Friday 15 June 2012
Stephanie came home last week in preparation for silage-making. She’s finished her uni work for this academic year and was kicking around whilst her friends had either gone home or were working. It was raining when she came home and continued to do so for the majority of her visit, so she went back again to wait until we really need her. The silage-making is, in the meantime, on hold. The ground is waterlogged to such an extent that even the cows are struggling to walk across it so the prospect of driving tractors over it looks bleak. To add insult to injury, the forecasters are gleefully telling us the horrible weather is set to continue for the rest of the month, but I’m sure it will eventually stop raining long enough for the ground to dry. The delay has given Gordon plenty of time to get the machines ready to roll so we wait.
I’m not sure whether I’ve mentioned this before (I could look back, but probably won’t!) but since Gordon has given up smoking (last July and still counting) he’s got a bit ….. well, odd! He’s taken over the cooking for a start, something I did for the first twenty-four years of our marriage. Not only has he taken up cooking, but he’s inviting people round and cooking for them. The other day whilst I was out lunching he took it upon himself to do the weekly shop! The weekly shop, for goodness sake. Now he’s suggesting outings. Day-time outings for no good reason. Never one to look a gift-horse in the mouth, I’m just going along with the whole thing and enjoying spending a little bit of extra time with him, even though I’m a bit perturbed by this whole new person. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s mentally winding down in preparation for giving up the whole farming thing, but time will tell.
Subsequently, on Tuesday we went to Lyme Regis. I thought it was only a year or so ago that we went there for a walk along the Cobb, but when I looked back at my photos it was in 2007 so another visit was overdue. It was his suggestion and the reason for it? He “wanted to eat fish and chips on the seafront”! We helped out with the morning milking then set off in the rain. It took an hour or so to get there and was pretty cold initially, but we walked along the Cobb, looked at the boats and even spoke to a couple of fishermen before coming back to find fish and chips.

This is Gordon’s idea of funny! The Cobb is narrow, high and sloping and I asked him to stand on the end so I could take a photograph. He stood on the very end with his heels overhanging, grinning at me like a loon whilst I worried he was going to drop on to the rocks. It doesn’t look high, but it’s a good twenty feet down!

This has to be the biggest plug I’ve seen – plug for what though? Whatever it was, it hasn’t been used for a while judging from the rust.

I don’t actually like seagulls ‘in the flesh’ but still think they’re impressive looking birds. These two were very noisy.

Almost a dance!

As usual, I’m fascinated by texture. This rope looked like it was tied up to the remains of an old cannon!

It was still too cold to go paddling and these pebbles were pretty uncomfortable to walk over as well as constantly shifting.
We bought fish and chips from a kiosk that was advertising the fact they’d been mentioned in The Times, and once we got the meal we could see why! The fish was very fresh, came with two sachets of tartar sauce and a quarter of lemon whereas the chips were crunchy and cooked to perfection. By then the rain had stopped so we did get to sit looking at the sea whilst we munched our way though them. Neither of us could finish the whole meal.
On the way home we saw a sign for the Lyme Bay Winery so followed that down a country lane until we got there. Gordon did a little ‘sampling’ and we came away with four bottles of speciality wine as well as some cider called Jack Ratt.
Last night he took me out for tea and now he’s hankering to have cream tea on a steam train! Odd indeed.
Yesterday a cow called Grace had twin heifers, so that’s good news although she’s only feeding one. We’ve taken over the feeding of the other one with the teat bucket. She had a heifer last year too on 27 July so in under a year has brought the number of Graces in our herd up from one to four! Our current heifer count is twenty-five which outweighs the number of bulls born by quite a few.

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