend most of the days until October, as five doors open onto it from our U-shaped house. 

We’re not the only ones to ‘bust out’.  The animals have all decided to break the boundaries of winter.  Holly the beagle and Jack the terrier have worked out that if they climb the log pile, which is high with choppings from winter fallen trees, they can drop into the next door garden, do a tour of the neighbouring vast nursery greenhouses and then bark at the front gate to be welcomed home, not remembering at all how they got out.  The cats spend the day on safari inspecting the field hedges and rolling in the sun.  One brought in a mole this week which had a beautiful soft shiny coat.  We had to stop Kory (2) from adding it to the cuddly toys.  Last year she popped its ancestor into her mouth like a choc ice. 

Spring is sending the geese crazy with all their complicated loving and hating each other.  They resist anyone’s rule but their own, and upset the order of things at shutting up time by honking and arguing at their shed door like children in a school queue. 

The ram has done so many charges and butts at his fence he has nearly pushed it over.  Andrew our helper has had to try to mend it from the next paddock with seven pigs all squashing him at the wire.  The two pregnant ewes are getting large, but rather alarmingly, dance in the spring air every morning at the sight of breakfast.  Adjoining them are eight hoggetts (young sheep) who are as unruly as the geese.  They can push and shove through the tiniest gaps and one night squeezed through the duck and geese hole leading to the pond.  This resulted in the ducks staying on the water instead of processing in single file to their hut, the geese running riot, the sheep trotting round the yard and one pony jumping over a fence while the pigs squealed with excitement at the sight of enticing buckets, forgetting that they had actually been fed.

Spring is ‘bustin’ out’ all over indeed – we’ve even discovered two goldfish in the pond where for six years we’ve only seen one.