"Circle my wagons"- What would Gregory Peck have done?

I have no real experience with fending off enemies like the fox. Ok I have a modicum of common sense and an innate will to protect my girls, but that is about all!
Most of my knowledge comes from the Internet, local farmers and a good imagination and love of film.....so it wont surprise anyone that I found myself remembering all of these siege movies where the likes of English Postmistress Mrs Frazer finished off the Nazi filth with an axe (Went the day well) or John Wayne repelling the Indians from the children filled church in Rio Grande.........hummm so just what would have the likes of Gregory Peck have done when faced with an murderous adversary with cunning and guile

So....out I went at 6pm last night, with a 6 pack of diet coke and a large stick to watch over the flocks.
The whole experience was pretty and subtly stressful ! I parked myself in the centre of the field and for three hours constantly scanned the borders of the field as the mutton headed chickens constantly put themselves in harms way by wandering into the dark recesses of the stream and the hawthorn hedges. Occasionally I even had to curb the urge to yell over to them to return to the "safety" of the field centre....but did succumb to the odd bit of bribery when I "encouraged" the girls back into the fold with a hard bit of bagel !
Bird brain is not a phrase that I wrong I can tell you!
Anyhow, one by one the girls took themselves to bed and the night was drawn to a close without another casualty or another glimpse of Mr Fox.
I know the red faced welsh farmer would help me out if I needed a "hired gun", (and American readers my be interested to hear that the use of firearms is ruled with an iron glove by the authorities here in the UK)..but we will wait and see.....

A neighbour gave me some extra netting to plug the gaps in the pig fencing near the stream, which I did this morning, and all of the heavy greenery has been removed from the field borders. So the girls have more than a fighting chance to see any approaching predator.

I have also set up my solar powered radio on the top of the largest hen house roof, and have been tuned it to London Talk radio. I hope the sound of "chatter" might make the fox think I am around.

Remembering the 1960 movie Spartacus, I did have the urge to set up a a line of oil along the length of the fencing which I could set alight with a flaming touch thus providing a wall of fire between fox and hens.. but I suspect I was letting my imagination run away with myself when on the lonely vigil that is sentry duty!

Poor Chris....he came home last night to find me marching out of the house muttering "fu*king foxes!",, and just had time to ask "where's me tea?" before I was gone.......
( I did leave him a nice supper by the way!)
More of the same tonight
hey ho

Gosling bonding and fox watch commences

I had some advice from Mike (http://mrandmrshalpern.blogspot.com/ ) about gosling care. He suggested I take the little ones out of their shed on a regular basis for some "quality time" on pastures new. So this morning and this afternoon we have sat out in the front garden for a play.
I cannot stress this enough, goslings are a real delight. They are affectionate and careful and when unsure of anything immediately adopt the bowed posture of the adult bird.
Every time I moved around the garden, they mirrored every movement and only seemed content when either sat on mylegs and lap or in the safe shade, underneath my arm.

The rest of the day ( apart from making fish cakes for Chris' supper and walking the dogs twice) I have been concentrating on Operation Fox Watch.
It has taken over 5 hours, but I have strimmed the whole of the bottom of the field of the untidy tussocks and 4 foot grass and nettles that would camouflage any attacking fox. I have plugged the holes in the hawthorn hedge with branches and thorn bushes and had a brief fantasy of planting land mines along the fox run by the stream. Tonight I will keep guard over the field from 7 pm. Anymore problems and it will be gun time!

