After my comments about George pirouetting instead of doing turn on the forehand the other day, he did a very tidy turn on the forehand this morning. Clever lad! Now all I have to do is catch him doing it and associate a cue with it so we don’t confuse ourselves.

They all got a nice going over with the shedding tool again today and enjoyed it greatly – and they’re all moulting like mad, handfuls all over the yard and me sneezing when it blows into my face!

I was delighted today when I hung the washing out – there was a nice breeze blowing and the sheets were fairly whipping and cracking on the line, but the horses all lined up a yard away over the wall to watch without a tremor of unease! Admittedly they were upwind and the sheets were waving away from them, but it’s still good to see horses being relaxed about huge white things flapping so close to their heads – particularly as they all came over and lined themselves up after I’d put the sheets up, proving they actually chose to be there.

I picked up three duck eggs yesterday amongst the hen eggs and another three today – considering I only have 5 ducks and one’s incarcerated in her run (still brooding beautifully), that’s pretty good going! I’m getting between ten and twelve hen eggs a day, too – though some muppet of a chicken laid one in the horses’ hay box yesterday and it got broken! Apparently none of the horses fancied an egg though, as it was all still there when I found it.

The ferrets are all doing well – Angus is now in with the other lads, making five in that run, and the girls have a run each. I’m pretty nearly sure they’re both getting a little more bulgy in the midriffs… though as I’m now supplementing their regular diet with extras, it’s an interesting question as to what the additional weight I think I see is… but ferrets normally self-regulate their diets extremely well and I’m not going to cut back on the extra meat, given that growing kits is very hard work for a ferret and neither of the girls is very big to begin with. I’ve ordered more chicken breast for them, since by Thursday we’ll be getting down in the freezer, and I’ll have to liberate another tin of fish for them next week, possibly order another bottle of salmon oil next week too…

I got a delivery of feed from Longley’s this afternoon – I emailed them last night and they called back this morning, took the card details over the phone and Arthur Lee brought it all up and stacked the sacks just inside the gate for me shortly after lunchtime. The dogs are delighted, since they don’t really approve of bread for breakfast, and I’m having to fend Wicket off the kibble bin in the kitchen again – she adores her lurcher and greyhound kibble and will snaffle it right out of the bin and stuff her greedy tum given the chance!

How time flies. If nothing else, this lockdown is proving that actually I’m perfectly happy not seeing anyone else and not going anywhere else for – literally – months on end!

I’ve had some excellent sessions with the horses over the past couple of days, with Dancer doing some brilliant work standing and lifting hooves, being groomed, following me around the yard and even wearing a surcingle! She’s never had anything around her tum before so I put it on very gently, just draped over her, then hooked the ends together very loosely and took her for a walk up and down the yard. Not a twitch! I tightened it up so it was snug. Still no twitches! Finally we had a walk up and down with it snug and she was totally unfazed and cool as a cucumber, so I was thrilled with her! Abe has had some work learning to stand on a mud mat; he’s perfectly capable of standing on anything he chooses, of course, but getting him to understand that I’d like him to walk along with me and then stop with both front hooves on the mat is a little more complex. He has it cracked now, though, and it’s excellent for teaching him to know exactly where his hooves are (horses not being able to see under their own chins!) and to stand straight and tidy, which is good for his posture and long-term joint health.

Poppy was invited out but each time said she couldn’t possibly, George was looking at Dancer.

George has been excellent – though sometimes a bit naughty! He loves standing by the breeze block stack being groomed, rubbed, patted and leaned on, which is fantastic, and he’s also been pulling my chain a bit on leading exercises. He is still very young, after all – 4 next month – and there’s a definite glint in his eye sometimes when he suddenly tosses his head up and scampers a little next to me, jut to watch me leap aside before he stands on me! I had a firm word with him about it in the end and he behaved for five minutes, so we stopped there.

He’s being superb about having his sweet itch pour-on poured on, standing by the fence beautifully for me to climb up and tip stuff in his mane and down his bum, and he seems to be non-itchy so far, so fingers crossed that keeps on!

We must have grass growing, though I’m not seeing it – the horses are spending most of their time out and only coming in to mooch in the yard, so they’re eating far less hay – so they must be eating far more grass! It’s been more than a month now since we had any rain at all, I’m amazed the grass is finding anything to grow on.

