Jim Webster's Blog, page 23

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

There are a lot of Christmas traditions about. Some are long lasting, some almost transient. A friend of mine used to be in the catering/retail trade and one year, calling in the wholesalers just before Christmas, discovered that the wholesalers already had Easter eggs. You can see their point; there is no real point in …

In the bleak midwinter

From memory it was 2005. It started when I had to take a dead bullock up to a veterinary investigation centre north of Penrith. At the time I was driving a Ford Granada I’d inherited from my late father. A nice car, not a lot of acceleration but it was lovely to drive and once …

Multicultural dog in a manger

Sal is a Border Collie, a working dog. Thus she does seem to get a bit tetchy about other dogs. It’s as if she cannot really see the point of them. But then she’s perfectly happy playing with the older lambs if the spirit moves them, and she and the cows have an interesting relationship. …

Just messing about

When he started farming on his own account my father kept a diary. He thought it would be useful and so he jotted down in it what he’d done that day, anything bought or sold, prices and similar. Then one day my mother seems to have ‘encouraged’ him to go to town with her to …

A dog’s life?

Farm dogs are a peculiar mix. Most of them are Border Collies, most of them are working dogs, and they’re trained rather than domesticated. Hence if you’re used to Labradors or similar, farm dogs can be a bit forbidding. Some of it is they’re not used to new people and treat them with justifiable suspicion. …

And so it begins (cue portentous music)

Obviously coyotes and roadrunners don’t really feature in our local ecology, but like many, I grew up with them. The animated antics of the two internationally famous protagonists kept us all amused. Indeed I’m still a fan.   But still, it’s great but it’s not real life. We have chase scenes here but I’ve never …

Strange things happen out west

Out here in the west there are times when you can feel cut off from the rest of the country. We’ll glance over Morecambe Bay to discover that England has disappeared in fog or cloud, and the comment is normally made that ‘England has gone again.’ Given the number of times the A590 gets blocked …

Pontifications on a road less travelled. Feed me!

  You see it’s all the fault of ‘the other lot.’ The growth in foodbanks is all due to the wicked tories, or it’s because the last labour government spent all the money, or they’re all scroungers anyway. (Delete as your current political allegiance dictates.   But it’s worth taking a look at the embarrassing …

Is it daylight yet?

Today was one of those days that we often seem to get in November and December. It felt like the first proper day of Winter.  I went to feed sheep and there was a thick ‘rag’ on the grass. It was covered in frost and the sun was too weak to break through and thaw …

Resilience?

  Instinct is a wonderful thing. Calves are born with the instinct to stand next to their mother with their head held down but tilted upwards. They will then grab hold of their mother’s teat and suckle. Except that instinct isn’t too precise and you’ll often see a calf work it’s way round mum at …