Four Scruffy hens & Sorrel kicks some ass!

The chap that wanted to get rid of some unwanted hens didn't turn up today, so after a bit of ringing around I went to see him! He was friendly enough, but some of his girls were, shall we say, a "little below par" and most had seen better days! After a long time checking each bird (I found one cockerel with scaly leg mite which he knew nothing about) I chose 3 underweight black rocks and a shy bullied brown hybrid which were housed in a tiny dirt run and said I would take a pair of guinea fowl off his hands too, The guinea fowl were out in his back yard, and would not be caught, so I asked him to keep them safe until I could collect them at another time.

Many of his old hens and bantams, needed some TLC, and I had to draw the line in accepting any of the obviously frail birds, but at least I could give six birds a good home.

When I got the girls home, I bathed each one in a tea tree bath, treated them all for mites and worms and placed them in their own green run with plenty of water and feed. The corn was finished off in seconds, and it was lovely to see them pecking excitedly at grass(I don't think they have ever experienced grass before) and some melon seeds that I put out for them. Hopefully they will make buxom, happy hens.

Sorrel and Chris have enjoyed a day's shopping but Sorrel was completely exhausted on her return home. This was not just due to some over excited retail therapy, but was a result of a battle she had with a tenacious horse fly in the middle of the night!

This might not sound too interesting, but I must admit, it was a little shocking as the level of noise and violence was considerable! First there was a succession of loud TWACKS with a paperback,,, followed by a few muffled cries , then a brief silence before what could only be described as ten murderous slaps of a slipper accompanied with some triumphant "arrrhhh haaaaas!!!". Not being content with merely flattening the fly, she followed all this up with a final set of bangs with her glasses case, pulverizing it into the carpet.

suffice to say, Sorrel doesn't "do" pests of any sort....I sometimes think that the countryside holds too many horrors for her to relax completely in it.......worries that Albert would sneak into her room with the body of a small dead mouse, meant that her bedroom door was always very firmly locked!

We have enjoyed having her!

An afternoon at the cinema

We have dragged Sorrel down to the beach for along dog walk, had a very passable roast dinner in a local pub and spent the rainy afternoon watching the pretty awful The Time Traveler's Wife

I have never read the book by Audrey Niffenegger, but I was reliably informed that it was a cracking good novel....you would never have guessed watching the movie though! as I thought it was all rather bland, unmoving and just a little pedestrian .

The central story could have lent itself to an interesting and thought provoking film, as the idea of a married man's ability to see-saw back and forth through time boggles the mind somewhat when you think of how it could affect your close relationships. Alas this film concentrates more on the rather saccharine love story between Eric Bana, and Rachel McAdams to the detriment of the other significant relationships in the time traveller's life.(parents, best friend (Ron Livingston) and daughter)

A brief, underplayed and very moving scene between Bana and his unknowing and dead mother (a nice all too short performance by Michelle Nolden) indicates just how good the film could have been if it had the guts to move away from the crowd pleasing chick flick audience . 6/10

Tomorrow, Chris and Sorrel are off to Manchester for a day's shopping....I am getting stuck in with clearing the garden and a local guy should be dropping off some more unwanted hens to add to the the other waifs and strays in the field.

I have been working all day today and most of the shift has been concerned with preparing a poorly patient for the worst......so it has been a little tough. Respite came at 9pm when I wandered around the field locking the animals up and experienced the glorious cool of dusk.
I did have a small panic when Halleh was missing from his small duck house, but was amused to find him curled up with Scotty and his small group of hens in the far hen house.
I managed some small talk with Sorrel tonight, but didn't really do her justice, so I will make up for things tomorrow.

Last night I watched a bit of Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds on tv, and I must admit that I did enjoy some beautifully crafted sequences in this rather "mainstream thriller" Spielberg often does this! amid the popular film, there are always snippets of pure gold!- and one overlooked scene in particular (when Ton Cruise and his kids are escaping the aliens for the first time in a stolen car.) is absolutely amazing to watch, In it the camera pans around and around the speeding car, shooting the action from all angles and freezing sporadically to allow conversations to be watched more closely. If you blink you will miss it, but the complicated choreography of the camera movement alone, is worth the price of a cinema ticket!