Mother Duck is still sitting firmly on her nest, which is now a mass of soft white down. She has 13 eggs now (I slipped quietly in and snuggled them under her the second night of her sitting, when she’d had time to settle properly again) and she gets off the nest once a day to relieve herself, raid her food dish, have a quick dunk in her water container and then plunks herself back in the nest again. This is where ducks score over incubators – they get the humidity of their nest just right by having a bath and going back damp, while incubators have to be faffed about with, needing sensors and meters and water containers topped up all the time.

I have 3 brown eggs, 3 blue eggs and one little pointy Pencilled Hamburg egg in the incubator in the lounge – hens’ eggs not being as fussy about humidity as duck eggs! – so we’ll find out, in due course, (a) how fertile my assorted cockerels are (I’m not sure, just now, if I have 3 or 4! – I’ll come back to that in a moment) and (b) who sired what.

The cockerels…. Al is definitely male, very much the top cock and cock-of-the-walk, keeping the others firmly under his foot (literally, when Snowball pushes his luck!) Snowball and Charlie are definitely male, too – they have the cockerel strut, they’ve been crowing for months, they have cockerel tails (albeit the rather fluffy silkie version, not Al’s handsome jungle fowl hind end!). Angel, though… Angel I thought was a hen because she’s hen-shaped, she doesn’t strut, and didn’t crow.

I thought…

…Until I watched her crowing under my bedroom window the other day.

Chickens can change gender, either because there’s no cock available and one of the hens takes on that social role then develops the behaviour and plumage to match, or because they have some kind of reproductive problem, injury or hormonal imbalance, that tips them over the gender divide. I don’t know if Angel was a very, very slow-developing male who’s only just getting into things or a female who’s gone trans.

It does mean no silkie broody to hatch eggs, and it also means no silkie eggs – even if she’s female, trans hens are always infertile non-layers.

I suppose I should really turn Angel into a chicken supper but I’m just watching to see what happens, for now.

Achilles is getting stronger, if not putting much weight on, and is enjoying coming in twice a day – to the point of throwing himself out of his run at me! He’s in the kitchen demolishing an egg with some salmon oil just now so I’d better go and supervise before he wrecks the joint!

Mother Duck is still – slightly grudgingly – on the nest, even after I moved it. She did jump off and run for it when I produced the run and bunged it over the nest, but I caught her and put her back in again; she’s settled down again overnight and squeaked at me when I picked up a couple of hen eggs next to her nest this morning, so she’s still feeling broody. I’ll pop another dozen or so eggs under her tonight and we’ll see how it goes!

I think I may load the incubator up again with a batch of assorted hen’s eggs. I don’t know if any of my cockerels are fertile or not and there’s really only one way to find out! The five quail hatchlings are good and sturdy – in fact this morning they all lined up and yelled for me at the top of their cheeps because their food dish was empty and they wanted me to go refill it! – and the remaining eggs aren’t showing signs of life, so I think that’s as good as we get on quail for now!

Achilles is getting stronger – he ate a piece of finely chopped chicken breast this morning and will be getting two bigger pieces this afternoon, as well as having ad-lib access to kibble and water in the run, of course.

I took advantage of the horses all being down the other end of the field this morning and mucked out briskly – I didn’t muck the barn out yesterday because I was busy getting about 25 barrowfuls out of the bit where Mother Duck is now sitting. I was aware that George was grazing closer each time I took another barrow to the heap… but then as I was turning back with the empty barrow for the final trip, there he was, stepping out of the barn to say hi! I said hi in passing, left him wandering while I finished the job, then shut the barn before Poppy came out to join us in the yard and went to talk to George again.

He wasn’t in a very co-operative mood, for whatever reason, but he did follow me around a bit (not in the approved I-shall-walk-level-with-your-shoulder manner but more I-shall-slouch-on-your-heels-and-sometimes-dash-forwards-to-make-you-scurry style. At one point I ended up taking refuge on top of a stack of breeze blocks and we discovered this is a delightful spot for him to engulf lots of nuggets while I scratch withers, pat his back and even lean on him a little! We went back there several times, in fact, to do more of it. Eventually, though, I fetched his head collar and towed him (reluctant but obedient) into the barn again. Three complete scoops of nuggets had vanished down his throat by then – which is three times his normal daily feed ration! He’s not fat but even so…

I had a few minutes with the girls, too, and then went to collect a stray hen’s egg from the hedge in the field, which gave Abe the chance for some quality alone-time with me. He was delighted – though less so when I insisted on tugging a few tufts of mucky loose fur off his tum! The sooner his belly is free of mucky lumps, though, the sooner we can get back to putting his saddle on and practising for him accepting me on his back…. which shortly afterwards opens the door to interesting things like going for a walk up the road and back, while the traffic’s still so sparse!

