The book launch of Midnight on Lundy onboard the MS Oldenburg (the Lundy supply ship) went very well, despite awful weather. For further information about the book, please see http://www.tortoise-publishing.co.uk/

Here are some photos of the book launch:

(Photo courtesy of the North Devon Journal)
L - R: Peggy Garvey (who bought the real Midnight from Bampton Fair in 1961, and started the Braetor Herd of Lundy ponies with him), Mary Martindale (a former leading light in the Lundy Pony Society), me (author and giant!), Annie Alford (who was selling her wonderful cards of Lundy at the launch - she's spent a lot of time on Lundy and is Felix Gade's granddaughter) and Diana Keast (Diana is Martin Coles Harman's daughter, and her family owned Lundy before it was sold to the National Trust in 1969. The book is dedicated to her because it wouldn't have been written without her help).

Jaqui Pyle and Ann Mold looking at Peggy Garvey's old photos of Midnight

Chris talking to David and Debbie Kennard (http://www.mistthesheepdog.co.uk/ )

Mike (http://www.artisticexmoor.com/) and Val Sherwin (Val founded the Exmoor Pony Centre http://www.moorlandmousietrust.co.uk/ )

A terrible photo of me signing a book for Penny Ogilvie! I put it in because the Ogilvies and David Dyke were very helpful when I was getting ideas for the story. David Dyke (behind Penny) remembers being cornered by Midnight in the ruins of a cottage and being saved by his father,John Dyke. Liz Ogilvie is pictured between me and Penny, with Kate Ogilvie in the separate photo below. Kate and Liz are Penny's daughters. They grew up on Lundy (their father, John - Penny's husband - was the farm manager there for many years) and Kate's memories about growing up on Lundy and then having to go away to boarding school helped me get into Jenny's world when I was writing the book.

Lindy Mitchell and Vanessa Bee (who runs our pony handling courses www.positivehorsemanship.co.uk )

Simon and Tricia Pearce, and Crewman Aiden (all the crew of the Oldenburg were incredibly helpful, and I thoroughly enjoyed having five uniformed men asking me if there was anything they could do to help!)

Mum was the cashier - a job she seemed to relish! In the background Diana Keast is being interviewed by Hilary Bradt www.bradt-travelguides.com

George Rhind (who helps us out at West Ilkerton), Sarah Eveleigh and Luke Mayo (Sarah's boyfriend).

Last weekend Chris and I went to Scotland to see George, our son. He's working as a stalker on the Glen Kinglass estate on the west coast, between Oban and Glen Coe.


George, Lucy (girlfriend) and Moss (dog)


Ardmaddy, George's cottage on the shores of Loch Etive

View from the hill above Ardmaddy (you can just see the roof of the cottage down below)

Loch Etive: looking south (above) and looking north (below)

We stayed with George for two nights, and then went to the central Highlands for a night.
If you are going to central Scotland, we can thoroughly recommend the Atholl Arms Hotel at Blair Atholl www.athollarms.co.uk .

The Glen Shee road between Blairgowrie and Braemar

We spent the last night in a very plush, spivvy hotel on the shores of Loch Lomond. The sauna was much too hot and steamy, the food was a triumph of marketing (give everything a posh French name and pile it in a round mountain in the centre of a large, cold plate, and with any luck nobody will notice it doesn't taste of anything), but the sunrise was worth it:

I hope this hasn't persuaded you to go to Scotland, rather than come to West Ilkerton, for your next holiday!

It's time to say farewell to the swallows and housemartins for another year (and time to hose down the porch!) A family of housemartins took up residence on the electricity meter (see previous blog) and several swallows took over the antlers inside the porch during rough weather.

Cattle and deer grazing together in Rough Field

Last week Peter Ridd came to brand the horns of our Exmoor Horn two-tooth ewes. All registered Exmoor Horn sheep have to be inspected and branded. It looks scary, with lots of smoke, but it is painless to the sheep (honest!).

After we'd finished haymaking and branding, Chris and I went up to Scotland to see George for a few days. Sarah stayed at home to look after the animals. Some photos of Scotland will be in the next instalment.

At last we're getting a summer, but at the wrong time of year. We made about half our total crop of hay and silage in the first week of September. The picture above is of baling hay in Ranscombe Field, with Countisbury Hill in the background.

Barham Field: Chris taking the hay back to the barn

Meanwhile, Sarah was an exhibit at the Dorset Steam Fair!

Summer at West Ilkerton

I've finished Midnight on Lundy at last! It's now with Sally Chapman-Walker, who's doing the book design. Hopefully it will be ready for the printers in early September. It's got to be printed by 11th October, because I've hired the MS Oldenburg for a book launch (hopefully literary, not literal) in Ilfracombe Harbour. So publication day is 11th October. The books will cost £8.50 each, and can be ordered in advance so they're posted on Monday 12th. Please see http://www.tortoise-publishing.co.uk/ for further details.

Luke's bear, outside the house at West Ilkerton

Luke (Sarah's boyfriend) was 21 yesterday. He had a really good Wild West party last weekend. I wonder whether people living in the Wild West ever have Frightfully English parties, where they sip Pimms, eat cucumber sandwiches and play croquet. I do hope so.

