Horses, and Fishes, and Pigs, Oh My!

For me, there’s nothing like settling into a routine on a farm to let the days ease by, especially if it involves being anywhere near horses, tack, and barns. I can spend hours at a stable and never feel the time pass.

Torlundy Farm is an amazing place. It covers over five hundred acres of fields, woods, brooks, and hills. It is practically at the base of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Britain, over 4,400 feet. I didn’t see its top for three days because of cloud cover.

Legend has it, according to Charlie, that if the one particular spot of snow on the side of Ben Nevis ever melts, it will signal the end of the world. I check each day to make sure the snow is still there, especially as hotter days burn the clouds off toward the end of the week. I proposed to Charlie that maybe someone has painted the white spot on the side of the mountain so people don’t lose faith, like in that O. Henry story about the man who paints a leaf on an ivy vine to prevent a sick woman from dying when the last leaf falls. Charlie just rolled his eyes at me and grinned.

Ben Nevis and its two companion mountains, Carn Mor Dearg and Aonach Mor, are visible over the front garden from the window of my large private bedroom. The evenings are deep-blue sky. In the middle of one night, I woke up to moonlight flooding across my bed. There’s no sight like a full moon over Ben Nevis. I’m sad that Perry’s camera couldn’t capture it.

My first few days here were spent under Siobhan’s instruction about the animal feeding and horse routines, coupled with stall and tack cleaning, general farm chores, helping Chris with some computer problems, and grokking the reservation process for the chalets. I’m glad that Charlie has done that part before.

Siobhan took me on several horseback rides over hills and through shady glades on trails that are in almost constant view of Ben Nevis. We were checking on the horses or sheep, or taking a chalet guest for a ride. I haven’t ridden much for about two years, and have ridden the same horse for seven, and I felt really out of shape and clumsy riding the different horses from Torlundy. Trail riding takes a different kind of confidence in the horse and myself than arena riding, and I could tell it’s not a confidence I’ve cultivated yet.

Mealtimes for the first two or three days united the entire family around the kitchen table over home-cooked food. Breakfasts had farm-fresh eggs (when we could get to them before the dogs did) and lunches and dinners had home-grown salad greens and organic foods bought from a tightly-stocked local grocery store outside of Fort William.

Siobhan and the girls are all wonderful chefs, and over the week I enjoyed a smorgasbord of from-scratch cheese soufflés, stew, and Thai food in between my favorite piece-together lunches of cheeses, meats, bread, and salads. I kept expecting (and hoping for) leftovers, but everything goes into the slop bucket for Miss Nicolette, including her daily dose of caffeine in the form of used coffee grounds and tea bags.

Daisy and Gemma left for their respective points east and south in Glasgow and London Tuesday, and Siobhan and Chris headed for London on Wednesday night. In their absence, Charlie and I fell into an easy routine of animal and yard chores. I took care of the animals and he took care of the yard work and “strimming” (weed-whacking using a string trimmer, or “strimmer”), and we both managed the phones for the guest house reservations.

Charlie is great fun to be around—27, delightfully energetic and artistic (ask him about his lawn sculpting with a strimmer), with a brilliant mind for details, history, song, humor, and theatre. He has a willing heart and willing hands, and is thin as a strimmer himself.

He’d spend all morning in the gardens near the house with the strimmer, then disappear for hours on the tractor to mow acres of fields somewhere in the Scottish outback that’s the Carver property. I usually took care of the cooking or lunch prep, and Charlie was tops in adulation over the meals.

Thursday brought some excitement with helicopters all over Aonach Mor next to Ben Nevis. A gondola on the lift that goes to a restaurant halfway up the mountain had somehow collided with another one and fallen. It felt weird to watch the rescue activity from the driveway of Torlundy. Radio reports were sketchy. We found out later that no one was killed, although several people were flown to hospitals.

