Mrs Downs Diary - Feb 17

More forms? We could dimly remember that yet another layer of traceability had been added to the farm paper mountain that accompanies each animals birth to death movements, but what more did they want to know?

Really it is just another declaration that the animals are fit for human consumption.

As if we would be sending them into market under the eagle eyes of every supermarket buyer if they weren't up to scratch and looked after.

In as much as no-one in supermarkets wants dirty carrots and potatoes or wonky cucumbers and misshapen swedes, stock has to be virtually perfect and uniform before it stands a chance of being sold for a reasonable price.

The calves are starting to arrive more regularly now.

John is up and down like a yo-yo all night checking on the cows and so far the calves have either arrived on their own, or needed very little help on their entry to this world.

As a couple of bantam hens have also proudly introduced us to their little broods of chicks, carefully and secretly raised in some hidden corner of the barns; it is beginning to look as though Spring is starting to have sprung.

The moles think so too. Suddenly, over all the grass fields, mole hills are erupting.

And not only in our fields.

As I drove back from market with John, from my vantage point in the Landrover I could see hundreds of mole hills in fields, where a week ago there were very few.

Something is stirring down below. If you listen carefully you can hear the patter of tiny male mole feet in hot pursuit of lady moles.

Or so I fondly imagine.

With the purchase of another freezer off Ebay, we finally have room to put the last of last year's Aylesbury ducks into cold storage and make a start on the guinea fowl of which we have a flock of about two dozen.

They have been very lucky.

The only ones we have eaten are those that have had minor accidents such as getting trapped under a cow's hoof or apprehended by an eager young Labrador puppy.

She, Pip, is getting a little too good at that and before she really teaches herself some bad habits, the guinea fowl must pay the ultimate price and join the ducks in the new freezer.

We shall spare the original trio of guinea fowl who laid all the eggs and hope that they are as co-operative about their choice of laying sites as they were last year.

In the hen hut along with all the hens.

Most guinea fowl consider that a clump of nettles makes the preferred des res for their nests, but ours are far too sophisticated for such al fresco habits.

The trio did flirt with laying other than in the hen hut, but predation by an eager spaniel, Holly, with a taste for raw eggs, soon dissuaded them.