What could be more comforting than going out for an evening walk on the farm with a faithful friend? Two faithful friends!
It had been raining for most of the day and it was still a bit gloomy – nightfall seemed not far away – but I knew that Malachi and Inca, two of Rosie’s beautiful Black Labradors, would love to come for a walk with me. I wore my Wellingtons over my orange “Malibu” half-mast trousers and put on a pink zip-up jumper (we don’t worry about looks or funny colour schemes when we’re on the farm); it wasn’t cold but it seemed too strange to go out without a jumper during the dark evening of a rainy day. I remembered what my brother-in-law Geoff advised and I took a long walking stick, like a staff, from just inside the front door. I like to walk with a stick, especially ones like staffs – they make me feel like Robin Hood, and they remind me of my dad who made “thumb sticks” from willow, and carved the name of the recipient on each one before giving them to his grandchildren.
Malachi and Inca decided upon our route; I opened the gate where they had stopped and waited for me and we took the muddy path that leads to the sheep fields on the left. With the end of the path in sight, I noticed a public footpath sign with a yellow arrow that directed merry men with staffs and dogs through another gate and across a field, over a muddy cleft with running rainwater (thank goodness I had on my Wellingtons) and on to a well-trodden track that follows the hedge. Ungainly in my big boots and with my staff, I climbed the wooden style that spanned the hedge; the dogs jumped through it and ran off to the top of the neighbouring field made a luminous green by sunshine filtering through a thin cloud. A large brown hare dashed out from the long grass where the dogs had passed through and made it, unseen (except by me), to the opposite hedge.
About half-way up the hillside I found a good handful of mostly button mushrooms, which I put in my jumper pocket (no straw hat this time – and I don’t worry about my jumper smelling of mushrooms when I’m on the farm).
“Come on Malachi and Inca,” I called after a while of watching them running, tails up, through the long grass.
This time they obeyed me and came bounding on down, catching me up and overtaking me; but every so often, perhaps realising I couldn’t walk as fast in my Wellington boots, they would stop and wait for me. And when I stopped to observe the hazelnuts that had dropped in the wind and scrunched like snails under the tread of my boots, or when I took photos of the toadstools, Malachi and Inca stopped and waited too. They seemed to take comfort from my proximity and, every time I caught them up, and my hand stretched towards them casually, it always found one soft ear or a sleek shoulder; or a long tail slid through my fingers.
Just beyond the last gate, the one that opens onto the stable and farmyard, who should be waiting for us but another faithful friend – Hunter the cat (who also answers to “Horsey” on occasions). Hunter lagged behind the other two in order to get in a couple of nice strokes and rubs on the chin, and then we all went inside and I made mushrooms on toast for dinner – my dinner – neither cats nor dogs eat mushrooms, although I can’t deny that all four dogs enjoy a crust of buttery toast.