Charlie drove every day to Fort William to buy three to four local newspapers for their crossword puzzles. We’d spend lunch or dinner grappling with one puzzle, getting stuck, and moving to another. I cleaned the huge red-enamel gas stovetop one night with almost no effort because we were laughing so hard over mystifying crossword clues and Charlie’s horrible spelling, which often produced far more creative answers than the puzzle writers had anticipated.

Working with Eric and Celene this week was both challenging and satisfying. Eric, pictured here, is an Exmoor pony who’s skittish about things coming at him from both sides, can be hard (as in last) to catch, moves away from anything near his feet and legs, and jerks away if someone reaches for the top of his head. I wanted to see if I could help him be more comfortable and confident in the world. Celene is a young-adult horse, and Siobhan had asked if I could help her be less head-shy with haltering and bridling.

I worked with both Eric and Celene using TTouches and techniques that I learned at the TTEAM training in Farmborough (sheesh, was that only a month ago?). I enlisted two young guests from the chalets—Tanya and Shaunie—to help me guide the horses through a labyrinth and other ground exercises a couple of times a day.

Tanya and Shaunie were both very good at learning the TTouches, and were a tremendous help getting Eric used to more skin contact. That’s them grooming Chris’ horse, Great Glen, in the barn.

Even Nicolette loved the TTouch. I’d lean over the fence of her sty and she’d move around on her wooden feeding platform to present first her butt, then her head, then turn around at my request so I can do her other side. Her hair is wiry and her skin is wrinkly, but softer and warmer than I expected. And those ears are so big I could put my whole palm on them for stroking. She liked having her jowls TTouched, too. I’ve never gotten this chummy with a pig before; I liked the opportunity as much as Nicolette seemed to like the TTouch.

After our last TTEAM session on Friday, Tanya and Shaunie surprised me by coming back from the chalets with a gift of flowers, homemade cupcakes, and a lovely thank-you note for letting them help with the horses. They were indeed a great help to me, for Celene and Eric were both showing remarkable progress since we started with them on Thursday. By Saturday, I was able to halter Celene without her turning away, and Eric was not only coming in ahead of the rest of the horses, but was also OK with things all around his sides, and open to having his legs and feet touched without moving away.

Siobhan arrived home in the morning on Saturday, and I helped Liz, their chalet housekeeper, with some of the cleaning to get the chalets ready for the new guests.

Saturday afternoon lazed by as a picnic with Siobhan and Charlie at River Lochy, a primary salmon run whose banks demark a border of the Carver property. Siobhan explained that many rivers in Scotland have strict fishing rights and regulations. This one is fishable for trout, and only for fly fishing.

Siobhan took us to the river in her truck, driving straight through several seat-jouncing sheep fields and parking under a tree next to a barbed wire fence. We covered the fence with cushions, handed over picnic basket, wine, blankets, and other goodies, and climbed down through bracken to reach a sandy, half-shaded beach.

The day was hot. The water was cold. I swam across the river (another first for me, like the loch swim at Jura). We slathered melting Flora margarine over bread and crackers, peeled off slices of warm salami and cheese, ate olives and salad greens, nestled wine glasses in the sand to hold them up, and talked and laughed and napped in the sunshine.

On the way back, Siobhan gave us a driving/historical tour of the Fort William area on both sides of the river, including many views along the Caledonian Canal that runs from Fort William to Inverness. Neptune’s Staircase is here—eight locks to navigate through the elevation change of the canal. Sometime I’d like to grab a friend and rent a canal boat to travel part of the UK this way.



I had been invited all week by Ian, Torlundy’s almost-resident ponds-keeper, to drop in for a free fly fishing lesson, and I finally took the time out on Saturday to do it. Besides teaching fly fishing, Ian manages the catch records, trout stocking, and fishing fees for the three ponds on the property. That’s him driving the ATV with a guest who caught two large trout in the upper lake.

Now let me begin by saying that my only other foray into fishing was almost twenty years ago, with Richard on the Snohomish river in Washington. We had brand-new gear, freshly minted fishing licenses, and no idea what we were doing. We somehow found our way to a part of the river where no one else was fishing, and where the water ran rapidly over some rocks. I snagged a 4-inch fish, which was so under the size limit that the thought of having it for dinner gave a whole new meaning to “small fry.”

