Chewing the Cud – Sam Russell

Chewing the Cud, Farm and Family Life, Inspiration

Rustic Nostalgia

September 15, 2017September 16, 2017by Sam Russell1 Comment

I wrote a post about corn dollies a couple of weeks ago and it inspired a very old friend of mine to Google the infant school teacher she and I both remembered so fondly.

Here’s us, back in the day.

class pic 1970 — My friend is second from left. I’m not in, it I must have taken the photo.

CCI_000003 (2) — That’s me on with the grin and friend diving behind me. (We actually got drummed out of the Brownies but that’s a whole other story.)

I wanted to include a picture here of the very first book I wrote. It was part of a trilogy entitled Walks Along the River Bourne. But I’ve wasted too much time hunting for it in the attic and come away with only a cobweb cardigan. I’m sorry, you’re missing a treat it was beautifully bound with original artwork on the cover 🙂 Self-published, of course. By an 8 year old.

Anyhoo, I digress. One thing led to another, and we arranged to get together to revisit old haunts of our primary years and retrace our steps along the river Bourne, where we’d spent so many happy hours.

We set off on our hike, and immediately lost our way because the beautifully descriptive print-out of the route was rather too wordy for our basic navigation skills (and we were gabbing too much to concentrate).

“… passing hedges, into the next field, through another hedge, the path turns left on a walkable field-edge beside a hedge of hawthorn [a confusion of hedges].The heavier clay of this side of the parish can make it heavy going in wet seasons. But it’s a pleasant downhill trek through a gap over a rather wobbly stile [we never found the stile] into a long, narrow slipe of a meadow, then over a step-stile [nor this one] into a bigger meadow and down to a little footbridge…”

The directions got waylaid in the wonderfully detailed wording, and some of the landmarks had changed:

“Passing the last cottage, go through the gate, closing it carefully as there may be stock in the meadow. The high bank may be the lynchet of the old lane. This is a fine spacious meadow dotted with oaks, populated by rabbits, with views of distant wooded hills…”

Ploughed… but still a view of distant wooded hills.

It didn’t matter to us. We found ‘our’ river Bourne.

And remembered, and played silly buggers on the fallen logs… just like back in the day. We even took a selfie in front of our primary school.

Here’s to rustic nostalgia, a lovely day and the dear old friends who keep us young. I don’t think we’ve changed at all.

Chewing the Cud, Farm and Family Life, Inspiration, Our Barn Conversion, Self-publishing, Writing Romance

Writer’s total lack of inspiration

Featuredby Sam Russell3 Comments

Ah, book three. It’s not so much a question of ‘will it get finished’ as ‘will it ever get started?’

I’ve dropped right out of the habit of sitting and writing this summer. There are a lot of reasons for that. My physical fitness is back after years of being limited by a dodgy hip and subsequent surgery. There’s a puppy in the house to make full use of my time (and my resurrected walking skills) and we’re converting a barn on the farm to be our new forever-home, which is keeping me mentally occupied and absorbing every drop of my creative thinking juices.

Jodie the horse

I’m walking and riding and project mismanaging… I’m loving the time away from my desk. I’ve shed half a stone just by being more active (author’s bottom be gone!) and in my downtime, I’m reading lots of lovely books that other people have written. (It’s so much easier than writing one yourself).

I’m asking myself some deep and meaningful questions:

Does it matter if you never write another book? (Answer: No, not a jot.)
Will your finances be adversely affected if you give up writing? (Answer: No. The opposite is true, in fact.)
Do you want your author’s bottom back? (I don’t need to tell you the answer to that one).
Does anyone but you give a fig whether you’re writing or not? (Answer: Yes and No. A dozen or so people do. I was accosted this week at an Uncle Funk gig by a couple of ~~mates~~ avid fans of my Draymere Hall Series who wanted to know when the next book would be out (Er, probably not this week). That happens surprisingly often and I’m always terribly flattered. But, contrarily, the Farmer is happy that I’m back in the real world; that there’s dinner on the table and the washing is getting done).
So… WILL THERE BE ANOTHER? (Answer: Hell, yes! Just don’t ask me why. Or when.)

