Snow!

March 1st and heavy snow has been falling now for forty eight hours and shows no sign of stopping any time soon. I can’t quite believe my eyes; so unusual in Devon and Cornwall. The last time we had anything like this in the valley was in the 1980’s.

The whole of Briton is gripped by ice and snow. Red and amber weather warnings, grid locked motorways, trains and planes cancelled, countrywide chaos. And now Storm Emma joins in with gale force winds, whipping snowflakes into a frenzied dance and building huge drifts everywhere. My footsteps seem to vanish behind me as I walk from the farmyard.

This morning I brought the rams down from the top fields to the small paddock near the yard to find a little grass. I hope I will be able to feed them easily there despite the weather.

It was so wild that for once dogs and I didn’t walk up the hill to feed the ewes and yearlings. Instead Paul crept up in the big old Lamborghini tractor with oats and hay. There is still some grass up there but as lambing approaches they need a daily supplement. Fortunately we bought a large quantity of oats in the autumn from a neighbouring farmer; just as well as all the farm stores in south Devon have run out of beet shreds at this critical time.

The garden is suspended in monochrome; surrounding hills vanish in a misty blur of snowflakes. Water crashes down the stream between frozen vegetation. Crisp, collapsed daffodils fill the orchard, a sad sight, petrified and flattened.

Camellias marching us so joyfully into spring, are turning brown before my eyes. The pond is frozen. I wonder if my newly gifted goldfish will survive.

Donkeys hunker down in their big shed and chickens stay in their barn. Even Milly put her nose out of the back door this afternoon and quickly retreated to her basket again! Mr Porter, an old timer, didn’t stir from his!

Only the cat saw fit to play with snowflakes for a while.

March 2nd
We wake to a white landscape and howling gale. No footprints in the snow up to the yard. No tyre marks on the lane past the gate, no postman, no refuse collection. Snow has stopped falling. All is grey and silent but for the eerie whistle of the relentless wind.

We trudge once more to the yard in the early light, dogs following this time, dancing in the strange white dust which has thickly disappeared their familiar green landscape. Donkey’s eeyore loudly at their gate. Nutmeg bites my sleeve as I go to fetch their breakfast: what is this stuff, what’s going on?
Paul sets off once more in the tractor to feed ewes up the hill. I feed the ram lambs. The wind whips up snow, takes the oats and blows them away. Sheep stare at me and old Larry sounds his usual insistent, moaning baa. I must find a trough and feed them again!

Chickens fed, Milly and I trudge through Sunday Orchard to the quarry to wait for the tractor to re-appear. Nothing happens; we wait. Puzzled we climb the hill. The snow gets deeper and deeper till it’s over my boots. There is the old Lambo in a snow drift: snow so deep the gate will not open despite our best efforts. Southerners unused to this weather, we forgot to take a shovel!
Ewes fed now, the only way home is backwards all the way down the track to a small turning space. “Thank goodness for a vine gear” says Paul when he reaches the quarry. The old Italian was designed to have a special low gear for grape harvesting which enabled it to travel so slowly the pickers could walk behind and load the grapes.

Home at last we warm up with cups of coffee and busy ourselves with indoor tasks till it’s time to go up to the yard and feed again. We watch the sky darken. The forecast says sleet at four o’clock but alas, it is snow!

********

Housebound my thoughts turn to food, of course. A trawl into the deepfreeze reveals a forgotten pheasant bought from the butcher a few weeks ago. Gone are the days of a well hung pheasant from a local shoot. Now they are bought in by butchers and supermarkets alike, from huge commercial shoots. Once defrosted, this one doesn’t look too great; only partially gutted and badly damaged, poor little bird, obviously not a clean shot!

I complete the gutting before thoroughly rinsing all traces of blood away under cold water to avoid it rendering the meat bitter during cooking. It is important to be very vigilant whilst doing this to avoid contamination to other food.
I pat it dry and wrap each piece in a rasher of streaky bacon which I first stretch with the back of a knife. This will make it shrink tight round the meat as it cooks. I add a little olive oil, some stock and a dash of white wine to the roasting dish as well as couple of cloves of garlic and some small slices of chorizo sausage.

Covered with foil it goes into the oven for about 25 to 30 minutes. Once cooked, I take the pheasant from the pan, keep it warm and let it rest. I make a little sauce with a teaspoon of cornflour stirred into some stock, a dash of crème fraiche and salt and pepper. With potato and celeriac mash and a few garlic mushrooms it certainly cheers up the poor old bird!