The Learning Curve

Life is an endless lesson.

For someone addicted to adult education classes you would think that this would be a good thing, but lately I've been finding myself overwhelmed with the number of things I have yet to master.

Having taken the plunge and thrown ourselves in the deep end; bought the land, the horse, the pigs and got chicks on order (hatching as we speak), we now have to learn how to take care of it all and keep it alive long enough to turn it into sustenance for ourselves.
We also have to learn about growing crops on a clay/calciferous soil, putting up a polytunnel, erecting various small wooden buildings to house compost toilets and showers and make platforms for our yurts. And how to dig out, install and plant a horizontal reed bed system. How to plant a willow plantation which will provide fencing, sculpture, basketry and ornamental willow. How to build a chicken house that will be fox-proof, not harbour red mites and yet still be aesthetically pleasing.
We are committed to replanting about an acre of woodland that the previous owner seems to have raised to the ground. He removed the oak wood (presumably to sell as firewood) and left us a load of Scots pine lying on the ground, no good for firewood but it will lend itself nicely to cordwood building seeing as it is now seasoned. So we're cutting it into appropriate lengths and putting it under cover to dry out, in order to build a horse shelter from it.
And somewhere along the way I decided to teach myself how to make wooden shingles from the wood on the land, so that I can roof both the cordwood horse shelter and a couple of small lean-to structures to store our firewood out of the elements.

That's just for starters.

I haven't even begun to think about the small flock of sheep I'd like to raise for their wool and the plants that I can grow and use as natural pigments to dye the wool. Or how to make our own smoker for the bacon, or how to make a small scale charcoal burner.

When you look at it altogether like that it all gets a bit much and I feel compelled to go and sit somewhere quiet, stare at the trees and remind myself of where it all started.

As we stumble from one new lesson to the next, hoping not to make too many mistakes along the way I have to remind myself to stop, look around and remember how blessed we are to have the husbandry of this ten-point-five acre slice of earth.

The Tick Whisperer

Having dreamt of owning a horse since I was a young child, I was filled with anticipation at the arrival of our first piece of the smallholding puzzle, a 15 year old cheval de trait. Pepito was led down our ridiculously steep drive to the meadow below and installed in what we now laughingly refer to as the lower field, due to it's tendency to flood every time it rains. (But that's another story altogether, suffice it to say he's now been moved to drier ground.)

I spent the first week being quite nervous whilst grooming and feeding him, he's quite a big horse after all, and my previous contact with horses has been rather limited.

But all that has changed over the last few days. I wish I could say that this was to do with having discovered some latent talent for handling horses. Or having a sense of bonding with this beautiful, placid creature. But alas the truth is far less prosaic. It was the discovery that Pepito was plagued with ticks which changed all that.

I hate ticks. I have only been bitten once in my life by a tick, but I'd rather not repeat the experience, and that one was tiny compared to the monsters that I'm finding on Pepito. After picking off nearly twenty of varying sizes and thoroughly pissing off the horse, I returned home demanding that the grass be cut short in his field. The other half dutifully went out first thing the next morning with the tractor, bless him, possibly due to my graphic descriptions of the alien bloodsucking lifeforms.

It has now become a part of my daily horse routine. Armed with my handy tick-removing tweezers, I mutter darkly to myself, as I sweep my hand over Pepito's head and neck, uncovering the little bastards skulking under his thick coat. The combination of damp weather, long grass and the presence of deer has ensured that it will remain a part of my horse care routine from now on I fear.

The other delight of horse ownership I'm discovering is shit.

Quite literally. Mountains of the stuff!

This daily horse care routine I find far less offensive, bizarrely enough. Shoveling shit is, contrary to popular belief, quite an enjoyable activity. It doesn't smell bad, the activity is aerobic and warming, even on the coldest of mornings. And I look at my growing mountain of steaming shit and I see compost manifesting itself before my eyes. I see the future pumpkin patch. I see potatoes happily multiplying deep under ground nestled in their nutrient rich bed of horse excrement. I see all this possibility and I smile.

In order to contain and shield the sight of the pile from more easily offended sensibilities I have surrounded it with a rather lovely coppice fence, finding a use for the undergrowth we've cleared out but not got around to burning (what with all this damp weather we've been having).
I'm so pleased with my new creation I might have to find some other things to surround with fencing. Thus ensuring that we need to burn less waste wood, which gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Something I definitely can't say about the ticks.