Easter Sunday: A Normal Day at Stoneywish
Public Holidays are working days for us. Nevertheless I try not to let such times slip by without a sense of celebration. So for Easter I plan a breakfast of fresh-laid chuckie-eggs and homemade brioche, courtesy of the new bread-maker. Michael sets off for work just after six a.m. with instructions not to stay out cutting stinging nettles after he has fed the animals. Breakfast will be at 8 sharp. At seven he returns, but my hopes of a restful start to the day are short-lived. One of our sheep - last year's bottle-lamb, Spotty, to be precise - has managed to wedge her head through the bars of a metal gate and, due to her horns, cannot be extricated. Do I have a hack-saw? No, I do not. And as she cannot be left in such a parlous state, I call the Fire Brigade and we both set off to the Car Park to await the arrival of professional help. The fireman show great gentleness and understanding, for their Easter breakfast has probably also gone by the board, and manage to cut Spotty free without any trauma, After staggering about a bit, she heads off for a rest in the shade before resuming her grazing. I would like to think she has learnt something about the value of seeking greener grass on the other side, but I suspect she has not!
Within an hour I am rounding up a dog which has strayed from one of our neighbour's houses and is running amongst the geese and their newly hatched goslings. These six babies, now gawky on long legs, were, at Easter, still helpless balls of fluff, zealously guarded by their parents and a gaggle of aunties and uncles who were bold enough to fly at the sheep if they came too close. But even a bold goose is no match for a dog. By the time I have chased him home and returned to the house, it is getting on for midday.
No matter, the weather is warm and sunny and the apple blossom hums with bees in the orchard. Perhaps an Easter lunch outside will make up for breakfast? We pile bread and salad onto plates and just as we head out of the kitchen the telephone rings: Is Michael there? There is water pouring through the ceiling of the Visitor Centre kitchen. It looks as if the tank has burst again...
Two emergency plumbing trips later, pigs fed, chickens shut away, and visitors and staff departed after the excitement of the Easter Bunny Hunt, we anticipate a quiet evening. But perhaps it would be better to make no further plans! Fate has such an arsenal of practical jokes to play on the unwary. Half way through dinner someone calls to say that a fox has carried off one of the goslings and the thought haunts me late into the night.
Next morning however, I find all in the top field still alive and well. In addition the noisy Canadas have hatched three young of their own on the Black Swan Pond. I count six ducklings, darting about, hunting flies on the water surface and also spot four moorhen chicks, hidden under the overhanging foliage that obscures their nest. The cuckoo has been calling for a week now.
This surge of life brings its triumphs and tragedies. With the warm weather, two sheep, though treated already, succumb to fly-strike and Michael and his grandson, Mike, have the unenviable task of dealing with the flesh-eating maggots which have burrowed into their wool. And the heron returns to the Black Swan Pond and perches at the top of the weeping willow, waiting to swoop on my unsuspecting nursery.
Two weeks on, I have four duckling survivors, but only one moorhen, lovingly tended, as only baby moorhens can be. The Canadas have taken their family to the safety of the Big Pond where they were welcomed by a raucous flotilla of geese. Meanwhile, despite their water drying up alarmingly fast, the top flock have continued to protect their goslings and their unflagging vigilance makes a very moving sight.
And already it is May. Today's news becomes out of date even as I write it. Elder bushes flower where the apple and rowan bloomed before. Great drifts of red campion and blue alkanet lie between the trees along the Big Pond edge, the best I have ever seen and May blossom foams in the hedgerows. You would not guess that we have been without rain for five weeks or more. Shaun McCullagh came at Easter and did a new bird count for us, recording whitethroat and lesser whitethroat, blackcap and reed warbler this time, in addition to our usual residents. And Michael has met a baby fallow deer twice on his rounds in the early morning, which is lovely for the blog and (deer being voracious eaters of roses) rather worrying for the Herb Garden!
We finally got our lazy breakfast on May morning!
Suddenly everything is bursting into life. While geese, ducks and moorhens are busy guarding their nests on the Reserve a tide of green is seeping over the hedgerows. Pussy willow is out. The chiffchaffs have arrived from Africa and you can hear their distinctive notes, calling their own names, quite clearly, among the other bird cries. And our family of farm animals is growing too. Two dear ginger-spotty piglets have joined the gang in the Smallholding and another lamb was born last week. On the Black Swan pond, the Canada Geese and the swans have called a truce and have settled down to nest beside one another on the island. While their womenfolk are occupied, the males warily patrol the waters round them, all raucous displays of greeting and warning temporarily halted. In the folk mythology of Finland, Tuonela, the Underworld, is surrounded by waters which are guarded by a lone black swan. Black swans come from Australia so the 'Swan of Tuonela' was a piece of pure imagination on the part of Finland's pre-christian storytellers, but their tale inspired a haunting tone poem by Sibelius, and I cannot help hearing his music in my head as I see our miniature epic unfolding here.
Carpets of spring flowers are appearing now: primroses, violets, the beautiful oxlips, which have colonised a corner of the woodland coppice,
and mantles of wild garlic, and bluebells are close behind, while the blackthorn, crab apples and orchard fruit trees are only days away from breaking bud.
There are plans for some turkeys to join the hens in the orchard. Already the Oxford Sandy and Black piglets have turfed up the grass in their pen and learnt that a snout is a good powerful tool for levering fences up high enough to escape into the world at large. They can run fast too! Michael was called out two days ago to catch them before they set to helping to dig the vegetable beds!
