Serenities

We are a starved society living in the midst of plenty.

Our possessions are many, our serenities few.

Laurie Lee.

On why we will never be self-sufficient

French beans.

Courgettes.

Red cabbage.

Runner beans.

Happy snails.

Perhaps this would be a match for them.

Crambe maritima or sea kale.

Leaves as tough as neoprene, but the stems are delicious blanched and

eaten like asparagus apparently.

Close to you

Lambing

Walking through a field of lambs in springtime.

I think that could be added to the list of things

children should do before the age of 12.

Things not to do would include

standing on a rake in your own hallway.

Yep that would be me.

Thwack.

Luckily my glasses took the worst of the impact

and are still intact.

Farm animals

As a child born and bred in the suburbs

you could learn about farming as I did

with Mr and Mrs Smiles, Joy and Bob,

who lived on Blackberry Farm

with talking animals like

Henry the pig

and his sister Henrietta

which I loved.

Or you could study a tiny but 

surprisingly technical book called,

Farm Animals from the Truth in a Tale series (1958),

which followed Nigel Andrews 'a cheerful little chap'

who lived in a new housing estate just outside Ruislip,

on a trip to the Nethermill Farm in Somerset,

on doctor's orders after a tonsillectomy.

From the moment he is met at the station by Major Mason

in the Landrover, 

('the engine drives all four wheels instead of only two')

no opportunity is missed to educate.

Corgis, we learn were originally bred as cattle dogs,

horses don't like draughts,

Suffolk Punches are 'good in the collar',

fences are creosoted,

cow, hen, sheep and pig breeds are compared,

and there is no flinching from foot rot and fly strike.

Not surprisingly I preferred the talking animals.

These were pretty cute though.

Snow at Blackberry Farm

IT BEGAN TO SNOW

at Blackberry Farm just before tea.

Great, big, white flakes

slowly covered everything.

The animals peeped out to watch.

WHEN ERNEST

Owl looked out in the

middle of the night,

it was still snowing.

He watched for a little while and then went back to bed,

saying to himself:

'It will be very deep in the morning.'

For Il Fratello.
Blackberry Farm Book - 21
by Jane Pilgrim