I know there’s another book in there. In fact, I’ve started several…

A tentative foray into detective stories with a nerdy (female) PI and a dollop of quirky love interest.
A WWII historical Anglo-American romance set on a USAAF airbase.
Another Draymere Hall romance (with Zoe as the heroine, you’ll have met her if you’ve read Brambles. You know, the one who worked with Hettie… one of Julian’s ‘volunteers’.)
A brand-spanking-new contemporary romance series.
A complete departure from any genre, with a narrator who’s already dead…

Dear Lord. What I need to have written is several K words of one book, not one k words of several. Is it any wonder I’m in a muddle?

I’ll pick it up in the autumn.

Oh, hang on, that’s today.

But the sun’s still shining and I must walk the puppy down to the barn. There’s a tractor parked up outside with my name on it and I’m riding this afternoon…

Maybe this winter, then. Watch this space (but not with too much anticipation).

Chewing the Cud, Farm and Family Life, Inspiration

Corn Dollies

August 25, 2017August 25, 2017by Sam Russell6 Comments

You don’t often see them now, but the culmination of harvest this week and an article in NFU Countryside magazine on how to make them set me to reminiscing about the art of corn dolly creation.

In my early rural-school years we had a teacher who wove corn dollies as she taught. She sat in a battered armchair in the corner of the classroom and her hands rarely stilled as she counselled us in the ways of nature, with an old-country wisdom which resonates with me to this day.

I recall that the different dollies had meanings and potencies and that the spirit of the corn was encased in their form. Mrs Homewood crafted works of some intricacy whilst the class had a go at the simple, spiral ‘drop dollies’ (with mixed results!)

Some are traditional to an area, named after counties and places.

CambridgeshireHandbell — … and this one’s a Cambridgeshire Handbell.

Plump, comfortably dressed and slightly dishevelled, Mrs Homewood made a greater impression on me than even gorgeous, blonde, Miss Ford from my city-infant class who let me brush her long hair and handed out sweets from the drawer of her desk. I thought Mrs Homewood was ancient, but she lived on for decades after I left so that must have been an illusion of youth. I wonder if she was actually a pagan goddess of nature, even the name fits!

Our classes were often conducted outside (whatever the weather) and we walked the length of the village river to study the life and nature of its twisting path. I certainly knew what a tributary was long before I could spell it. Our very own forest school (before forest schools re-emerged as a trendy ‘new’ idea) but do not be misled into thinking that Mrs Homewood was saintly. Oh no. She chased one of the boys with a bunch of stinging nettles (he was chasing us girls with the same) and when a classmate told her he’d been stung by a bee she offered no sympathy.

‘Poor bee. You do know that he’ll die now?’

The varieties of wheat we grow today have stalks too short for successful dolly making. It’s been cultured that way to prevent the crop falling and to accommodate combine harvesters. But maybe I should give it a try anyway…

The dolly should be kept over winter and laid in the first turned furrow of the plough to set the spirit of the corn free again. Bless Mrs Homewood, whose spirit is free now too, bless all the teachers who shaped us and the spirit of the corn which makes our bread.

Chewing the Cud, Inspiration, Rustic Guests

Rustic Guest Anne Bennett Brosnan – Girl in Wellies

June 30, 2017June 27, 2017by Sam RussellLeave a Comment

brosnans-20th-july-14a-45 I’ve followed Anne’s blog for a while now. She writes witty, evocative and often moving posts about her experiences as a Cork city girl who’d never met a cow until she married a North Kerry dairy farmer.

I had a job picking a favourite to share with you here, so do go and read more of Anne’s posts over at Girl in Wellies. In the meantime here’s a taster …

It’s a date

We should check this one out, he writes, on a restaurant review in last Saturday’s paper. ‘It’s a date’ I write and ‘look at this’, I go on, circling a home exchange advertorial that suggests that we could up sticks for a couple of weeks and swap our farm house for a Manhattan penthouse. We get cocktails, you get milkshakes and oh so much more besides. And here, Mr and Mrs New Yorker, if you could milk the cows; that would be great.

I leave a sandwich, he eats it.