A week or so back we took delivery of two ponies, which Charlie Camp from Clayton made for us out of his locally grown chestnut wood, and they are now stationed close to the Indian Tepee and newly refurbished Wild West Fort in the Play Area, waiting for child adventurers to scramble on their backs. Charlie makes all manner of beautifully crafted items in wood, from wellie-racks to garden furniture and we are hoping to add his handiwork to the things for sale in our shop.
Well, it's no use waiting for the weather this year. We are still sloshing about up to the ankles in mud beneath white, dreary skies, so the birds and animals on the Reserve are getting on with spring anyway. All the mallards on the black swan pond have dispersed to find their own breeding grounds, battle-scarred robins are a regular sight, as they scrap for a mate and the first frogspawn has appeared. We also have seven newborn lambs in the field. Everyone seems surprised that they should have come so early, but our sheep breed naturally, like wild animals and follow their own instincts without human intervention. And you can see their logic.
This way the lambs have to be tough to survive the cold weather, but they can rely on their mothers' milk and body warmth for protection. They then benefit from the longest possible time to grow fat on grass before they have to face a winter alone. It is a joy to see them, black, cream and brown, chasing one another along the hedgerows at dusk, so sturdy and free.
As for the rest of the reserve, the long walk beside the big pond is awash with snowdrops in full bloom, and spreading pools of primrose and purple crocus. The weeping willows are breaking bud and the deep green spikes of arum lily and wild garlic leaves are spearing the drab leaf-mould in the woods. If only the sun would put in an appearance, we would really believe the brown days of winter are behind us.
Here we are rapidly running out of dry wood for the Rayburn. Michael seems to spend half the day sawing up old fence posts and dead branches and we have running battles over which items belong to the beetles and woodpeckers and which are fit to burn. Some sticky pine the other day gave us a chimney fire at supper time. An ominous crackling in the Rayburn flu alerted me and I called for assistance. Michael, a veteran fireman of 33 years service, looked at it quizzically and pronounced that it was only soot burning and would probably do the chimney good. "Shut everything down and see what happens", he said. My efforts to continue cooking were hampered by falling sparks and molten cinders and when the chimney plate began to glow I made a larger fuss: "You know, this really is on fire!" Michael considered the matter. Pottered outside to inspect the state of the chimney pot, rummaged briefly in his veterinary box and handed me a water pistol. "You could try squirting that up there if you like. There are no flames coming out of the top." The water pistol produced an angry sputtering and dribbles of tar, but gradually did the job. Apart from a few smuts in the risotto no real harm done. Of course we should get the chimney swept more often. 'Grandmother's Household Hints', an old American manual recommends dropping a live hen down once a year. The fluttering descent will dislodge soot most effectively! No mention of chicken's rights! More prosaically, Sussex lore advocates a holly branch. I might simply settle for calling in the sweep!
One sad note. We lost dear old Charlie the donkey. Heaven knows how old he was,as he was already elderly when he came to us and that was over 16 years ago. This winter he became slower and slower at eating his food and Michael spent many long hours standing over him in the snowy weather, to fend off the cows who gobbled their rations so quickly and came foraging for more. We find ourselves still looking for his pale shadow and quiet welcome at the gate.
New for 2-5 year olds!
'Forest School style 'Adventure Tuesdays at Stoneywish Nature Reserve during term time from 9am-2pm.
Today, a slimy-brown,
relentlessly rainy day, is Twelfth Night, the traditional end of Christmas and the day when we should be wassailing the apple trees to sing in a good harvest and frighten away malicious spirits by banging trays and firing off the odd shot gun. Though we have done it in fun in other years, there seems small chance of it in this downpour, so perhaps we shall have to toast them from the comfort of our fireside instead. I did, however, go out and inspect them. New buds are still tightly clamped to their branches, but there is a different air already about all the trees in the reserve. Hazel catkins are almost in flower.
The birches 
are alive with robins in full voice and at dawn, their warning cries mingle with those of the blackbirds and late-hunting owls, while the mistle thrush tries out his spring song. The green spears of the flag iris shoots are up like a fringe of little teeth along the margins of the ponds, and winter aconites, always the first flowers of spring, are breaking through the leaf mould, uncurling their yellow heads in defiance of the weather and creating their own sunshine.
Contrary to good orchard practice, we failed to pick up the fallen Bramleys and the snow has now covered them twice. But I notice that since their first frosting they seem to have become more palatable to the birds and they have helped sustain them through the last few weeks. Moreover, more birds foraging should mean fewer bugs left for the spring, I hope, and fewer maggots in the apples. It has seemed to work in other years.
Meanwhile, back to the rain. My wellies have sprung another leak so feeding the chickens is rather like hopscotch, dodging the puddles! Traditionally, it is February that earns the epithet 'fill-dyke'. Well, all our ditches are full a month early and passing Canada geese stop off to investigate the new ponds that have appeared out in the meadows. Michael says he has never seen the fields so flooded and the drive to the Car Park is honeycombed with potholes. 
Compared with the vast floods happening elsewhere in the world, we have nothing to complain of, but you get a sense of the incredible power of water when even our gentle English rain washes out a road overnight. The news from Brazil, Australia, Indonesia gives a sobering glimpse of true global warming in action and makes our local perspective seem rather trivial. But it also brings home the awareness that we are all connected. Perhaps it is good to get your feet wet and remember that the weather is not just an amenity, or an inconvenience, but, like part of our skin, a medium for life and breath. We always want to insulate ourselves, but the old wassailers sensed, with a wisdom long pre-dating scientific knowledge, that one had to stay close to Nature if one wanted to keep it benign. The water birds here live immersed in their element and for them the thaw is a welcome relief. After all, it is exhausting work breaking ice with your chest when the ponds freeze over!