Farm.

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February 2023

The feet that finished my back off

Out of Action

I found myself out of action all of Feb due to the tweaked back and poor access to NHS health care locally.

Deeply grateful to Gordon and neighbour Jon who helped me. We have now done the ‘unthinkable’ and changed GP’s.

Took out a sub for the Abbotsbury sub-tropical gardens to try to get me walking again.
Mindful and peaceful

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January 2023

A little dusting of the white stuff
Neighbour Jon came and consolidated the muck heap
Mucking out by hand

Having had rather a long Christmas/ New Year break ‘doing art practise’ – due to the new Volvo lorry having issues Gordon had to get sorted. On the plus side we were warm and well fed and cosy. His working environment was ‘all change’ as soon as he was rolling again and so I ended up with a big pile of sh1t to shift. It will be good for someone’s roses or our runner beans but turned out not to be too good for my ‘out of condition’ back.

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Jan to Dec 1st 2022.

Jan to Dec 1st 2022.
 
I suspended all Blogging, unconsciously really. We lived through my Mum’s dementia hitting crisis and her needing to be taken into residential care. This was not planned. 
 
The first part of this year was always going to be tough, as I was dealing with acting on the decisions we had to take, when the goats failed a CLA test, back in Sept 2021. I had to get them to a point where they were ‘dried off’ and the herd hadn’t increased in over all size. This was never what anyone wanted. In order to ‘get through’ those activities, I had planned to increase my art-for-something-to-do practise.
 
As it turned out the art activity also gave my Mum something she could do when everything else around her became out of step for her. It was something we clung to, and shared for several months, till even that could hold us all together no more.
 
Mum is now settled in a home local to us.
 
We are picking up the pieces of our lives and sorting ourselves out. 
 
As part of that, I am reviewing the Blogs and what they mean to me and deciding whether I will renew the hosting etc or not come Autumn when these things fall due.
 
I am also looking at what I will be doing with fiction writing. The non-fiction book, about domestic dairy goats, is not happening. I could not, in good conscience, encourage anyone, here in the UK, to invest in garden dairy goats today.
 
The goats are now being kept for the hell of it/fun of it as ‘retirees’/’pets’. All 22 of them. Stopping the numbers increasing will be a challenge as 5 are entire males. They are also CLA carriers. CLA is a non-notifiable and zoonotic disease, and we are keeping them against Vet’ advice to cull. This is a risk to ourselves and other livestock. At the moment we do not have neighbours who keep livestock that might be at risk. It’s a situation that is monitored responsibly. Responsible decisions will be taken if circumstances change. Not one of them has clinical CLA. This is not a ‘re-homing’ situation. Meanwhile, they are happy goats on a Dorset hillside and we are enjoying having them around and Rufus enjoys their antics too.
 
The ‘riding’ section of my website is defunct as I am not riding – though Rufus is still here as only-pony retiree and I have no plans to ever ride again or keep any other equines here.
 
It may be that I will ride through my writing but I just don’t know yet…
 
Art has become part of my life and that may be something that I will want to Blog about…
 
I have had new stories kicking around in my head and the re-write of Luckshill Riders can still be done but, right now, I am taking a break.
14/12/2021 ‘Roundup’ of 2021.
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14/12/2021 ‘Roundup’ of 2021.

Survived a Difficult Year But Not Without Personal Losses.

My personal experience of this year has been that it has isolated me more than ever and that is what it is. It is a year when I suddenly had to say ‘Good Bye’ to Flax and on what passed for our wedding anniversary this year too… and I had to look after Rufus when I could not. in all honesty, even bare to look at him without wanting to cry for him and myself. Continue reading →