The only other catch of our day was also mine, and it put up a bit of a fight against the current and over the stones. I was already salivating for supper when my prize cleared the water—a sodden, black leather work glove. Richard and I guffawed, and he unhooked it and flung it away behind us. When it landed in the bushes, the glove was palm up, with only its middle finger extended to give us the bird. Years later, we sold all that brand-new fishing gear in a garage sale.

With this redoubtable record, I wasn’t particularly hopeful about fly fishing, but decided it was worth trying as something new. I arrived at the pond about an hour before sunset, and the water was quiet and still. Even the midges weren’t biting. Ian was happy to put a pole in my hand and explain the nuances of the toss and the fly and how the fish respond to it in the water.

Ian is a good teacher. Because I was a beginner, he had me use repeated tosses to get the fly way out into the water, instead of trying for a long-range throw all in one shot. Within only a few minutes, I could do a few semi-decent casts that actually reeled line out and sent the fly away farther each time. Consistency was harder to achieve.

I found out a lot of ways that casts don’t work. Sending the rod too far back over my head meant that I’d hook a wad of meadow grass and fling it—plop!—into the water, no doubt scaring every fish in the pond. I could just hear them muttering to each other below, “Hey, man, stay away from that dock. There’s some big sh!*&^# comin’ down!”

Part of the trick was knowing when to release the fishing line from where I pinned it under my finger during the throw. If I released too soon, the line would whiiiinggg straight up into the air and the fly would drop down almost on top of me. It I freed it too late, no fresh line would reel out, the fly would snap-stop in mid-air, and the whole would plummet straight down—kerplunk—creating a watery ripple of “Oh, god, another amateur” spreading outward over the pond.

Ian, of course, could consistently send the fly arcing up and over with one graceful throw that spun out yards and yards of line in a satisfying whir and never got snagged on anything. Years of practice does that.

Thirty minutes later, Ian and I were still casting from our respective little docks at the edge of the pond. I was enjoying the relaxing rhythm and companionable silence. Fly fishing is one of those sports that’s enjoyable even if nothing more happens than flinging the fly through the air. I like the soft whizz of the reel feeding out line, the gentle plink of the fly landing in water, the subtle V that forms on the surface when I drag the lure back in. Being pond-side and in the open air seems to be enough.

Just as I was feeling the fatigue of continuous casts and ready to stop, Ian hooked a trout and called me over so I could reel it in. He taught me how to let it play out the line, then to pull it in steadily for him to scoop up into the net. It was a lovely shimmery thing, maybe a foot long, full of whipping muscle and gaping mouth and gills. I couldn’t bring myself to cook it for supper, so we let it go free back into the pond. I’m officially recorded in the log as someone who did a catch-and-release.

Sunday, my last day at Torlundy, I taught Siobhan some of the TTEAM basics with Eric, and we worked with 2-month-old foal of a mare named Jura (there’s that Jura again).

Siobhan thinks I should continue with the animal work and WWOOFing. She says I’m good at working with animals. I agree. This week has taught me that I really like farm environments, and that I prefer to work with animals much more than with plants, although I can still take or leave dogs. I have so much to learn about working with horses, too—young, old, different breeds and sizes.

Siobhan commented on Sunday that Eric was “much easier to catch; he doesn’t walk away from me anymore,” which I was very glad to hear. I felt I’d done well by Eric, the WWOOFing program, and the Carvers’ generous hospitality.

Farm Duty at Fort William

I was so glad to get out of Oban today that I was nearly halfway to Fort William before I realized I was feeling anxious about the week ahead. I feel nervous about fitting in, giving good service, doing well by the horses and family expectations, etc.

This WWOOFing idea of providing physical service on a farm in exchange for room and board is at once appealing and scary. Appealing because I’m trying out another way of living in the world and interacting with people. Scary because I’ve made my way by my writing skills for so long that I really wonder what else I have of value to offer. Of course I know there’s lots I can do, but I’ve rarely put it to the test as a means of barter before. And I feel the familiar butterflies of meeting a new family I’m supposed to share space with for a week.