As this is really a farm news site, I'd better start talking about the farm now. I can't believe it was April when I wrote the last news page. Many apologies for leaving it so long, but I had to get the book finished. We had one or two other things on our minds, too:

We got planning permission for the Alvesta 20kW wind turbine, but we've decided to wait until there are actual output figures from the ones which have been installed before we go ahead. If the Alvesta turbines don't deliver their estimated outputs we may go back to the drawing board and apply for a Proven turbine. We definitely want to get something, but we don't want to end up with an expensive mistake.
In May, our Land Rover was stolen and used for robberies in the area (where trailers and quad bikes were taken) until, a week later, it was involved in a police chase through the fields at Woolhanger, and was written off. Unbelievably, despite police cars, a helicopter and tracker dogs, the thieves escaped. Thank goodness, the NFU gave us a very fair payment for the poor old Land Rover in the end, and we now have a dark green one of roughly the same age (which is locked at all times). It's so sad that crime like this has reached Exmoor - but don't let that put you off coming on holiday here!

On the subject of vehicles, we have just sold the lorry because it was too expensive to keep on the road, with all the HGV regulations. It was like selling an old friend, as we've had it for twelve years. Beetle always seems to get in photos, doesn't he?

Shearing was in July. Here are some photos of Ian South, Sam Smyth and Sarah E:

Sam teaching Sarah how to shear a sheep - and the result!

Our Exmoor pony breeding programme has been a bit of a disaster this year. We had four colt foals and one filly foal. Loving Cup's colt foal (pictured here) was a friendly little chap, but he was never very strong. The terrible weather in July proved too much for him, and he died from pneumonia. A couple of weeks later, Chris was moving the ponies, and Trifle's filly foal came reeling out of the herd - as if she were drunk - and dropped down dead. She had seemed fit and healthy, so we can only assume she was kicked or squashed in some way. We now just have three colt foals. However, I have arranged to buy some more colt foals from Woolhanger for the pony-handling course. After handling, all the colt foals will be gelded and put out on Ilkerton Ridge as ecological grazers for a Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) agreement. The foals from last year (Kirbie, Rocky, Sandy and Pixie) are already on Ilkerton Ridge, along with two fillies from the Moorland Mousie Trust, a gelding called Clover and an old gelding called Steady Eddie.

This year, a pair of house martins decided to build their nest on top of the electricity meter in our porch. Daddy house martin took up residence on the antlers above the front door. They've made a terrible mess, but it's been fascinating watching the chicks grow.

While on the subject of wildlife, Chris took a picture of this badger on the field we call Opposite (because it's opposite the house)

Our new bull, Wellshead Duke, has settled in well, and (luckily) appears to be quite a lady's man. Here he is chatting up his latest love a few weeks ago:

July was a wash-out, and so we're late with the hay harvest again. In fact, it looks as if we'll have to make silage out of all the hay fields now. Last week there was a slight weather window, and we managed to make some good haylage in Cow Field and Marley Combe.

Chris immediately started ploughing Cow Field, before the grass grew back. The field suffered very badly when we were organic, and became over-run with hay rattle. This is a parasitic plant which takes over at an alarming rate - a problem which only ploughing and re-seeding with vigorous grasses can solve. Chris ploughed most of the field, but Sarah did some of it. Anne supervised on her Tramper:

Enjoying some summer sunshine

Our most important piece of news is that, after nearly a year, we have been granted planning permission to install a 20Kw vertical axis wind turbine at West Ilkerton. This is very exciting and also rather daunting because there's now a lot of work to do in preparation. Hopefully by August we will be generating most of the power we use on the farm (as long as the wind blows). It's our ambition to lie in bed during bouts of bad weather and think of all the money we're saving!
In case anyone is worried that West Ilkerton will be blighted by a noisy, monstrous great turbine, the whole structure will be just over 12m high, and it will be almost silent. See http://www.alvestaenergy.com/ to get an idea of what it will look like.
On the subject of electricity, some regular visitors may remember that a few years ago the Sycamore trees at the front of the house were pollarded because their branches were a danger to the power lines and the house. Well, they grew back so fast that they were a danger again, so Sarah's boyfriend, Luke, (who's a tree surgeon) trimmed them down again for us. More like a coppice than a pollard this time. It's just as well he did, because two of them were completely rotten inside and full of foul-smelling liquid which sprayed everywhere - and we'd just cleaned all the windows!

Lambing didn't go as expected. For a start, Sarah was supposed to be No 1 Shepherd this year (sadly Bernie, the original No 1 Shepherd, had to retire) but within a few days she was very ill with a chest infection. The chest infection didn't respond to antibiotics because it was caused by a virus, which has now given her swollen glands and a high temperature. She's in bed, and under doctor's orders to stay there for at least a week. You just can't get reliable staff nowadays....