He leaves a pile of washing; guess what, I wash it.

‘Don’t forget’, I write on a post-it, ‘to ring your man about the concrete’. ‘I won’t forget’ he writes back. ‘Good’ says I.

He records our favourite programme, I watch it.

He texts at bedtime to see how the kids have settled to sleep. They miss Dad I write and then think again and erase it, text instead ‘good, they’re all sound’.

And then the rains stops and the cows go out. They can, at long last, spend time outdoors during the day. And as he fences around the house to leave the cows out, we arrive, en famille, to ‘help him’ fence, we fill in the gaps between the scraps of newspaper, texts and sandwiches. The Spring or the intense calving period is coming to an end. We’ll be there to walk the cows out with Dad. To bring them in for milking, to let them out. In our wellies, chatting to fill in the Springtime gaps. Spring takes him away, the cows out in the fields brings him back. That most certainly is a date.

You can find Anne on Twitter and Facebook if you’d like to follow her there.

Chewing the Cud, Farm and Family Life, Inspiration, Writing Romance

My June in Pictures

June 23, 2017June 24, 2017by Sam Russell2 Comments

In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explode and every sunset is different.

John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

A pictorial diary of my month, what a beauty it’s been.

Wild roses with heart shaped petals.

Champagne cream tea at a friend’s birthday party.

Take That’s very own Wonderland.

The North Sea pretending to be the Mediterranean.

Pond dipping with the overgrown puppy.

The Summer Solstice.

Our barn home taking shape.

Writing romance with this view.

My cup overfloweth

Chewing the Cud, Inspiration, Rustic Guests

Rustic Guest Neil Quinlan ~ Free-Range

June 4, 2017May 30, 2017by Sam RussellLeave a Comment

Neil farms in Cheshire, rearing dairy heifers, and returned to the industry after a break from farming (you can read more about that on his blog – Quinlan and Cows. Or find him over at twitter @neilquinlan)

I’m sharing a post he wrote earlier in the year which I first enjoyed when I read it on Haynet.

I hope you enjoy it too. Free-range milk in your tea?

Free-Range

The free-range debate still seems to be rumbling on over on twitter….

I fall into the category of free-range farmer I suppose. Our heifers “went out” in April 2016 and we still had some out in January of this year! We were feeding silage outside as the grass doesn’t grow at this time of year. It was also frosty, but the cows were happy. How do I know this?

Well if they weren’t happy they would be stood at the gate mooing their heads off!

So free range milk. A value added product in the age of a volatile market. Great I thought. That was until I watched Friday Night Feast on Channel 4 who were promoting the product.

The connotations and insinuations that were made on the programme were very misleading. Housed cows are unhealthy and unhappy was the impression I was given. Not taking anything away from Jimmy Doherty as I think he has done a great job promoting British agriculture on the whole.

I take umbrage with this because, if done correctly, housed cows have been some of the happiest I’ve seen. Also due to the grass growing season of the UK “free range” cows will have to be housed for a portion of the year. So saying cows are unhappy when housed is damaging to the free range brand and the industry as a whole.

It’s not the system that defines the health and wellbeing of animals. It’s the person managing it. Same applies to organic.

So as a free range farmer what authority do I have to speak about housed systems? I visited America last year. I have to say I was concerned about what I would see on arrival at the farms I was visiting but my fears were unfounded.

This was typical of the farms I visited and the cows were happy, contented and in peak health!

Here is our winter housing. A light airy barn in which we get very few health problems Again if these animals weren’t happy they’d literally shout about it! They are cleaned out twice a day and get fresh straw every day and as much silage as they can eat! What’s not to like!?

So my point is not to persuade you away from free-range. Far from it. I want people to have a choice. I just want it to be an informed choice.

In the UK we produce quality, antibiotic and growth promoter free, sustainable and traceable products. So if you see the red tractor on something you pick up in the supermarket you know this is the case as that farm has been inspected.

Anyway. Back to the day job.

