The fields behind us have now been disked, just turning over the soil to bury the stubble from the harvested beans. Not a particularly interesting story, but it’s an excuse to show off Chantal’s photo taken when the disking was underway.
Sometimes I get confirmation that, despite living the in countryside, having farming friends, and, in my case, spending most summers doing casual farm work in my youth, we are not country folk. A couple of days ago I got “caught” walking Tia off of the public footpath, following a field edge for a bit of variety. A chap in green wellies and a gillett walked around the corner with his four spaniels, and “had a word” because I wasn’t on the footpath. He was fine about it, explaining that he understood that the grassy field edges were a tempting route, but that he pays the farmer, which he corrected to “well, I buy him a drink” to access these areas to train his gun-dogs, a reminder that we are in the shooting season. He did comment that he’s seen me before (on footpaths!) and that Tia was well trained. Thank goodness she was behaving on this occasion.
Yesterday morning , while on the footpath, I came across a group of tweedy country types at the edge of the adjacent field, placing what appeared to be a couple of plastic pigeons on a rotating low level horizontal wire, as though the birds were flying in a low circle. They also appeared to be carefully placing dead pigeon on the field, setting the carcasses up as though they were feeding. On enquiry they told me that they were aiming to attract live pigeons to the field, in order to shoot them. Sure enough, our afternoon of gardening was disturbed by the sound of gunfire from the field.
With the exception of the New Year clay pigeon shoot, I have never been shooting, and am not sure that I would gain satisfaction from killing fur and feather, even if the animals are vermin.
I enjoy the countryside, but am not really part of true rural life.
Technically we live in Oaktree House, but sadly the tree had to go.
We now have a thriving Oakstump at the front of the house.
