Lifestyle

a bi-weekly column
Snow was too much for a Muscovy drake
IT WAS a very misleading winter this year.. By early February I really thought that winter was on its way out. The weather was warm, plants were shooting up all over the place and we seemed to have missed all the blizzards and gales that had affected the rest of the country.
It was too good to last, and our turn duly came with plenty of snow and wind and some of the sharpest frosts in many years. Our lowest temperature was a ground frost of -17°C and this was more than enough to kill off many of the cabbages.
One casualty was a cluster of broad bean plants growing on the compost heap. We had heard that broad beans are supposedly hardy enough to survive the winter, so when some beans germinated on the compost heap, we left them there. After that frost, though, all that were left were a few blackened shoots. and they promptly collapsed.
One surprising aspect of the wintry weather was its effect on our young Muscovy drake, Erasmus. He is usually rather an extrovert bully, tending to run into the middle of the duck pond when let out of the hut in the morning flapping his wings and hissing just to let you know who is in charge.
After the first fall of snow this winter, and the first he had ever seen, he came hurtling down the ramp as usual but skidded to an abrupt halt. A white duck in a white world was too much to take. and he turned round and shot back indoors.
1 he final indignity was that the normally subservient but older ducks knew all about snow and proceeded to amble round outside with Erasmus looking on in amazement.
Even this month winter still had a sting in its tail, and last week was cold and wintry with plenty more snow. All our ideas about getting the vegetables planted have been hastily forgotten and most of the spare time has been spent making paths and caning manure up to the greenhouse for the tomatoes.
Incidentally, my methane generator still sits in regal isolation in one corner of the greenhouse waiting for the summer warmth to encourage it to start bubbling away. We have a vague idea about building a windmill, but as usual, this will probably have to wait a year or two.
In any case, a much more urgent task is to establish a bigger patch of soft fruit,especially blackcurrants. With thre& young children we find that the "Ribena factor" looms increasingly important in the family economy.
Our goat, Thea, was very considerate about producing offspring. She kidded only one day late, and thoughtfully arranged it to happen about half an hour after an experienced goat-keeping friend of ours arrived to sec how she was getting on.
There were no problems and We all watched with great interest, children as well. One of the things about keeping animals is that sex education starts at a very early age!
Unfortunately, Thea produced only one kid, and that was a billy, so our ideas about having two or three goats producing milk will have to be delayed by a year. Still she is now giving four to five pints of very nice milk a day, even if she does have her own ideas about how to be milked.
During the first week, she trod in the bucket one day and sat on it the next. Now she just. jumps clean over it.
Mind you, my_wife does the milking at present and she is slowly teaching Thea how to behave. The only trouble is that I will need to learn how to milk her as well. Heaven only knows what Thea will get ap to when that happens.
Paul Rogers