Chewing the Cud, Farm and Family Life, Inspiration, Our Barn Conversion

Plain Barny

April 24, 2017May 11, 2017by Sam Russell1 Comment

We live a jammy, comfortable life in a lovely home with running water, central heating and his&hers studies. (We’ve been wed 32 years, and farmed side by side for all of them, but we’ve yet to achieve the heady compatibility of shared office space.)

Our kids grew up in this house, pets and sagas have come and gone. The rooms wear the tale of our lives like a favoured sweatshirt; baggy and washed-out with age. There’s a simile there which suits us rather well these days too. We turn a blind eye to the peeling wallpaper, the leaky roof and the scuff marks. The house has become an old friend and her quirks are easy to tolerate.

But the indolence of our mid-life comfort is about to be shaken. We’re downsizing, into a barn, which currently looks like this…

Our barn hasn’t got running water, central heating or sewers, but I am reassured that these vital amenities are included in the plans. As are his&hers offices (to avoid the alternative – his&hers houses – which would be altogether more costly). There are also a lot of indecipherable ciphers on our drawings, which I’m desperately trying to interpret.

building reg snip — PRAY TELL – WHAT FIENDISH LANGUAGE IS THIS?

I’m sure it will all be fine. The Farmer has chopped down some trees (a knee-jerk reaction to stress), we’ve got artisan mates primed to start work and I’m mugging up on Celotex and feather-edged boarding (whilst surreptitiously pinning pretty pictures to Pintrest).

And I’m learning a lot. Primarily, I’ve learnt that my notions are more romantic than my budget. Is there such a thing as a dream editor, to keep things realistic?

BARN LIVING — £70K FOR WINDOWS? YOU’RE HAVING A LAUGH.

We may have to reconsider the pretty windows, but we will have windows of some sort… I think. There will be hilarity (hysteria), cock-up and heated discussion (argument) aplenty before we get this job done. I fully accept that my comfortable, baggy-sweatshirt existence is about to be disrupted.

Bring on the sequined crop-top, I’m (almost) ready.

Chewing the Cud, Farm and Family Life, Inspiration

April fools on the farm

March 31, 2017March 31, 2017by Sam RussellLeave a Comment

We’re running around like April fools now that spring has arrived on the farm. The men are loading lorries, dispatching the last of the corn which is still in the barns, and when the barns are empty they’ll have to be cleaned and readied for this year’s harvest. The lorries arrive at random times and often with little warning. Sometimes our early wake-up call is from a driver who needs ‘talking in’ from whatever situation his sat nav has landed him in: “I followed the postcode, but it’s taken me to a pub/tree/housing estate…” Much like our internet connection and mobile signal, it seems satellite navigation can only be relied on in cities.

This year’s crop is still green in the fields and, as the earth warms up, needs tending with nutrients and never-ending pest control. The autumn drought in the east of England, followed by an onslaught of pigeons and deer, has hammered our oilseed rape this year. We’re nurturing it, and trying to remain optimistic. There are hopeful buds on the plants, and only time will tell if they come to abundant fruition.

Back at the farmhouse, it’s also the end of the tax year, so alongside tidying barns we’re tidying paperwork too. Filling in forms while the hedgerows bud, scabbling data together on rainy days when the land is too wet to run on and the lorries aren’t queuing up.

Thrown into the mix of April madness there’s Easter, and work on our barn conversion scheduled to start any minute. Preparations which require thinking ahead, another barn to be cleared, foundations to be excavated and a row of hideously overgrown Leylandii (planted to shield the stable from a westerly wind) which have to be taken down before we can get going.

And then there’s the biggest time consumer of them all: Barley the puppy, who’s got us all spinning like April fools.

Writing? No chance.

Chewing the Cud, Farm and Family Life, Writing Romance

Dearest child, I can’t recall your name (the consequence of a chaotic mind?)

February 24, 2017February 24, 2017by Sam RussellLeave a Comment

It’s not an uncommon condition. Anomic or nominal aphasia, apparently. Problems with name retrieval. Or anomia, problems recalling any word. Ah, yes, that happens too, occasionally.

Ironic that there are three names for the condition, and that I probably won’t remember any of them when I’ve finished writing this post.

