Sotby Hall Farm, Stir-Up Sunday, 20 November 2022

 

Dear Distant Kin or Absent Friend,

 

Gosh! It's been quite a while, I know, since I've felt able to load up the Google Clown Speak-To-Taste soft where and oh bother it... the Kegel clout's peach too test... no, dammit... the cook aloud's beach two taxed... Justin I've had it with this bloody thing! Come over here and turn it off and just type what I say, will you?

That's better. I thought speech to text conversion was going to make life so easy, and I could just get this family newsletter done whilst my hands are in the mixing bowl stirring the Christmas pudding, without anyone else's help - but clearly I was wrong. 

 

Well, anyway - the past few years have been one thing after another, haven't they? First Pestilence, then War, and now the prospect of Famine and Death... the coming of Covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine cheered old Mr Benniworth up no end, as his dire portents and Cassandra-like prognostications year after year have finally come to something, it appears. For the first time I can remember since I was a Brownie, his leathery face cracked into what could almost have been a smile. That last time was when Presidents Kennedy and Khruschev nearly started World War Three and he thought the Day Of Judgement was at hand...

Where to start with all our news? With Pestilence, I suppose. You'd have thought a rural area like ours would be relatively unaffected by the Covid outbreak, but no. The Market Rasen and Horncastle Farmers' Market organisers - that's East Lindsey District Council, to you - reduced the number of stalls by half for social distancing and allotted them to traders by picking names out of a hat. Even so, we did extremely well with the beer deliveries when the pubs were closed - though some, sadly, have now closed for good. Mr. Sunak's 'eat out to help out' did nothing for the few we had left that were not virtually restaurants with a license to serve beer to diners. But it's an ill wind as they say, and the family now runs three houses tied to our brewery - The Hanged Man in Wragby, the Tom Brammer in Horncastle - the one that used to be a Wetherspoon's - and The Barking Frog in Market Rasen, that used to be Spilsby's, that used to be The Prince Albert (formerly known colloquially as The Cock Ring). Justin, delete that. You can always see a trail of ruin when a pub keeps changing its name, decor and clientele. We decided to return this one to its original name, first recorded in 1650: The Blasphemer Stricken By Lightning. You've got to admit it's not meretriciously trendy. But of course we all caught the Covid. I just hope that the Chinese have tightened up their farmers' markets since, so there'll be no more of this "A bunch of pak choi, a pound of noodles and a bat, please". 

 

Then came War - and I don't need to tell you which one. As an Anglo-Ukrainian family, it came as a shock, but not really a surprise. Julia - or Yulya as she now prefers to be known - resigned her commission with the French Foreign Legion and is out there somewhere with some old chums formerly of the Special Air Services Regiment (but you didn't hear that from me). In March Roger the Range Rover and Charles - who is now out on parole - took the old Dennis Dart bus, and they drove all the way to Kyiv and came back with all our cousins who aren't with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. All fifteen of them back here. I'll introduce them one by one, as I go on. Cousin Oleg's eyes lit up when he saw the distillery old Uncle Igor had set up in the old carriage block and which none of us had the heart to clear out. This is just as well as he's got it all up and running and we're producing sugar beet horilko again. I haven't told you that. Once you're read this newsletter, tear it into pieces and swallow it. Justin, are you sure you're typing what I'm saying?

It's good to have all the extra help on the farm from our Ukarinian cousins now Brexit has made it so difficult to get our seasonal workers over the way we used to. And this year, it's been wonderful to see the County Agricultural Show back again for the first time in three years. The Bain Valley Mink Hounds came - Oscar is now Hunt Master - and when some misinformed visitor to the Show said to her companion, passing by in Oscar's hearing, that the hounds were trained, half-starved killers that would eat each other if it weren't for the whippers-in - one of the twins opened the door to the hounds' compound while the other twin dropped a venison burger in her shopping-bag - and it was ages before she stopped screaming. It wasn't the dogs crowding her apparently, it was the discovery of the venison burger that gave her fits. It turned out she was a vegan. Well, you see them at these events, don't you - wandering around, looking confused as if they are wondering what on earth they are doing there. I wonder, too. An agricultural show isn't a petting zoo or a Festival Of Mind, Body, And Spirit.

And what a year for weather! First we had a problem with weeks of drought, then with the voles that started eating the potatoes for the moisture, then we irrigated the spuds  with a fire hose and water pumped out of the moat (which made the capybaras rather unhappy, though we did find an old cannon from the Civil War in the mud at the bottom), and then we had a plague of slugs - so we put out loads of beer traps around the field edges. We caught more voles that way than from snap-trapping, and I can only assume they were after the beer, got drunk and fell in, like the slugs, and drowned. It's nice to think that they died happy. I suppose beer-marinated slug is quite a treat, if you're a vole.

 

That brings us onto Famine - the massive increase in fuel costs has given Roger a brainwave: those Indian Kadai fire bowls have become popular garden features since the pandemic started, as people can cook and socialise outdoors with minimal risk of infection. They'll be used a lot more when people can't afford to use their oil fired Agas or gas cookers or electric hobs any more, so the demand for barbecue charcoal will rise to new heights, too. This, says Roger, is where we get really authentically Indian - offering real artisanal cow dung briquettes, guaranteed organic (since fertiliser has gone up 300% this past year and we can't afford to use it any more), and advertised as 'Ayurvegan' (TM). It'll be a win-win for us, and the first time dairy farming will have made us any money in more than two decades.

Oh, and speaking of poo, our septic tank emptier Mr Wragby arrived last week with a legend painted on the back of his tanker: 'THIS TANKER IS FULL OF GOVERNMENT PROMISES'. When you think about it, full of sh*t or empty air, it's always going to be true.

Death - As with the passing of poor old Uncle Igor (though that came as a relief to some), our late Queen's departure, though expected, still came as a shock, showing us in no uncertain terms that we are living at the end of an era. The old wartime generation is fast disappearing... old Nanny Sausthorpe, still in her nursing home at Ingoldmells and 98, has refused to come out from under her bed, since the snails haven't either, and you'll no doubt recall that the height they achieve as they crawl up the walls of her room seem to enable her to foretell with precise accuracy the condition of the world's financial markets. I think the position of Nanny and the snails says it all for the foreseeable future, really. As Mr Benniworth seemed almost pleased to tell me, reciting from Old Mother Martin's Boke Of Prophecie:

                        "Threescore yeares and ten schal reign
                        A quene that is of all Bretayne,
                        Whereafter cometh sorwe and peyne,
                        And none schal happy be ageyne."

Justin you bastard, you just made that up. Switch that voice to text thingy on again - the goo gulls pitch toot dexter, and give me the microfoam. Now get outer fear.

In other nudes, Tam's in is now a director of the Macs planking stitch hoot in tubing hen, ketch away hoe is still painting and living in Aunt Lavinia's care as Artist in Residents at the California in stitch hoot of the Arts, will helm meaner came fifth in the straw day be Yankee and third in the Ronde van floundering. We're all praying that Humphrey's extra dish on order doesn't come through, and that Uncle Juan gets his card in Al's hat after all.

 

Justin, why is this looking like a James Joyce novel? What have you done? Drat the boy - he's gone out. Look, I haven't time to do this all again, so merry Christmas and a happy New Year from all of us, to all of you. And SLAVA UKRAINI! HEROYAM SLAVA!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anastasia Kirov-Renshaw.