It’s now 28 days since our lockdown began. We’re fine – in fact, apart from the fact that people are dying out there, it’s quite enjoyable, peaceful and productive here.

Yesterday Achilles the ferret was looking a bit skinny and wobbly, so he’s coming in for extra meals and cuddles 4 times a day. He ate about half a pack of RCC (Royal Canin Convalescence) food yesterday but this morning wanted an egg instead, so he got a mini-egg one of the chickens had laid (they just do this sometimes – for no reason I’ve ever come across!) He’s looking perkier this morning and somewhat less wobbly, I think – and having got into the kitchen, he set out to explore the pantry, hall, bathroom and had a try at the lounge and Mum’s bedroom doors into the bargain!

I studied Holly and Ivy carefully this morning. It’s hard to tell through their thick fluffy coats (7/8 Angora) but they may be just a little bit stouter round the midriff…

We have 5 quail chicks in the brooder now, with maybe another egg making small noises but I’m a bit doubtful… we’ll see. 5 out of 12 is about normal for quail eggs – why they have a low fertility rate I don’t know.

Mother Duck is making little squeaky noises when approached, and spends a lot of time sitting in one of the nests, sinking into a sort of flat, feathery puddle, so I’m keeping a close eye on her and counting up duck eggs – she’s going broody and if it holds, I’ll give her a dozen and a half eggs to sit on. In the meantime I’m mucking out a foot-deep layer of scrap hay from the space behind the feed room, which is also where her preferred nest (also the preferred nest for most of the hens!) is, so she can have a little pen in there to sit in. She’s quite determined about it and has even sat on a couple of chickens in the past two days! I’ll try and move the nest intact for her, since she’s started lining it with down, and then pop her in there with food and water, so she’s not bothered for the 35 days of sitting required to hatch Muscovy eggs. I might pop a few duck eggs into the incubator, too, and time them to hatch together so I can add in the incubator ducklings to the duck-hatched ducklings – Mother Duck will raise them far better than I could and if I slip new-hatched ducklings under her in the night, she should be completely convinced they belong by dawn.

I had a wonderful couple of minutes with George this morning – he was lying down in the field near the gate so I popped out and sat with him, feeding him nuggets and talking to him. He stayed down beautifully and was pleased to see me, though he did say he didn’t want to be touched, thank you – so I didn’t touch, I just sat eight inches away from him and chatted a bit. After about 5 minutes my feet were going to sleep so I backed off and stood up – and so did he. He walked me out of the field, had a last nugget over the gate and then we went out separate ways.

In some ways that makes up for yesterday’s efforts from the Big Ginger Job – which has led to us christening a hole in the ground outside the back door ‘George’s Hole’.

The previous owners added a little porch/conservatory to the yard side of the house, but they floored it with fibre panels over a 6-inch-deep excavation they seem to have considered adequate foundations. The porch was removed before I came here but the floor panels are still there… albeit, since George had a wander in the yard yesterday for a groom and some handling, now with a large, hoof-sized hole in one of them. He was fine – just gave a snort and heaved the hoof back out of the hole again in his usual practically bombproof manner – but the flooring will never be the same again, that’s for sure!

There are new lambs in the field across the valley, I can see them through the lounge window and hear their shrill voices answering the deeper baas of the adult ewes. I’m also seeing roe deer most evenings, they’re coming out of the wood at the bottom of the valley and grazing just by it in a patch of rough land between the sheep fields and the green arable crop now sprouting busily right behind the house. The fleepers (oystercatchers) have stopped calling, which means they’re sitting on eggs and keeping quiet, the larks are singing their hearts out from dawn til dusk, the fluff the horses are shedding is vanishing in all directions – I’ve seen starlings, blackbirds, pie wagtails, jackdaws, rooks and a thrush all winging off with beakfuls of horse fluff! – so there will be some very snug hatchlings this year!

If we could just have a couple of days of gentle rain, please, it would be absolutely wonderful… it’s so dry the ground is cracking!

I was thrilled to bits last night with Abe – he’s suddenly decided that turn on the forehand is not only do-able but desirable! He did a dozen in quick succession, up and down the yard, and we’ve successfully attached a voice cue (swivel!) and a hand signal (a hand in the air, circling) to him pivoting his body and three legs around the fourth leg!

