At the Woodbridge Horse Show today Colony Tanzin made her first appearance. She had to adjust to the noise and bustle of a busy public occasion.
Groom Richard Gibbs from the Suffolk Horse Trust led Tanzin in the Class for 2-year-old Suffolk fillies. Tanzin won a blue rosette for second place (out of two). She is sponsored by Old Pond Publishing - see blog 28 September.
Land Girls Gang Up by Pat Peters, paperback, 200 pages inc. 8 pages photographs.ISBN: 978-1-905523-95-5. IN STOCK at Old Pond Publishing, £7.95.
What was likely to happen if you took a group of feisty 17-year-old London girls and dropped them into the heart of Cornwall in the 1940s?
Dropped into Cornwall and then made to work as hard as any man, clearing stones, pulling thistles and cutting broccoli on freezing cold mornings. Not to mention the unending potato harvest.
Of course, these girls had all volunteered to join the Women's Land Army, and they knew that the drudgery was all part of the war effort. But that didn't stop them constantly looking for ways to avoid work. They hid in the corn crop plucking their eyebrows, writing letters or even darning socks.
The local farmers responded to the girls with various degrees of welcome. Some were frankly hostile.
A few of the girls rebelled and returned to city life. Most of them battled through, making the most of the local dances and the Yanks. Some, like the author, even settled down in Cornwall as a farmer's wife.
These memories are vivid, humorous and detailed and they show just what did happen to this high-spirited gang.
The Cornwall gang. Pat Peters is in the front row, second from the right.
On Friday Andrew Arbuckle launched his first book, Footsteps in the Furrow.
Andrew chose the village hall at Luthrie in East Fife for his party. It was to a farm in this area, seen behind Andrew in the photograph (left), that his grandfather came from the West of Scotland in about 1903.
Andrew's book, more fully described in the blog of February 11th, is a loving but unsentimental testament to Fifeshire farming - its variety, pleasures, pains, humour and the changes of the last century.
About a hundred guests gathered in the hall, including many from Fife to whom Andrew had talked when he was gathering information and photographs for the book.
While he was farming and after he retired Andrew enjoyed a long career as an agricultural journalist. Former colleagues were well represented among the guests one of whom, Bill Howatson (right) - now Provost of Aberdeenshire - paid tribute to the book.
The Provost described it as 'the collected customs, stories, working practices, living conditions and lifestyles of farming folk.'
'The book,' he continued, 'chronicles the basket of skills shared by farmers and workers, men and women, making a living from the land. It records the transformation of this part of Fife with sensitivity, understanding, sympathy, and no small amount of love.
'I am sure Footsteps in the Furrow will join the rich tradition of rural writing, and become a singular contribution to our understanding of farm and rural life. It is a well-researched, thoroughly enjoyable piece of work that will strike a chord not only here in Fife, but in rural Scotland as a whole.'
Footsteps in the Furrow is published by Old Pond at £9.95.
From chaos to control!
One of the beginner’s main obstacles to training a sheepdog is that he or she has to control the sheep while at the same time encouraging the dog to go around them. The time-honoured way to do this is to use an experienced sheepdog to keep the sheep in the centre of the paddock.
Andy Nickless bases his training on containing the sheep without the need for the second dog.
In the first DVD in this two-DVD set Andy shows how his system works and gives detailed advice on: the choice of dog; choice of sheep; management of a field; what you as a handler must know; when to start training; and how to proceed.
The second DVD shows the basic training of three young dogs with very different temperaments. Andy subdues the aggression of the livelier one and encourages activity from the quieter dogs. It is noticeable that throughout the DVDs Andy’s dogs are enjoying their training and enjoying being with their handler.
Andy Nickless came relatively late to sheepdogs after a career as an industrial photographer. Now he spends all his time training dogs, producing programmes about them and running a working sheepdog website.
First Steps in Border Collie Sheepdog Training, demonstrated by Andy Nickless. Two-disc DVD set, over 120 minutes. Released 2009. IN STOCK at Old Pond Publishing. £26.95
Old Pond has spent the weekend filming the paint restoration of tractors with Alan Davies in Cheshire. This is the fourth visit we have paid to Alan and just about completes the filming of the programme. We covered a lot of ground, including the use of aerosols (right) to ensure that the hidden surfaces of mountings are covered.
On previous visits we recorded most of the preparation work and also the sprying of a casting. But, picking up on some basics, Alan gave a full account of how he chooses paints, how he sets up the sprayer and how he mixes the paint (left). This may sound basic but the hints Alan gives will save newcomers a lot of grief.
Undercoating was next on the agenda (right). Although Alan is a professional car body restorer with an industrial paint booth, this time he showed how to use a garage-type set-up which will be familiar to most of us.
Alan moved on to the finishing of an MF industrial.
Below (right) is what it looked like in 2007 before Alan started work.
After taking the radiator out of the industrial Alan masked up the bonnet.
Using a gravity-fed gun Alan demonstrated the finishing of the bonnet (right).
Another of Alan's useful lessons is how to polish out paintwork contaminated by dust or, as in this case, scratches (left).
Finally - this is what you should be aiming at: one of Alan's completed tractors.
Old Pond expects to be releasing the completed DVD this autumn. There are photographs from last year's filming in the blog 26 February 2008.