Stormy weather

We’ve had lots of lovely calls and emails asking how we are faring in the storms.  It’s very sweet of everyone, but actually we are quite well sheltered here.  Although we are high up, we are in the lee of Wood Hill, and sheltered by lots of trees.

Not everyone has been so lucky.  The village stores at Ponsanooth were flooded on Christmas Eve and a temporary shop has opened in the pub.  The village is pulling together to help staff this, and give pensioners a lift to Perranwell to pick up their pensions.

One of John’s work colleagues had his fishing boat smashed up in Portleven Harbour (the massive gates were broken by the force of waves).  At the moment he is seeing what can be salvaged.  This dramatic picture was taken at Sennen.

We have had a few branches fall which today we have been logging.  Both cottages are occupied at the moment and everyone just seems to be enjoying the log burners and keeping cosy and warm!

Stormy weather

The big wave at Sennen

The visit of Marshall the cockerel

We have just said goodbye to Marshall, the cockerel who has been on a 3 week visit.

Marshall lives in Ponsanooth so it was a bit of an outing for him.  In fact he managed to escape from the box he was travelling in on the way over.  The van briefly filled with noise and flapping.  The driver (dad, your narrator) stopped immediately and jumped out, communicating through the sides of the van with the intrepid Charlie Miller who soon had the rather large and feisty Marshall subdued and back in his box.  The trick apparently is to grasp the feet with one hand, simultaneously enveloping the wings with the other arm.

Our 7 hens were rather intrigued by their male visitor, but he seemed wary of them, and did not leave the hen house for the first week!

Anyway, everything is now settling back to its normal pattern and all being well we should have some new chicks in 3 weeks time.

Millerstock III

The other big story of the year was of course Millerstock, the third installment of our pop festival, which we put on over the weekend of 27-28 July.  We all had a fantastic time!  We had 500 guests altogether – musicians and audience.  We ate a hog roast and guests brought either a salad or pudding so we had a massive spread!

Here is a picture of the Blind Date – so called because they were the scratch band assembled on the day for the first time from stray musicians!  They entertained themselves and us with renditions of mainly Ska numbers.  There are a few videos on You Tube, but we’ll post some more pics soon.

‘the Blind Date’ at Millerstock

 

New Year 2014

Shirley (left) and her son Andrew

Well we have a lot of catching up to do on the blog!  Eve is no longer in charge so we are going to be sharing our inputs into this everyday story of country folk!

As everyone knows, it was a superb summer in Cornwall – wall to wall sunshine pretty much – It’s not every year one can say that!

Livestock-wise, the main news is that the chicks Eve was writing about are now fully grown and productive beautiful Maran hens!  They lay a chocolately-brown colour eggs.  All the old ladies are also doing well, so we are getting about 5 eggs a day presently from 6 hens.  (Tomy sadly died of old age in November) We are hopefully going to be borrowing a cockeral from friends in Ponsanooth soon so there may be some more chicks before long!

Also, big news this one – we now have Sheep!!  2 to be precise, a mother and son, Andrew and Shirley.  Their main job is grass cutting – John was getting so fed up with spending 6 hours on the mower at a stretch!  Here’s a picture.  They are Hampshire Downs breed and have a lovely nature.  We spent a good few weeks training them to come when we shake a bucket of nuts.  This has been time well spent as we have on more than one occasion had to retrieve them from neigbouring fields.  After a lot of work and wire, the hedges are now properly sheep proof!  Andrew and Shirey look after the patch of grass behind Rose and Bryony Cottages, and also the big ‘play field’ to the left of the gate.

01/06/13

The sun has come at last!! We’ve been to the beach tons and had some friends staying in the cottages. Today I’m going with a friend to the skating bowl at Kea with our penny boards.

21/05/13

Ahhh!!! I haven’t blogged for ages! Today we cleaned out the chicks again – they are getting soooo big! They’ve almost lost all of their fur now and are about triple – verging on quadruple – the size they were when we first got them! They don’t fit in that little ice-cream box now so we had to put them in a bucket. They can fly out of their box now – that’s almost the equivalent in proportion to me flying to the top of my house!! I found this photo of our dog, Meg, as a little puppy and thought I’d do a comparison!

12/05/13

Not much to report on today – we cleaned out the chicks because they were starting to smell a bit. Here’s a pic of them in the ice cream box while we cleaned their box!! They are almost double the size they were when they hatched, and that was only a week ago!! In the left hand corner you can just see a painting of our field that an artist painted when they came to stay in the cottages.

Another calf has been born today!!

Born this morning at about 8. Will (the bullock born a few days ago) is back in the field after going back to the farm to have a splint in his leg.

Bluebell shoots

Just beginning to bloom!!