I checked this morning and he’s still happily doing them.

For comparison, I checked George, and noticed that he turns on the same cues from me – but his is a pirouette (he keeps a back leg still and pivots around that), not a turn on the forehand. Interesting! I shall have to remember when I get to doing more in-hand lateral work with them, so I don’t get them (and me) confused.

The ferrets are all fine and happy and still looking meaningfully through their wire at any bird that walks past, but the boys have (as I anticipated) settled down together again.

George has unexpectedly taken a big stride forward – he’s stopped dropping everything the moment he sees me and rushing up to demand attention! He still wants attention and if it’s offered he’ll take it, but if I have something in my hands, he now stands back and lets me get on with the job, then asks for attention when I’m done. It’s a massive jump in his trust levels – he now trusts that I, the hay nuggets and the attention will be there, he doesn’t have to rush in and hog the lot before someone else does or we all evaporate. He’s also being much more relaxed about getting scratches instead of nuggets – he’s turning his head and giving me a little nudge as a reminder, rather than pulling at my sleeves or waving his teeth at me, but if there’s more scratches rather than a handful of nuggets, that’s fine too!

I’d hug him – but I don’t think we’ve quite got to that yet!

I did some more jerky and pemmican this morning – I’m slowly rebuilding the long-term food stocks that took such a battering last year when I had neither money nor time to cook here. I spent a few quid on eBay for a couple of silicone flapjack moulds that are making very nice, meal-sized bars of pemmican.

I think probably tomorrow I’ll do a batch of cake fingers in the moulds and maybe some muffins in the silicone muffin tray I’ve had for years – something to keep Mum happy for a snack in the afternoons.

Much to the utter disgust of the geese and the squawking dismay of the hens, I’ve moved the ferrets!

Holly, Ivy and Angus are sharing one run happily, and in the run next door a sort of weasel wrestling match is ongoing – and will probably continue for the rest of the day, complete with screams, dooks, the occasional stink (ferrets let off their anal glands at will when excited) and the odd bouncing ferret.

None of the birds like ferrets – I think they’re all well aware, on both sides of the relationship, that all the weasel family are willing, amble and ready at the drop of a feather to attack any bird they can lay fang to. Hannibal and Lucy keep going in and shouting abuse at some remarkably unworried-looking ferrets who follow them around through their wire. I’ve cleared the straw bale that the chickens had built their absolutely most splendid nest in and put a cage full of male ferrets (Ajax, Achilles, Rambo and Fido) in that corner instead, so they keep wandering in, yelling their heads off about it and then wandering out again.

In the midst of all this the horses have been in and out a few times, but they’ve been absolute saints! I’ve been in and out of the barn all morning, carried a bale of hay round for George in the top barn (Poppy was eating at the nets in the doorway between barns, so he was Stuck and looking bored. He perked up when I turned up with a whole bale of hay, but was very polite about waiting while I opened it before trying to take a mouthful, and didn’t rassle me for nuggets either – merely accepted a nice withers-scritch instead.

I’ll get the third ferret run organised this afternoon and then I’ll have two nursery runs and Angus can move in with the other boys once the girls get a bit further along and definitely bulgeous. Angus gets on fine with Rambo and Fido, though Ajax and Achilles can be little monsters at times.

The next job in the barns after this is to get the hay bars up – these are tough plastic containers that bolt into the walls in a corner and take a stupendous amount of hay for the horses to eat at will. It’ll save me a lot of time filling nets! I can just go round with a bale on a barrow and fill up each of the two hay bars I have, plus the big hay box, and that will keep them all fed and happy for hours. I just need to order in the right kind of bolts – which are high-security expanding ones that lock into the blockwork and won’t come out even if George crashes into the hay bars!

I will need to order those, though, so it’ll probably be next week,

It’s now 101 days since China notified WHO they had a novel and mysterious pneumonia on their hands. How swiftly things have changed across the world!

Today was warm and sunny, if a little breezy. I finished getting the bunny cages sorted and Operation Bunny Switch went ahead smoothly – I carried each rabbit round to their new homes and they seem perfectly happy, if somewhat startled. Luckily the horses stayed out most of the day and I didn’t have to dodge curious noses while manoeuvring the bunnies – I think the rabbits would have been terrified! I’m hearing the occasional stamp as they get settled and learn to live with new sights, sounds and smells, but that’s all.

