Sunday 31 January 2010

Snow again, Night out, Dark Ages Re-enactment

We have a monochrome landscape once more since a heavy fall of snow on Friday evening. Today we are under leaden skies and with intermittent flurries of snow and hail. It is very cold.

The chickens don't like the snow much, they tend not to go out in it; I have been told that they get very dis-orientated by it , I'm not sure why.
However, they are still laying well.

We now have three lambs and hopefully by the end of the week there will be a good few more.

Last evening the Farmer & I had a bit of a social life...a night out! We went to the Shoot Dinner after the last shoot of the season took place yesterday. The Farmer went beating with the wonderful Poppy as usual  and came home with brace of pheasant & a mallard.
The dinner was held in a pub in our village and was a very jolly evening. I didn't know many people there, though there were one or two of our neighbours who we don't see very frequently and it was good to catch up with them.
 The Shoot Dinner is held to say thank you to all the people involved in making the shoot successful through the season. The amount of work involved is staggering, what with the rearing of the pheasants, the keepering, vermin control , the maintanance of the drives, recruiting beaters, inviting visiting guns, keeping the syndicate members happy and generally making sure that everyone has a good day's shooting.
We have our first holiday-makers of 2010 staying in the cottage who are delightful and fully appreciating being in the countryside in the snow. They even came out and helped us move some cattle this morning.
We suggested that they, & their sweet Border terrier Ralph, go up into the hills above Tregaron today where the views will be spectacular in this weather. Looking down the flooded valley of the Llyn Brianne reservoir with the snow lying on the hills and on the conifer plantations that blanket large areas of the uplands, will be a superb.
A. & J., our visitors, are members of a Dark Ages re-enactment society in Kent, and we have had  fascinating conversation with them about the history of that period and how they experience the details of life at that time by wearing the clothes, eating the food, handling the weaponry, even learning the language and generally absorbing themselves in the Anglo-Saxon culture. It sounds huge fun. They put on demonstrations at shows & pageants and are in constant demand by film-makers here and on the continent. Tomorrow I hope they will be able to go down to Pembrokeshire to visit Castell Henllys which is a  reconsrtucted Iron Age settlement, and one of my favourite places.

We heard from our travellers in New Zealand during the week. They were on their way to Wellington and then to cross over to South Island this week, I think. It is very hot there,apparently, but they are having a marvellous time. The Eldest Son reported that the scenery was similar to, but vastly bigger than Wales and very dramatic...he sounded pretty impressed actually!
 I hope they go to the Lord of the Rings 'Experience/ Museum'(?) while they are Wellington. I know Younger Son has visited a couple of the locations in South Island. He says LOTR is a huge thing out there still, almost unavoidable really.

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