C’est la vie. Whatever it’s called, I’ve got it. I run through a telephone directory before I hit on the right name for whichever member of my family I’m trying to holler. I might chuck in the names of the dogs, the horses, distant acquaintances (and, all too often these days, the name of a character in the novel I’m writing). My children have learnt to forewarn new partners that mother will refer to them by someone else’s name. In my defence, the name I use isn’t always that of one of their exes, but anomia has no decency filter.

When recalling the stars of TV or screen, Google is my friend. I can quickly locate the cast list for any film or drama. Now, what was the name of that blasted film? Pop stars, and who-sung-that? No point in looking to me for your answer, as many a pub quiz has proven.

Where we stayed on holiday will be ‘that little town/harbour/resort in the north/east/west/south’ and as a writer, I live in perpetual fear of being asked to name my favourite authors. Or what they wrote, come to that.

Apparently, it’s something to do with the way your synapses fire (or fail to fire in my case) and it frustrates me because I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent. I can recall many facts of less importance than the name of the person I’m talking to. My history teacher might have disputed my self-awarded IQ, but you tell me how it’s possible to correctly order the monarchs of England if you can’t remember their names. I wasn’t getting the dates wrong, you see.

When I speak, as an author, about my writing, I sometimes recount a funny story about how I changed one of my character’s names halfway through the manuscript (and the beta reading friend who sent me a text asking who the f**k is Ethan?). It always gets a laugh, (or is it a scornful titter?) and I thought it was amusing too… until the second novel came back from the editor with TWO character name changes, and one poor soul with THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

I’m afraid that’s what happens when you become part of my family.

Thank goodness for proofreaders. And thank you for reading, mary/jane/ben/tom… whoever you are. Please don’t take it personally, I’ve got a chaotic mind and I am synaptically challenged.

Chewing the Cud, Farm and Family Life

A Tale of Two Dogs (Episode 4) Don’t read while eating your supper…

February 12, 2017by Sam RussellLeave a Comment

Oh, the gore!

The terriers followed the farmer into the grain barn. It was always one of their favourite places. There’s a tunnel which runs through the middle of the barn, and at the end of that tunnel, a massive, industrial fan. The job of the fan is to blow air up through slats in the wooden floor, to dry the tonnes of grain which (we hope) are heaped upon it after harvest.

So, quite a meaty fan then. This fan means business. It also comes into use when we’re cleaning the barns pre-harvest – blowing mice out of the channels which run beneath the floorboards. It blasts those poor little mites up and into the air! Great sport, I’m sure you can imagine, for two little pest-control terriers. The sound of that fan firing up was a siren call to work for them. Heads up, and they were off.

Now, I quite like mice. I can’t say the same about rats, but mice are pretty with their cute little faces and twitchy whiskers. I console myself with the thought that the mice who live beneath our barn have a pretty jammy life; making their nests and rearing their pups in the warm and dry, with more prime feed-wheat than they could ever eat dropping through the ceiling.

The ones the terriers catch get a swift and efficient end to their lives too. Not for them the slow decline of poisoning or the panic of being trapped. You’ll know this if you’ve ever watched a terrier working. One shake is all it takes. A toss of dead mouse over the shoulder, and on to the next (although Nutty Meg was inclined to hover behind Russ and eat the dead ones that he threw back).

The dogs would return home knackered and proud. But, on one occasion, Russ didn’t come back at all. The Farmer went to find him, and I knew something was wrong from the tone of the Farmer’s voice when he carried Russ into the farmhouse. The poor little man was in a terrible state (the dog, not the Farmer, although he wasn’t doing so well either). The blood and froth spraying from Russ’s face propelled us all into the truck for an emergency trip to the vets.

He’d followed the Farmer into that tunnel, and when the door was shut behind him he’d tried to find another way out. When an industrial fan spins at several thousand rpm it gives the illusion of disappearing into thin air, and Russ tried to jump through it. The thought still makes me wince.

We thought he was a goner, but no. He lost about 4 mm off the end of his nose, and I spent three weeks delicately inserting a cotton bud into each of his nostrils (several times a day) and rotating it to stop them closing up.

The things we do for love, eh. He was right as rain in a few short weeks, but forever stumpy faced.