The relentless summer rain has given way to golden autumn sunshine. A chocolate box blue sky is decorated with perfect puffy flat bottomed little clouds gliding majestically across the valley. Sloes, fat and shiny fill the hedgerows with plump black wild plums and glistening blackberries. Orchards are heavy with fruit. Golden stubble fields striped green are evidence of a meagre harvest gathered at last after the  summer floods that devastated livestock and crops alike. Feed and hay prices are rising, vegetables will be in short supply this winter.  Even my own little harvest is the worst I’ve ever had. Potato blight destroyed my vegetable garden this year, caused, I suppose by wet, water logged soil. It swept through potatoes, beans, tomatoes. And then the badgers had a midnight feast, disco in fact, in my little patch of sweet corn. They trashed the plants and munched on every cob leaving their debris for me to clear up. Maddening as it is I rather wish I’d seen them having such fun!

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I wake abruptly at three o’clock to the sound of more rain beating on the window panes; more rain and still more rain. Will it never stop?  Nervously I look out of the window into the first shards of dawn light and watch a veil of water drifting sideways past the window. The wind howls, I watch the trees bending their knees in the half light. It’s July. Floods are swamping Britain. The biggest rescue operation since the Second World War, shouts the radio. Television pictures show towns and cities under water, houses destroyed, people staring uncomprehending at the wreckage of their homes, crops submerged, fields turned to lakes, herons fishing amongst the corn. Pea crops rot before harvester’s eyes as they wait for the deluge to ease. In the South West gentle rivers on the Moor are transformed into raging brown rapids. Sheep shorn for summer sun shudder coldly in the relentless tropical down pour. I climb anxiously back to bed and await morning.

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As we march into June the valley puts on its thick summer coat. The skeleton shapes of winter, clothed, oh, so gingerly in spring, are suddenly engulfed in furry foliage. Shapes merge and disappear; hillsides take on different contours, swathed in green lushness. Strong winds blow huge cumulous across the transparent sky. Giant shadows come and go playing tricks with the light. Sparse pastures are replaced by shimmering grass and the hedgerows are littered with wild flowers.

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Lambs are all born now. The playgroup, monitored by a rota of ovine mothers, has moved up the valley to a warm south facing field. Everyday dogs and I walk over the hill to count heads and watch the latest games.

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Farming’s fun, yes, it is, I repeat to myself as dogs and I trudge up to the yard yet again in the relentless rain. Bother, welly stuck, wet sock, whoops, squelch. “Remember,” I repeat my mantra, “you could be in that traffic jam on the M6”

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We seem to have tumbled into the New Year; 2007 has arrived with a great whoosh in every way, drama on all sides. As I sit here looking out of my window I’m wondering if the room will be blown clean off the side of the house. Such a storm is raging; trees are bending over at ninety degrees lashed from side to side. The Monkey Puzzle is doing an extraordinary swirling dance, all seventy feet of it. Oh, I do hope it stays rooted to the ground! The noise is amazing as the wind funnels its way, howling down the valley. Gusts of ninety miles an hour were recorded off the south coast according to the radio this morning….And January usually cheers me up after the dark dank days of November and December. But this year, so wet and wild, even the carpet of snowdrops, early camellias and smiling hellebores fail to give my spirits the usual lift. I hope things improve before lambing begins. We’re starting earlier this year in anticipation of another long hot summer! Fat Ladies in Waiting graze the hillside and race rudely to the yard for afternoon tea.

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Christmas is coming…..

…..and the goose is getting old! Silence fills the farmyard this year. Donkeys feed quietly. Fat lambs steal their hay.No turkey music, no gentle warbling sound answers me on this cold December morning as I potter about feeding, re-strawing chickens, fetching water, all the while bracing myself against the biting wind and the horizontal, sideways rain stinging my face. I drift away as I work dreaming of what it might be like to be in a steamy car in a traffic jam on the M25…….

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