The fox returns

I was herding Jane, the slate grey turkey back to the turkey enclosure at 7.30 when I saw a streak in the grass around 50 yards away. I could see a white hen running for its life and behind it was the russet Brown shape of a large fox. That part of the field is very rough and covered with large tussocks and swathes of nettles, and as the hen shrieked I could see the fox jumping over the humps of grass to get hold of it.
I dropped the feed bowls I was carrying and ran over. The fox and hen disappeared into a large clump of nettles and I blundered into it after them. ( I was wearing shorts!!) and ALMOST caught the bloody thing before It shot through the hawthorn hedge.
I could see no sign of the hen, except several patches of white feathers, so I was convinced that the fox had nabbed one, but after a head count of the st Trinian group and the old hen house girls (the hens that live in the part of the field) all the poultry had been accounted for.
It took an age but I found the victim eventually. It was one of the St Trinian adolescent cockerels and apart from a few missing feathers he otherwise looked ok.
A fox attack in day time is rare.
This fox will be back.
Time to organise a gunman...
In the meantime I am off to treat my nettle stung legs!!!

Sunday Snaps,a letter, teen thugs and goose updates

I am sat at the kitchen table with the first (and best) cup of coffee of the day. I have changed the usual LBC talk radio chatter over to Classic FM and in front of me is a vase of cut roses from the garden. (Chris sighs every time I bring flowers into the house and grumbles "there are more soddin' flowers inside the house than there is in the garden!"

This morning ( a fine clear day) you get a true blast waft of the scent of honeysuckle as you come around the front of the cottage, so much so, that two early walkers stopped by the gate just to "sniff"

A day or so I received a neat hand written letter with a local post mark. Not too unusual an occurrence, you might say, but in this age of email and text, had written letters seem to be a rarity and I may add , a little bit of a treat.

As it turned out, the letter was in reply to the lengthy one I sent to the vets after Maddie's death, and on reflection I think it actually mirrored mine by being measured, thoughtful
and in the main constructive.

Of course my concerns over Maddie's treatment were countered just as I expected they would have been, but my other points regarding communication issues and my lack of confidence in the practice itself, were acknowledged, and for that I was strangely grateful.

The time and effort it has taken to reply to my complaint has been therapeutic in itself.

Anyhow, over to more frivolous issues. The 10 young hens that were chicks only 11 weeks ago have formed themselves into a tight knit little group that resemble Ronald Searle's illustrations of the St Trinian Schoolgirls.

Led by a couple of immature and posturing males, the "gang" swagger around the lower part of the field like teenagers at the top of town! If there were a couple of tin cans around I am sure that they would be kicked, as the ten of them look as though they are up to no good for most of the time.

Only when the lead cockerel Stanley wanders around to give them a rather blank "once over" do the gang melt away into the grass to hide, before re appearing with that slightly bored "whatever" kind of attitude.

Winnie and Jo, seem to be doing ok in the hot house of the shed. Winnie is more robust than his/her sibling, but both seem to be doing ok. Readers that have raised goslings before may be able to give me some pointers about the specifics of gosling care.....I wonder if they are slightly more delicate than the Indian runner ducklings I am more used to. They seem to spend 90% of their time running around in hysterical circles and shitting on their own webbed feet!

Right...the coffee cup has been drained and I need to take the dogs out before the heat of the day becomes too unbearable...Hope everyone has a nice Sunday

My name is Nanette Newman

Speaking of The Stepford Wives......I seem to have metamorphosed into Nanette Newman this morning.....all I need is a frilly apron and a vacant stare....( ok ok I already have a frilly apron!)
I have been the ideal "wife" this morning. Chris has had a very hard week at work and looked shattered last night. So this morning I took the dogs out early, Popped to the garage and bought him the Saturday broadsheets and gave him the papers and breakfast in bed
I managed to curb the urge to start humming as I lightly flicked a feather duster over the top of the paintings in the living room, and the bright yellow washing up gloves are still lying on the garden wall ( I had used them yesterday to help me pull up nettles from the back garden border) ......I am sat here at the kitchen table with butter from a bagel dripped all down my front and a pair of pants on that are covered with chicken poo...so I guess I am still not quite the trophy partner.......just yet
ps and to all those geeks out there I KNOW it is a photo of Katherine Ross
x

