Introducing our correspondent - Carol Ogborn
Hello. Since I’m new to the Countryside blog I thought a few lines of introduction might not go amiss. I live in the New Forest and have done so for many years. I certainly won’t see twenty one again but I cannot do anything but live with that. I still work full-time, am a grandmother of three with another on the way and fairly live and breathe animals of all sorts.
I used to farm on a small scale, sheep and cattle, and pigs in the early days, but pressure of only having rented land finally got the better of me. I still have a few chickens and an odd ewe. Strangely, I miss it still, despite the winter weather, the lifting of heavy machinery at haymaking time and the daily rounds of feeding and caring.
I have a Friesian horse who is known as ‘Barbie’ for all the obvious reasons, although that isn’t her proper name. She is a dear girl, if a little ditzy at times, and I was very lucky to have found her. I also have a largish mountain dog and have just acquired a puppy of the same breed, who will be known as Yogi and Boo. I show the dogs for fun and we seem to have done quite well. I like gardening, growing my own herbs for cooking and medicines, reading and all sorts of crafts, such as spinning, weaving and knitting. I occasionally carve or turn wood too!
I suspect any other information about me and mine will turn up over the course of the coming months.
Carol writes
A month ago I thought the world had gone mad, now I know it’s so. The week before Christmas I drove past a local doctor’s where they have a small lawn with narrow flower beds around it. The beds were packed with daffodils in full and glorious flower. Then just two days after Christmas I saw two ornamental cherry trees bursting into delicate pink bloom and some red patio roses still flowering. There is an abundance of gorse in bloom and the grass is still growing, with the most unseasonal temperatures. How mad is that!
Boxing Day weather was much kinder this year than last and one of our local high points took place. This is the New Forest point-to-point which is an old traditional set of races, fiercely contested and much enjoyed by a good crowd of spectators.
The Open race is three miles across the Forest from a start that is only revealed just prior to the race, to a designated finish, taking your own line in between. Woe betide the rider who isn’t familiar with ditches, bogs and wrong short cuts. It is a fun, yet serious outing and shows just how versatile and hardy, not to mention quick, the New Forest pony is. There are children’s races over a shorter distance, Veterans, and heavyweights. The NF pony will carry a most surprising amount of weight over sometimes very inhospitable terrain, especially after lots of rain. Seeing the riders approach the finish line at flat out gallop is always exciting and it is often quite close, with riders and ponies so mud splattered it is difficult to tell who is who.
My personal world is also quite topsy turvy at the moment, with my partner in hospital again waiting for scans to be done. We will know more in the next few days, meanwhile I now have to fit in hospital visiting and the horses finally came in on Christmas Eve, so mucking out has to be done before work. I don’t think I can remember a year when it was so late before stabling the horses and this is yet another sign of the slightly mad weather. Barbie doesn’t even have night pyjamas as it is still too warm for her! Riding is a thing of memory with all that has been going on, including my mother having a heart attack two days before Christmas.
Hopefully the New Year will put everything to rights.
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