Having moved the rabbits out of the small dairy, I took the wheelbarrow round and started clearing away the litter left behind. We’re about half way through the ferrets’ pregnancies now so I need to get the nursery cages sorted for Holly and Ivy, so they can move in well in advance of having kits! One cage is now in position and has bedding down, the next will be sorted tomorrow. I need food and water bowls (ordered off Amazon this evening – hopefully they’ll arrive this next week), to organise nest boxes (I have some little pet carriers that will make excellent nest boxes for a ferret looking for a nest) and then a few toys in case of boredom… Holly and Ivy have never been alone before, bar a few minutes here and there, and they may well find it quite strange at first. I will have their runs next to each other so they can still ‘talk’ through the wire, but that’s not the same as playing with each other.

I had to chase Hannibal off the poor ducks with a broom this afternoon – he was upset because Lavender Boy was serenading Patchy Girl in the water tub (the ducks know very well where they can park themselves to be ‘unavailable’ to the drakes!) but apart from chasing Lavender Boy off, Hannibal then tried to climb into the water with Patchy Girl and that’s going far too far! I brushed him off briskly with some sharp comments about sticking to his own species in future.

George is mastering the plaintive look – in fact he produced such a heart-rending ‘I’m so loooonely!’ look through the kitchen window this evening that a cup of tea went on hold because I had to go out to him right then! The rest of the herd were all of forty yards away, of course, but I had just seen them all in the barn a few minutes earlier and Poppy warned George off from coming to say hi, so he clearly felt he’d missed an important Moment in our relationship.

I’ve just had a ‘first’ experience that I never thought I’d get.

I happened to glance out of the window this evening and saw some random hiker had paused outside my gate – holding onto the thing with one bare hand – while reaching over the wall to pet the horses’ noses with the other, equally bare, hand.

For crying out loud, how stupid can you be?? Doesn’t he know there’s a freaking pandemic going on? There’s a stonking big notice on the gate telling people we’re isolating and some braindead moron decides to turn the horses into walking fomite carriers!!

I just wish George had been closest to the wall rather than Dancer and Abe, and that he’d grabbed the idiot’s hand and given it a richly deserved crushing between his teeth!

I’ve wiped their faces down with dettol disinfectant wipes. I’ve rinsed the gate down with dilute bleach. Luckily for the hiker he’s moved on by the time I got to the gate, or he’d have taken an earful of education with him!

I wonder if he’s also the idiot who left 6 apples lined up along the wall there the other day? It cost me a pair of my small stock of nitrile gloves to remove them and bin them – I don’t want the horses congregating by the gate, I don’t want them jostling and tussling over apples and I don’t know said apples aren’t full of something noxious anyway!!

Shifting the fence in the field just moved a very long way up the priority list – keep the horses away from the gate. Anyone who wants to reach them from the rest of the roadway has to climb over the verge, balance on the edge of the insecure stone wall and lean over a barbed wire fence – and I still hope George bites them!

In other news, the coal that was delivered on Tuesday morning was moved into the coal shed this afternoon so my back’s aching a bit – there are 40 25kg sacks to the tonne, and I lugged every one of them in rather than leaving any in the yard this time. It all fits.

Our Asda delivery arrived first thing – everything was disinfected before entering the house; I now have three large shopping bags sitting in the feed room where I can quarantine deliveries for 3 days but obviously that doesn’t apply to frozen or fresh food. I could have left the tins and packets out, of course – they might get slightly duck nibbled but probably nothing much – but since I was doing some of it, I did the lot.

From here on in, we should get a delivery every week, so fingers’ crossed that should be ‘it’ on deliveries – just one, instead of 2, and enough variety to keep the pantry topped up and meals interesting enough. I’m still going to be careful with milk, though – I’m limited to 3 4-pint cartons a time and Mum gets through 4 pints in 2 days, so it’s going to be tight and I shall have to ration my tea somewhat!

Finally, I’ve managed to get the fence up in the horses’ field so they’re pushed well back from the gate, and also so we have a good big plot to grow veg in. Mum and I spent an hour hiking lumps of wood over to the south-facing wall and laid the beginnings of a hugelkultur bed – tomorrow we’ll start pitching all the muck heap over the wall and cover the wood thoroughly, about 2-3 feet deep.

The hens loved it – every time we lifted another piece of wood, they raced in to grab all the little invertebrate snacks they could find.