Anyhow I think we are off out for lunch tomorrow and then may take Sorrel to the cinema to see the very sexy Eric Bana in The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)......I think it is going to rain all day!

Margot Leadbetter

I was doing an extra shift this morning, so completed all the chores at 6am, before driving to work at 7am. As it turned out, I was not needed, so by 7.45 I was back home again, and caught William snoring UNDER the duvet, with his head on my pillow!
Anyhow, we have all spent the day at home as we have been waiting for a friend of Chris' to collect the five junior runner ducks (including Wellington).
Chris has spent the time dozing in the chair on the field and Sorrel has tried manfully to look interested in the livestock, but if the truth be known, she is generally terrified of hen,turkey and pig and she does remind me so of Margo Leadbetter in "The Good Life" , especially when she was almost pushed into clambering over the pig fencing to say "hello" to Gladys and Nora!
She came along with me to check Belle on her eggs, and bravely kept the bile down, when we found a blown, discarded and badly infected egg. Belle abandoned her nest and remaining three eggs soon after this, so Sorrel and I dashed the eggs back into the kitchen to check if they were still alive. We bobbed the eggs in some warm water and two of the three "jumped" in reaction so these two we placed in the hastily set up incubator in the kitchen. The ever broody Blanche is again sitting on some eggs, so if and when my promised turkey eggs arrive, then perhaps Blanche will take charge of any little ones that come along!.
By teatime I am sure she had totally been overdosed with animals , so after making them a nice tea, she has gone with Chris and Janet to their ballroom dance class-----not a chicken insight
I am definitely working all day tomorrow! The whole animal shebang will be in Chris and Sorrel's hands....gulp!

Sorrel arrives and Ann's open day!

Sorrel arrived this evening, by train, so after we picked her up we had a bit of an indulgent "fish and chip" supper, before coming home for the obligatory dog mauling (above)
We have a lot planned, over the next few days, and as always it is lovely to have her up and visiting

Before we met Sorrel at the station in Prestatyn, we called around to Ann's co-operative allotment to support her open evening. She has a brief open "night", once a year, and sends any money she receives to Charity.

Her allotment is tended by around 8 0r 9 people and looks professional, well organised and comprehensive...I am so jealous! (above Janet with Jess and Chris with a shorn William)

Ann giving a guided tour

Synecdoche, New York

fantasy? psychosis?neurological injury? depression? or a combination of them all, Synecdoche, New York is a confusing, stimulating and rather bleak study of playwright Caden Cotard's (Philip Seymour Hoffman) last "great" stage production. Having said that...nothing in this Charlie Kaufman production is what it appears to be on the surface, and the movie's surreal message of a man making sense of his life is not an easy ride at all!
I am not sure that I actually enjoyed the film, but I did find some of the performances by a mainly female cast wonderfully judged.
I especially liked Samantha Morton,Dianne Wiest and Catherine Keener......Morton was especially good and played subtle "brittle" rather than her usual slightly mad "flaky"!
I need friends John and Niige to see it and to discuss it at length over a wine