Gossip

My friend "Bel's" comments in Monday's blog comparing Trelawnyd to Stepford (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stepford_Wives) is an interesting one, as of course in village life there are always those petty niggles, fall outs and spats going on, that make the place real and not so chocolate boxy! ( Perhaps I do make it sound a little too much like the village from Little House on the Prairie)
I noticed all this today, as I have spent my hours clearing the back garden of five wheelbarrow loads of weeds and surplus growth.
Being in the garden means that I meet many more locals than I do toiling away in the field, and everyone that today seemed to have the need to moan about someone else in the village.
Someone had forgotten to invite someone else to a village "do", whilst someone else had argued over some gardening issues and the parking of some cars! Yes all very petty, and all very ordinary.
Village gossip about such things is entertaining and necessary, I always think. It is neither important or really dramatic but it is the stuff that makes a community shuffle along and gives the mundane a little harmless sparkle.
Of course our village has its fair share of little Hitlers and community snoopers, who delight in the misfortune or the rule breaking of others, but these people really have no impact in our lives as most people rub shoulders with their neighbours without any undue problems.
People in large estates, towns and cities have immunity to all this normality....as we did in Sheffield....in our street ( of say 70 households) we knew one family and one single woman! and that was it

The weather is too dry! and the grass the surrounds the flower beds in the Village public areas is already going brown after it has been cut.
Thank goodness for my neighbours who always allow me to use their hose and water to water the allotment beds nearest to the road. If water metering comes to Trelawnyd then well I ( and the hens and vegetables) are buggered!

Lourdes

Lourdes (By the Austrian filmmaker Jesica Hausner) is a cracking find of a film as it challenges and provokes rather than simply presenting an interesting story.
The film opens with a shot of a utilitarian and empty hotel restaurant. Slowly the large cast enter to take their seats. Some are clearly disabled, some are in wheelchairs and their attendants are made up of nuns and volunteer nurses who wear almost fascist type uniforms.
This first shot is a pivotal one, as it underlines the tone of the entire film. Hausner, takes an unhurried view of the group of pilgrims and their carers on a trip to Lourdes and does so with some beautifully crafted wide group shots of ceremony and ritual. She explains very little, yet gives her motley group a complicated religious ambiguity that covers pious hope, depressive apathy, and more interestingly observes acts of petty jealously, bitchiness,bitterness and periods of cynicism amongst the group when one of them seemingly has a partial recovery from her disability.
The central character is a young French quadriplegic Christine ( Slyvie Testud) who has come on the pilgrimage as a way of getting to socialise. She observes everything with a benign interest and although physically passive to the whims of the inexperienced teenage carers she survives the experience with a resignation and stillness which is, at times amazingly powerful to watch.

The film does not sneer at faith, or hope or indeed pilgrimage...it observes everything with some wit, with care and with patience and like all good films it asks many more questions than it finally answers
9/10

Winnie and Jo

After yesterday's tirade and fat baby insults (I caught myself giggling guiltily about it all when half asleep in bed this morning)- I thought it prudent to concentrate my attentions on two perfectly formed and sweet looking babies for a change.
Now I have reared baby chicks (no personality-literally just balls of down), turkey poults (delightful but solemn) and runner ducklings (mad as a box of frogs) but compared to all of them, the two goslings are a real and affectionate delight!
Obviously my two have already imprinted on me, so when I go in to feed and water them, they scramble forward to nuzzle and play with my hands and fingers. When picked up both lie still and content within the warmth of my hand, and their blind attachment to me almost brings tears to my eyes! (can this be the same old queen that verbally berated a woman in a common halter top and her ugly two year old, only yesterday?)
Anyhow, I am reluctant to name the two babies as yet, it is still early days and they have not been sexed.. but I think I will give them a "unisex" name...so the little grey will be called Winston (or Winnie) and the white Joanna ( or Joe).......

Early evening I am meeting up with Hazel ( I have not seen her for an age!) and we are going to see the movie Lourdes, I still will be back to lock the animals up before 10pm, so it's not exactly a giddy night out, but it is a change!