Last weekend Country Mouse and Spouse went to Town (London) which was mostly a mistake. To start with country distances between towns in France have got longer despite the expensive creation of motorways, or dual carriageways, between them. Take the distance between...
There is nothing quite as stressful as juggling with the unpredictable. This is what I have been doing for the last week and am likely to be doing for some to come. The first, and most important, unpredictable event is the arrival date of the roof tiler. Already he...
As spring settles in and humans start to relax, cease to believe in the unpredictability of the weather, non-human life starts to get excited. The birds have become almost obnoxious. Whilst their song is still delightful – if occasionally repetitive – their antics...
It is that time of year when the dawn chorus seems to last all day and only experts can parse the sound into its component parts. I no longer hear the screech of the owl that tears night from day, for I am still safe asleep in my dreamless dark as the sun rises and...
Last week’s great excitement was the liberation of the sheep, plus their lambs, from confinement in the sheep barn. A riotous occasion that showed how truly stupid sheep/lambs can be. You would think humans could just open the doors to the grass rich green...
It may be only a few days after the official (French) start to spring on March 20th but the season seems already well established. The dawn chorus has become more dense, more complicated and lasts all day. Song birds are very competitive. I no longer hear the white...
There is no accounting for daffodils: there has been a sudden rush to flower with the majority of the plants either appearing in the rose hedge or the brambles. I believe roses and brambles are related plants – think of the thorns – but no time to check that...
Only nine days to the official start of spring but the signs of its imminence are unmissable. Now we can actually think of something other than the irregular arrival of lambs even though eight mothers have still to produce. The lambs-to-ewes ratio is now 1.5 and we...
A dramatic weekend! On Saturday one of the larger ewes had difficulty dropping her lambs, which is most unusual for Clun Forest ewes. The birth process had started (no, I shall not describe the mildly gruesome details) and then stopped. We waited a couple of hours...
The art of management, I learned when I was paid to write on the subject, is to delegate a well-defined role to the right people. And then to let them get on with it, presuming on their abilities and initiative. Actually this is not as easy as it sounds and not just... 
