Introducing our correspondent:
My name is Caroline Cash. I live with my husband Andrew, Topsy, a Jack Russell/border terrier cross, and house cat Morse in the village of Beckington, Somerset.
We have a smallholding of just under two acres in the village, about five minutes walk from home. Here we have a couple of horses, hens, cats and a vegetable garden, which keeps us fully occupied in and around work. I originally trained with horses at Catherston Stud and have been lucky enough to work with three Olympic riders and top class horses in eventing, dressage and showing.
For the past 20 years I have worked for Farmkey freezemarking horses and I also teach, train and clip. Alongside this I work part time at a local architects.
In common with many, I try to juggle fitting my animals in with my work and earning enough to be able to keep and enjoy them! Caroline Cash 2011
Caroline writes:
So Winter arrived briefly last week. My day freezemarking was a beautiful one with bright sunshine but absolutely artic temperatures and the perennial problem of how to write legibly. Fingerless gloves while filling in the necessary identification documents just weren’t sufficient for the first three marks of the day and I resorted to writing in thick thermal gloves which certainly left a bit to be desired in terms of clarity!
As so often, the day was full of interest, starting with a visit to Stephanie Dale at Cotswold Carriage Driving who featured in NFU Countryside last year. I have freezemarked several horses for her over the years. She had previously suggested I try sulphur powder mixed to a paste with baby oil on our Clydesdale’s itchy legs and gave me some to try. We’d had years of different treatments for these leg mites which are common in heavier and hairier breeds and Clyde was on three monthly injections just to keep abreast of the problem. The sulphur really worked and is considerably cheaper and more pleasant than the injections apart from slightly yellow legs after application.
I then went to the beautiful historic stable yard of the Berkeley Hunt, near the castle, and from there across the Severn to Wales. The views from the motorway of snow covered mountains in the distance were breath-taking. I finished the day around Cardiff passing the Millennium Stadium and the revamped docks area which had very swish apartments and buildings and some very large (and no doubt expensive) motorboats zooming around the bay.
At home it was back to carrying flasks of hot water and breaking ice on water troughs. One of my most trusted pieces of equipment is the large kitchen sieve we use for fishing “things” out of the trough. It’s ideal for removing all ice once it has been broken up – any left in the water just refreezes and becomes impossible to break. The sieve is just as useful the rest of the year for removing leafs and rescuing drowning insects. A brief change to a colander in the hope that it would be more substantial failed miserably – just not enough holes to let the water out quickly enough.
The snow stayed for one day only but left the camellia in our garden which had been gaily blooming for the previous fortnight, looking rather the worse for wear. That’ll teach it for flowering a month or more early!
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