Country Life.

It seems that Doris and the gang were having me on last night. I went up the lane to see how they were doing just as the farmer and his wife were in the process of serving supper. Mrs farmer assured me that they were fed yesterday evening as usual, so the flock were just doing an Oliver Twist on me en masse.

And then she explained to me how the process of field rotation works. The reason they’re having to feed the sheep on hay at the moment is because the grass is too wet to cut, so they can’t shift the sheep into another field. Cows cope with long grass well, apparently, but horses and sheep don’t. The grass needs to be cut short for them to graze. It’s good to learn things.

Mr farmer told me the story of a strange creature he’d seen near the village where I used to live, a creature remarkably similar to a fictional one I invented for a story I wrote while I lived there. I’m glad I didn’t know about that at the time.

Doris and another ewe came up for a nose scratch, and then I took my leave and came home. The heavens opened before I’d walked a hundred yards and I got very, very wet. Country living can be really rather nice at times.