I’ve had superb sessions with the shedding tool with all the horses – yesterday all of them together in the yard, even George, with the only uneasy moments coming when Poppy threatened him, and today the two mares in the barn, George in and out and around, and Abe as and when we could sneak off together! George is learning a whole new concept – whenever he waves his teeth or stamps his fore hoof at me, I scoot off the other side of a barrier and turn my back on him for 10 seconds, then we go back and start over. It took him a few minutes to work out the rules, but then he got much calmer, even spent some time yawning on my feet (a sign of deep relaxation) and at one point took my right hand very gently in his lips and held it for a few seconds (I had to steel myself a bit not to back off in case he bit, but he was exquisitely careful).

As a result, they’re all much cleaner, though I’m wearing a lot of horsehair again.

What I’m hoping to do is get the hugelkultur bed finished for the end of this month, when I’ll have the money to order plants to go in it – I’m thinking courgettes and bush tomatoes, peas and a couple for the bees – borage and nasturtiums, probably.

Yesterday was so windy part of the barn roof came adrift – a worm-riddled bit of beam from under the hole in Abe’s Bit plummeted to the ground. Poppy, Abe and Dancer came skedaddling past the lounge window heading for the field, where they stayed for the rest of the afternoon, and I went out to investigate. George appeared nonchalantly from the barn, chewing hay placidly, and helped me pick up the debris and turf it into the big dairy shed for the time being. He’s astonishingly laid-back in many ways… fortunately!

They were all in this morning for breakfast and I managed to get this snap of Abe and George together – showing how magnificently huge George is these days! Abe’s only a foot or so beyond George, yet look how tiny the little Arab head is in comparison! George doesn’t look that big by himself, but put him next to Abe, who’s 15.2 (when standing at attention) or have him pad silently up behind you and Loom (a skill he practises diligently) and his sheer bulk impresses. I reckon he’s slightly bum-high again at the moment, so he may have another inch or two to go yet!!

Here’s George again – having breakfast this morning. Watch out for the bit near the end when he lets me know his feed’s a bit too damp for perfection! Those lips are amazing.

Today’s slightly less windy and the hot-bloods have forgiven the roof, it seems, because they’ve spent some hours in enjoying the hay around lunchtime. All four were out through the morning, spread out on the field sunbathing and sleeping peacefully – which gave me time to get 5 barrows of muck out – one from the barn that represents ‘what we left overnight’ and 4 from Abe’s Bit, which is now clean again.

The hens are taking a fiendish pleasure in producing masses of eggs – because I’m out of egg boxes, I darkly suspect! I picked up 15 yesterday and another 15 today – I have bowls of eggs waiting on egg boxes arriving (due Wednesday, though I may have to put out a plea for people to drop off egg boxes before then!)

I’ve managed to get the rest of the second block of beef dripping sorted, so that’s halfway through the job. At this rate I have another 4 day’s work ahead before it’s all safely stashed.

Today I inveigled Mum out to do some gardening. She was somewhat reluctant but I cajoled and eventually she came out, though I had to remind her which end is which when planting garlic and I kept an eagle eye on her planting spuds, in case she ‘tidied’ the eyes off them! Still, the fresh air was undoubtedly beneficial, she actually moved around further than from bedroom to lounge to bathroom and back, so it’s good. I have 3 stone sinks doing duty as garlic beds, with 11 plants-to-be in each, and 10 potato planters, each holding (gasp) a potato. I might be able to cram in more but I’ve always found that if you give a potato space, it happily expands to fill it, so I didn’t.

I boiled up a pan of spuds this morning (while waiting for fat to melt in the pan next along) and found a nice recipe for potato cakes online, so I’m going to have a go at it tonight. 500g of cold mashed spud, 50g of plain flour and a half-teaspoon of salt, all mixed together in a bowl, then add one egg and mix thoroughly, shape into a log, cut slices off the end and fry lightly for 5-10 minutes each side, until golden. I have a couple of diced chicken breasts in the slow cooker, with chopped tomatoes, sweetcorn and mushrooms, to go with the potato cakes.

I also enjoyed a bit of childhood nostalgia – I sat on the doorstep in the sun to peel the spuds, so the peelings haven’t been in the kitchen. I boiled them up in the shed on a camping stove, so I can mix them with a little bran and feed them to the chickens quite legally! I’m eager to get a bed of peas organised asap so I can then look forward to sitting on the doorstep in the sun podding peas, too!