The morning has been cloudy but not rainy, and the Argyll Coastal Road to Fort William offered some lovely views of coasts, forests, and villages that I tried to take in without much success. I arrived at the Fort William bus/train depot in time to see the Hogwarts Express Railway puffing at the platform across the way. It’s a coal-burning train that heads into the Glenfinnan region, where parts of Harry Potter were filmed. Lots of people were hanging around it, having their pictures taken next to the emblems emblazoned on the train’s side and nose. I would be there too, probably. I snapped this photo through the chain link fence that stands between the train tracks and the bus station, but Perry’s built-in camera wasn’t quite up to the task of a good zoom.

My WWOOFing hosts, Chris and Siobhan Carver, picked me up at the bus depot. Siobhan asked me a lot of questions to find out what skills I could offer (had I ever WWOOF’d before, how well did I ride, what experience did I have with horses, oh, you do Tellington Touch—how does that work, etc.). It seemed a bit like a grilling, but I later welcomed her direct way of speaking.

Siobhan had an errand at the train station, so Chris took me into Fort William for a quick look at the town while he ran errands, too. As we drove, he told me that he and Siobhan were leaving on Wednesday for London for a few days, that their daughters would be leaving town too, and that I’d be taking care of the house, grounds, and guest-chalet business with somebody named Charlie who’s also staying at the farm in their absence.

I tried to soak in this information while dozens of thoughts zinged through my brain. All of them were variations of, “Hey, wait a minute, you can’t just leave me with that kind of responsibility—I just got here! And, golly, you’d entrust all that to someone you just met?” But then I recognized that that’s also part of the WWOOFing experience—Siobhan and Chris have had lots of WWOOFers before, and the program probably attracts honest, earnest people by default.

Still, I was eager to be of use the first day and to assure them that I was no slacker who had just dropped in for a week of free room and board. That was hard to accomplish when the first thing Siobhan did after showing me my huge private bedroom was to sit me down to the kitchen table and offer me food and conversation. I felt more like a welcome guest than a traveling work-hand. I began to suspect that perhaps that blend is the whole point of WWOOFing.

The morning was mostly spent meeting the other occupants at Torlundy Farm. First were two of the daughters, Daisy and Gemma, in their early twenties. They are two years apart but may as well be twins for the way they do practically everything together and feed off each other’s enthusiasm. They all but hugged me in greeting. Gemma is an up-and-coming fashion designer; Daisy is, I think, the chef of the pair and does a lot of painting. Both of them are artists, musicians, dancers, horsewomen, festival directors—you name it, they’ve probably done it.

Charlie turned out to be a family friend who’s been a fixture at the house for what seems like years. He works the grounds, rents an apartment down the lane, and adores Daisy and Gemma, with whom he plays theatre, music director, and fashion dress-up with great aplomb.


The critter contingent of the farm comprises two dogs, Pip and Tarka (shown here); a pig named Nicolette; a dozen or so horses (Cory, Merlin, Eric, Boswell, Great Glen, Celene...I was already having trouble keeping them straight); and lots of free-roaming chickens. I don’t see any cats yet.

I can’t help but like this family and feel welcome here. They’re all loving, down-to-earth people who happily share tales of when they were extras in Braveheart and Rob Roy (both filmed in the Fort William area), and when they pastured and worked with the horses for these movies. Chris and Siobhan are going to a garden party at The Buck House (Buckingham Palace) this week to celebrate 50 years of The Duke of Edinburgh Award (for youth) work. The family organizes and runs an annual “nothing commercial” music and arts festival, and Gemma is part of the Queen’s birthday celebration by having one of her fashion garments on display in London this week.

They relate all this news with a refreshing matter-of-factness that has no hint of arrogance or name dropping. It’s more an attitude of, “This is what we do every day and, oh, by the way, we have to muck out the stalls and feed the pig this afternoon.”

