Denise Plummer: Festive tidings from the farm

On Christmas Day I was cooking dinner. We decided to have a goose and I had never cooked one before , but found a delicious sounding recipe for roast goose with two stuffings , with the Italian name Oca Arrosta Ripiena. One of the stuffings was made from apricots, apples and breadcrumbs with flavouring, the other was mainly pork sausage meat, with shallots, breadcrumbs, orange zest and juice, with herbs and seasoning. Cooking however began in a rather traumatic way. When I turned on my oven it tripped the electric switch in the fuse box! Oh dear, I thought I do not have a second oven big enough to fit a large goose. Fortunately Melissa’s oven was available , so the bird was very quickly relocated and I could continue the rest of the preparations for dinner. We all decided that it was a tasty meal especially enhanced by the stuffings.

Of course, when you have animals to care for the work never stops. So even on Christmas Day the routine jobs of feeding, bedding up and checking has to be done and there are still sheep in fields to check. Often we get up a little earlier, so that the jobs are done before breakfast to leave the middle part of the day free for the family to get together. Melissa’s family got up just after 6am to tend to all the stock; feed and walk the collies; feed the chicken and guinea pigs; feed, muck out and bed up the horses, before riding them and putting them into a field for the rest of the day. Ian fed all the cattle and sheep with a ration of grass and maize silage, dispensed using our mixer /feeder wagon, whilst Kevin gave the ewes their additional nutrients fed in the form of a large pellet.

Later in the day there is always a final check, just to make sure all the sheep and cattle have food and water. Fortunately this year there has not been enough cold weather to cause any problems with frozen water pipes, but the rain prior to Christmas caused a river of water to flow through an open area between the barns, which had to be diverted.

The two sunny days made life easier and we ( Kevin’s family , parents and myself ) were able to spend an enjoyable Christmas Day together.

At the beginning of the week, Francis continued to prepare equipment for lambing. He also helped Kevin check the ewes for any signs of lameness. There were very few with a problem, but those found to be showing any signs were given appropriate treatment.

We recently sold some silage and a few more of our older Angus cattle , which graded as finished, have been collected . The alternator on our largest tractor had to be replaced, and after Ian had replaced the worn out blades on the power harrow he discovered that the gearbox was suffering from old age . It was bought in 1997 , so has lasted well considering it has worked quite hard over the years. The cereal crops planted in the autumn are looking well despite the copious amounts of rain we have had recently , but it has been quite mild most of the time. I expect you may remember me saying we have a resident pair of kestrels, frequently seen around the fields near the farm buildings housing the ewes. We now have a barn owl in residence as well. It seems to be quite used to the daily goings-on with the sheep , sitting under cover in one of the barns .

He can be seen on the wing, never going too far from the buildings. Barn owls are silent in flight, gliding like pale ghosts in the evening searching for small mammals such as voles and mice. Originally it’s numbers fell as a result of persecution, trapped and killed simply because people thought it evil. Apparently Shakespeare used the bird as a symbol of doom in some of his plays. The barn owl is sometimes referred to as the screech owl as it utters a spine-chilling eerie shriek, often in flight.