“What is this world if full of care,
We have not time to stand and stare?”

Our imagination is a blessing as boundless as it is free.

It has taken this particularly challenging year to be reminded of the wisdoms and wellness to be gained by spending time communing with the animals and plants that share our space, as I did so much as a child. 

Over the coming months I look forward to introducing the characters and stories they share with me.

As I do, I hope we will come to offer somewhere more than a sustainable and holistic hospitality, rather an immersion into a new reality for children and adults alike. 

Matt
November 13 2024

My childhood lesson

I believed I could eye talk with animals when I was six and recount my written memory of this from many years ago, below.

It has to be said I was an unusual child. Very much a loner. I made friends with animals, lived in the weather of the river meadows and had little interest in other kids. My love and curiosity of all wild creatures and the farm animals gave me a patience I think few children possessed. I thought nothing of my ability to talk to animals. I discovered it with Dad’s cattle, long before I met dear old Scruffy [a fox I befriended]

The bullocks were always great listeners. They would spend their summers grazing the soft meadow grasses next to Coombe Hill Canal, a derelict haven for umpteen broods of Mallard and loud mouthed summer warblers.

I would often cross the wooden trunk bridge and skip down there to explore and play. This was my playground! I would lie in the grass blinking in the sun dead still until eventually the herd loafed over intrigued to see a human lying down. Still careful not to move, they would crowd round and take it in turns to lick me with their hard coarse tongues all over, their friendly round eyes staring through the buttercups.

I would then make the slightest move and backwards they would bound and I would laugh. Then we would play the game all over. I never felt threatened by these creatures, I never felt threatened by any animals actually. Perhaps that is unusual too.

In Big Cobney (where the Curlews nest) there was one Steer, a slightly fatter, squatter animal to the others – a Hereford Freisan cross, with such dull sad eyes. He would bound up with the others, and want to lick my legs but I could not but help notice his eyes. From as little as I remember being, I talked to animals (what child doesn’t?) and I asked him what was wrong. I called him Freddie.

I stared wide eyed into his because it was his eyes that had drawn my childish curiosity. Then it happened and I will never forget the moment. Imagine my excitement to hear Him talk back through our eye gaze. The strange thing is, afterwards I thought it completely natural and simply another box ticked in my never ending adventure of childhood. I was only six years old.

Freddie told me how he missed his heifer, his love, who was grazing across Cobney brook on Chandler’s land. It turned out that in buying 15 young stock off old Sidney, my Father had split this love pair up. Freddie sadly told me, through our eye speak, that he and Mary could no longer nose, play and cavort. He forlornly explained they now spent hours each day stood on opposite sides of Pike Brook staring longingly and hopelessly at each other.

Well, this is where my gift became my secret and my poor Father’s frustration! I told Freddie this was to be our secret and to follow me. I proceeded to unravel the rusted chain holding tight an old wooden gate on a brambled long unused hump backed brick brook bridge. His eyes – I and remember this too – changed the moment he jumped that hump. I closed the gate so no one would know and I felt so happy for Freddie and Mary. By the time I had heaved the gate open, Mary was there waiting for Him and I could not resist to try my eye speak again. It worked! She said – and I remember to this day – she said: ‘You are the best Person in my world.’

Well, praise a six year old is likely to remember! She was the second animal ever to speak to me.

And that  is how it began! (And for that matter, in the short term, an awful lot of puzzled telephone calls between my Father and Sidney and ensuing cattle herding!)

Our Team (in progress)

Henrietta

“A dinosaur relic. A phobia over my claws. I’ve heard it all. But I give. I try to give an egg a day. That’s some 300 eggs a year. For that the most I ask is to do is a little clawing to slip a few earthworms.

Yes, I get a lil’ noisy at times – pushing out an egg ain’t easy. I like to moan and to gossip but what girl doesn’t?

I am not ‘clever’ like you are. But how clever are you?

I sleep well at night. I have no issues with MY mental health. I roam and yes – I scavenge – but isn’t that a good thing to do? One person’s waste is another’s reward and I am proud to spend my days scavenging. I have done it for thousands of years but hey! Now it is cool for humans too? I wonder why that is….

And you call me a dinosaur?!

I am lucky to  be a hen. My men are either cocks or lost to being genetically engineered meat engines. I no longer fancy them, though apparently you do.

When you meet me, all I ask is you call me Henrietta (or ‘Hen’ for short). I am no spring chicken, just as you are no lump of meat. Keep your dogs away, too.

Charlie the Cuckoo

Fatten up the caterpillars. Next week I fly from the Congo for the Willow Hill nests n nosh!

“I will probably turn up again around the 15th April but you will hear me… and Spring don’t start ‘til I turn up – does it? So WAIT! [chuckle]

“I will stop off for a few weeks along the Ivory Coast then fly over the Sahara. I’ll probably drop into Algeria for a bite to eat and catch up with some fellow travellers before flying for a sojourn in Spain for as long as I fancy before my final leg up the French Atlantic coast, and over to my little orchard on a hill, Just when them sweet nested couples will be laying their eggs. Oh how merry! [sneer].

I don’t have many friends over there but  who needs them? I might be pigeon ugly but I ain’t no pigeon brain.

Those farm cats like me, though. Chips & Purry. Never forget watching the time my daughter hatched, pushed out the dimwit dunnock’s little babies and whoops! The cats ate them. Chuck is doing well. She is flying over too.”

“Get them nettles growing my caterpillars.

Cuckoo!”

Craig

“I don’t just play ball with kids. This place is surrounded by foxes. Here i am on constant patrol and alert.

Just the word FOX kicks in my adrenalin.

I make lots of noise and chase (at least for as long as they choose to run)

My boss jokes I look like one – even though I don’t. They are bigger, uglier, fiercer, scarier.

I only do it for the hens. No I don’t – I cannot stand scavengers, especially the precocious and spoiled Henrietta.

I do it for the extra supper ;-)”