Things are quiet at the farm right now. They just finished shearing all the sheep, so the big work is done; the long-term WWOOFer who helped left a few days ago. The guest cottages on the property—they run Great Glen Chalets here—are at the beginning of their week-long rent schedule and don’t need any attention.

So my “service” today started with an hour’s trail ride with Siobhan and her friend Jennifer, to exercise the horses and check out part of the property. I was on Cory, a gray, and Jennifer rode Eric, a little Exmoor pony. I’ll be cleaning saddles and bridles all week, and I got through four saddles today to the sound of rain falling on the barn roof.

Nicolette’s daily routine, which I’ll be managing, involves putting slop and grain into whichever pen she’s not in, opening the gate to the one she is in, and getting the hell out of her way as she beelines for the food. This girl is strong enough to knock over a VW bug if it were between her and her breakfast.

Siobhan showed me where to look for chicken eggs among the bales of straw and hay. The chickens have favorite hidey-holes, but Pip and Tarka know of them, too, and Siobhan says the dogs sometimes get an egg breakfast before she does.

The rest of my duty list this week will involve taking care of the house and guest house reservations with Charlie while the family is gone, and helping with the change-out of guest houses on Saturday. I also hope to do some TTEAM and TTouch with the horses and other animals. I’m glad the Siobhan is interested in that opportunity, too.

WWOOFs, Bleats, and a Sneaky Seagull

At the close of the TTEAM week, I traveled the three hours to Cornwall with Julie to her farm outside Helston. Julie had offered to have me stay Sunday night at her home with her husband, Andrew, a buddhist cleric. I've booked a self-catering cabin in Mullion, about nine miles south of Helston, starting tomorrow.

We drove across Devon and then Cornwall in her Mercedes caravan, a self-contained camper van, with her terrior, Henry, and her terrior/yorkie mix, Megan. Megan sat in my lap almost the whole time. Andrew had supper waiting--homemade garlic pizza with vegetables from their garden and the goat cheese they make from their goats' milk.


Andrew and Julie have a 70-acre landholding called Carthvean ("small holding") that was all field seven years ago and is now gardens and pastures and woods (they've planted a whopping 10,000 trees), replete with two huge polytunnels (plastic-sheeted greenhouse quonset huts). Andrew and friends had just put the plastic on the second polytunnel today--Julie was thrilled.

Julie's a TTOUCH practitioner for camelids (llamas and alpacas), and she and Andrew run the farm, grow most of their own food (fruits, berries, vegetables, greens), raise alpacas, make their own cheese and yogurt, and have all manner of critters around the place--rabbits, three llamas, alpacas, goats, guinea pigs, cats, ponies, dogs, chickens, probably others.

Their farm is a WWOOF member: WorldwWide Opportunities for Organic Farming. WWOOF hooks up people who own farms or ranches with people who want to work on them for room and board. Three WWOOFers John, Imiko, and Manuela, are at Carthvean on various schedules to help out. I met all three of them while I was here.

I woke at 7 Monday morning, bathed in a clawfoot tub, and had a breakfast of homemade muesli with fresh goat's milk, homegrown strawberries, and apples. John came in carrying seven eggs, this morning's generous output from the Muscovies in the coop.

The weather continues to be very hot and sunny, with a breeze at the top of hill. My laundry on the line dried in very short time.

Alpaca shearing was to start at 10a, but first we had to get the critters into the shearing barn--girls this morning, then the boys after lunch.

Julie, Imoko, and I herded the girls from the pasture using TTOUCH wands, a herding tape, and voice. There were thirteen alpacas in this group. They shuffled along the field in a great bleating, scrambling mass of round woolly bodies and long woolly necks, directed and, in some cases blocked, by our moving barricade of herding tape. As they reached the narrower wooded lane, they hustled and balked and shoved and walked at our insistence, eventually jamming up at the open doorway to the work barn.




