Countryfile
| DALES FOLK |  | | | PICK OF THE PAST | | | READERS' LETTERS | | | COUNTRYFILE | | | | CARTOONS | | |
|
|
|
From the farm at Yockenthwaite
The weather hasn't been up to much, but it has certainly been a good year for daffodils; everywhere you go across the Yorkshire Dales and beyond these lovely spring flowers are blooming.
In several places roadside verges on the approaches to towns and villages have been planted and the displays have been a joy to behold.
Travelling back home from Harrogate via Ripon last Saturday the approach to Ripon is like a yellow carpet, there must be thousands and thousands of them and to borrow a few special words from a rather famous poet they really did seem to be "fluttering and dancing in the breeze" and "tossing their heads in sprightly dance."
Our daffodils have done really well and the bulbs that David planted in the back croft in front of the kitchen window a few years ago have, for once, managed to give us a good show of blooms without having all their tops eaten off by foraging hoggs'.
Every year they have just started flowering and then overnight all the yellow tops disappear leaving only stalks - every flower, every petal, every bud, only stalks..my poor daffodils. Complaints fall on deaf ears I am afraid, but I suppose that at this time of year there are more important things to think about.
Like lambing time for instance and, this year, it is proving to be a difficult one. It never is easy, but for some reason this year is proving to be harder than usual; I just wish that things would warm up a bit. They are long days; early mornings and late nights and tiredness generally leads to frayed tempers.
I cringe every time the kitchen door is opened and Stuart and Dan come back in and I know without asking by the way the door is opened if something is wrong. Last weekend every time they came back from the lambing sheep they brought in a lamb with hypothermia to attend to. But that's lambing time.
Sadly, lambing time and Granola production do not mix and I am trying to concentrate on the Granola without being distracted, which I have to say is not easy. We have a very busy month ahead of us and the next couple of weeks will see us stretched to the limit as far as production is concerned. It will be a testing and exciting time and will give us a taste of what is to come as the business grows.
Our holiday for this year seems as though it is going to be a week promoting our Granola cereals at the Royal Highland Show, followed by three days at the Great Yorkshire - and I am actually quite looking forward to it - it sounds a bit sad, but we will be living on the site and the atmosphere and camaraderie on the showground when all the visitors have gone home is great.
In the past, Stuart and I have spent many years promoting sheep at the Royal Highland and it will be good to go back to renew old acquaintances.
3:27pm Thursday 17th April 2008
Print 
Email this 
Comment
What are these links for?
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
More on Digg
More on del.icio.us
More on Furl
More on reddit
More on NowPublic/
More on Yahoo!