The Great Escape

We have this 1930's postcard stuck on the fridge! and boy did I wish that the pig enclosure followed these four simple rules!
Last night, just before I was to drive to Llandudno to meet up with Chris, I raced around the field locking up the turkeys, ducks and chicks. Hazel had agreed to come round later to lock the hens up, so after a bit of racing around , I was good to go!
Or so I thought!
Just as I was walking back up to gate, I heard a burst of hen clucking from behind me and Gladys and Nora pushed themselves through a hole in their fencing and shot past grunting and squealing! Nora dropped kicked the hen fencing and trotted over to the hen feeder to bolt down huge mouthfulls of layers pellets while Gladys, excited at her new found freedom, galloped back and forth in piggy hysteria.
Now, for those who don't know, pigs are notoriously difficult to round up; they need to be "guided" and coxed rather than herded and prodded back into their quarters, so after 20 sweaty minutes, I was no nearer returning them to their home.
It was time for more drastic action when I spied two passersby walking their dog in the lane and called to them to help me. To be fair both of them (two ladies in their late sixties), gamely agreed to lend a hand, and I asked the less robust woman to guard one path next to the allotments, to prevent the pigs from running in circles.
She looked a little nervous, so I "armed" her with a lid from the compost bins.
"What do I do if the pigs come my way?" she worriedly asked
"Look fierce!" I replied!
I gave the other lady (who I found out later was called Anne) a dustbin lid and we slowly cornered both pigs in my lowest vegetable patches, where they had chomped their way through some baby sweetcorn and parsnip tops.
After a bit of hard work and a bit of shouting,and dustbin lid pushing, we managed to get Gladys back into her pen and after waving a bowl of pasta at Nora (I had cooked some for Susan who is still not too well), we managed to get her in too, but the whole exhausting, messy experience had lasted 45 minutes!. The ladies looked a little fraught but somewhat exhilarated and after thanking them and fixing the fence I managed to drive to meet up with Chris and we had a nice meal out!
Poor Hazel!,
My rudimentary repairs to the fence failed soon after I left and Hazel (who is the size of Audrey Hepburn) was left with two escapee pigs when she called in to lock the hens up an hour later!
Bless her! without help, she gamely tried to get the girls back, and an hour later she was still battling away.....
This morning, all I have been doing is patching up the fence holes!
Animals are therapeutic? pah!!!!
Hazel and I are off to the cinema later.....my treat me thinks

The healing nature of animals

Now I don't want to sound like a Walt Disney movie here, but animals do have the uncanny ability to sooth and heal.

Now perhaps I lost sight of this today as a trip to the vets and animal feed shop cost me 64£!

The shopping basket comprised of:-

Stockholm Tar to cover feather pecked wings,

steroids, antibiotics and medicated shampoo for William,

flea treatments for all the dogs, (and Albert)

antibiotic spray for Gloria's sore foot,

red mite powder and poultry wormer

and frontline field mite treatment for George

Jane, Belle's sister, and one of my best layers strangled herself to death in some discarded cord yesterday and I have spent a somewhat fraught morning trying to clean Maddie's teeth for the very first time...so animal care is not all fluffy bunny, "let's have a group hug"kind of moments......BUT.....I have often witnessed just how healing contact with animals can be for people.

Almost daily the grieving family of a local lady who died unexpectedly, visit her grave. I have mentioned before how they will bring their children and grandchildren to the field to feed the pigs and hens after they call down to the graveyard, and I watched their latest visit from afar, as I was filling the water feeders.

The animals swarm around , with glee, awaiting their titbits of bread and fruit , but it is a certain stillness of their visitors that I notice the most. The interaction between sad human and the animals that demand noting more than a food treat, is I honestly think far more therapeutic than any psychiatrist's chair.....Simple interactions between species are ordinary but I think quite magical.

This got me thinking of Finlay. For those that don't know, Finlay was our first dog, He was a bouncy, demanding Welsh terrier, and he and I were totally inseparable.when he was around 18months old I remember taking him to work with me, and for an afternoon he was the centre of attention on the Spinal Injury ward.

One patient I wanted him to "meet" was a 17 year old farmer's son from Norfolk. He had sustained a particularly nasty spinal injury following a car accident and was on strict bedrest after being paralysed from the neck down. The boy always talked in glowing terms of his farm dogs and missed them dreadfully, so I thought a "dog" visit may be beneficial, especially as frustrations and grief reactions seemed to be translated into, what some health care professionals described as, "difficult behaviour"

I always remember putting Finlay onto this boy's bed and quite gently he lay down in the crook of his arm, with his head resting on the boy's shoulder and neck. There was no silliness, or usual frantic lip licking, but there was a stillness from both animal and patient which I remember well to this day.

Finlay provided a warmth and a contact that the boy so desperately needed but couldn't quite verbalise and the emotion that followed was terribly moving to witness.

I have said this before but it is so funny what you remember isn't it?

Even two years after Finlay died, I can still shed a tear thinking about him

(Above) photo of Finlay at Christmas 2004