In the lambing shed

So, yet again, Chris did the bulk of the work (3am to 7 pm) and I did from 8 pm until 1 or 2 am. We were helped by our faithful band of guests: Sophie Perks and friends and Alex & Charlie Howlett. Also, a vet student called Jake came for a week to gain some practical experience with sheep. I think he's decided to specialise in dogs & cats!

The poor sheep had lost a lot of condition in the snow during February, and the first lambs to be born were underweight. An additional problem was several ewes had little or no milk. The result has been more tame lambs than usual. Once all our willing bottle-feeders (Sophie, Alex and Charlie) had left, Chris and I had a breakfast 'Board Meeting' to discuss the urgent issue of who was going to feed 11 lambs six times a day with a bottle. By lunchtime we had bought and installed a Shepherdess lamb feeder www.scanutec.com . This is an ingeneous fake Mummy, which is essentially a bucket full of hot water with another bucket full of milk inside and two teats on one side. The whole thing is heated by a device which switches itself on and off, giving hot flushes for added authenticity. The lambs love it, as they can help themselves whenever they want. They are growing rapidly, and don't seem to get the pot bellies of bottle-fed lambs.

The weather for the past month has been pretty good. In fact (dare I say it?) we need rain. It's such a help to get warm, dry weather at this time of year because there are so many baby animals outside. Yesterday was beautifully warm and sunny, so I took some photos:

Calves enjoying the sunshine

Our new bull, Wellshead Duke

Exmoor Horn ewe and lamb

Our first foal (Ivy's foal) As you can see, he's a colt.

Ivy, Claret and Christmas Pudding have foaled so far. They all have colt foals. Still, an alive colt foal is better than no foal at all.

A few days after birth, Claret's foal was very poorly and couldn't get up. We weren't sure what was wrong, but thought he could have a navel infection. Chris gave him an injection of 'Pen and Strep', and within 12 hours he was running behind his mum again. In fact, he was so lively we couldn't catch him to complete the three-day course of injections!

Claret with her colt foal the day after he was injected (still looking ill, but standing, suckling and impossible to catch). He now appears to have made a complete recovery.

Some RSPB volunteers are doing a bird survey of the farm, which should prove very interesting. Mike Howlett, who stayed in the cottage for a week during lambing, took these photos of a buzzard and a dipper at West Ilkerton:

Chris went out counting deer and took these photos of West Ilkerton from the unusual vantage point of Butter Hill:

Make a line up * from the asterisk, and West Ilkerton is the grey blob just below the cloud shadow on the far hill.

See?!

http://www.westilkerton.co.uk/

Well, It turns out that the snow we had at the beginning of the week was only a dress-rehearsal. We woke up this morning to this:

First we fed and watered all the animals in the farmyard (including a little heifer calf which our cow, Livelong, had at midnight last night), and then we put the horses out in our safest fields to stretch their legs:

Winaway knee-deep in snow

By midday the snow stopped, thank goodness, so Chris wrapped some lengths of chain round the tractor tyres and braved the hill to Cow Field to get some silage:

One lump or two?

After lunch we went over to the other side of the farm to find the sheep and bring them back to the safety of our sheltered valley field, away from the northerly wind. The snow was already drifting dangerously. One ewe had died, and two others were suffering from cold and exhaustion, but we managed to get the flock to follow the tractor tracks slowly over the fields and down the lane to The Cleve. If panicked, the sheep jumped out of the tracks and became stuck in the snow. We had to go very gently, and the dogs stayed at home. The silage bale on the front of the tractor acted as the carrot and I was a well-padded stick, complete with cuddly Winnie The Pooh hat. Mist The Sheepdog would have laughed, but the main thing is it worked. The flock is now in a sheltered field, with plenty to eat.

The sheep finally made it to the Cleve, just before dark.

The only animals which seem to be perfectly happy in this weather are the Exmoor ponies.

Whilst skidding around defrosting drinking troughs and feeding hungry animals, Chris and I stocked up on potential Christmas card photos. Please vote for your favourites by leaving a comment at the end of this blog (guess where they are on the farm, too):

If you didn't know cows could be smug, you do now!

Happy New Year Everyone! We're getting a proper winter for a change, so let's hope it'll be followed by a proper summer, with plenty of sun by day and the odd refreshing shower by night.
I'll start with some sad news: Basil the Shire had to be put down before Christmas because his heart was giving up and he was filling up with fluid. He was put down at home, munching on his favourite food.

Dear Old Basil
Now for the good news. We had a great Christmas, and 18 people (four generations of the Eveleigh family) sat down in the dining room for Christmas lunch.

Sarah on Bella and Chris on Tempo at the Boxing Day meet

Calving started on 2nd January, with three calves in one day! Two bull calves and one heifer. Mothers and babies are fine. It's always a thrill to see new life appear as if by magic.

On Tuesday David Kennard came to West Ilkerton with his sheepdogs, Mist and Gail, to film a scene for his latest Mist DVD with our singing Exmoor ponies! You'll have to watch Channel 5 at Easter to hear the full story. See www.mistthesheepdog.co.uk for further details. If you haven't seen the Mist stories on Channel 5, you've missed a real treat. The DVD is one of the most watched in our self-catering cottage.



David Kennard filming at West Ilkerton