The barn has concrete floors and moveable partitions so corrals can be resized and areas closed off to direct the animals through the shearing process. Julie clucked, cajoled, and shoved them into the main holding area, Colin the shearer arrived, and we all got to work--Julie, Imiko, another friend of Julie's, Colin, and me.



Shearing alpacas is different from shearing sheep. Alpacas are big, strong, feisty, and all flailing limbs and neck when you get them down. You can't just pin them to the ground like you can with a sheep.

Instead, the shearer must lift and bring the alpaca to the floor, truss it by forefeet and hind feet to a pulleyed stretcher system, and flip the animal over twice during shearing to reach all parts of its body for the fleece. Colin, well muscled and well skilled, did all this wrestling and shearing with expert maneuvers and a predictable rhythm that made it very easy to know where to be next to support him.

After photographing the first shearing, I helped with the rest, holding down the alpaca’s head to keep it from squirming, and doing TTOUCH on its ears to help calm it. Some of them screamed or whistled or bleated with astonishing shrill throughout the whole process, while others lay submissive and quiet until they were released, looking like fuzzy miniature giraffes, barely ten minutes later.


The deep drone of the clippers motor, the constant calling from those still in the holding pens, the screeches of the one being shorn--every sound bounced off the concrete walls, and my ears were ringing by the time all twenty of the alpacas were done. (The seven boys didn't want to come in for their turn in the shearing barn--they'd seen what the girls looked like when we herded the boys past their fields.)

By the end of they day, we'd collected bags and bags of alpaca wool. White, brown, fawn, caramel, black--I'd never known they came in such colorful variety. We took two qualities of fleece from each alpaca--first quality from the "blanket" (back, sides, upper flanks), and second quality from legs, belly, neck, chest, head. The textures and lengths also varied widely. Long and crinkly is best, according to Julie, for its elasticity.

Duties done, Andrew later drove me to the Criggan Mill cottages in Mullion and took Manuela, another WWOOFer I met at the farm, to her holiday hotel a few miles away.


The day had been hot, and although the cabin's windows were open, the cottage smelled a bit musty. And, ohmigod, I’ve traveled back in time—the whole place is decorated in 1960s orange, brown, and yellow, big stipes, and funky lamps. It's sunny, though, with a stream at the back behind an embankment and wood pigeons and magpies sharing the bushes.


I pay for electricity from a meter box that looks like it was built in the 1930s. The place has a kitchen, so I can cook my own meals for the week--yay.

The cabins are at the bottom of a hill in a fold of valley; I can't see the coast from here; it's 200 yards down the road. The landlady was brusque, as if she doesn't like her job today.

Cornwall has fields, hedgerows, gorse, heathlands, and--surprising to see--Monterey pines, which were imported by the Victorians. The pines do very well in this windy coastal area, just as they do in northern California. They've been here so long, though, that they're dying off of old age, and the government wants people to plant more. Andrew and Julie have planted about 50 on their land.

I had dinner at Mullion Cove Hotel, just up the hill from the cabin toward the coast. It has a spectacular ocean view. The evening was warm, so I dined outside on mushroom risotto and garlic bread at an umbrella-covered picnic table. The bread was hot and buttery and garlicky--a big, fat french roll sliced in half. I munched most of one piece before starting my meal. The waiter had forgotten my cutlery, and I went in to get it, leaving my food behind. I returned to several people all talking at me from nearby tables.

"We tried to stop him, love, but he was off quick as a wink."

I looked over. The other half of my luscious garlic bread was gone--nicked in all its melted garlicky butter crispy glory by an opportunistic seagull. Dang. And I'd saved the best piece for last, too.

The gull made short work of his catch, entertaining us all with how quickly he swallowed it, and practically whole. By the time I got out my camera, he was downing the last hunk.

"What wine are you drinking there?" one of my fellow diners asked. "He'll be comin' back for that next."

I laughed, finished my meal, and took the last of my white wine across the street to the cliff edge to watch the planet roll away from the last fifteen minutes of sunlight. The sky gave a burst of pink light after the sun was gone, like a little explosion of color.

I toasted the dayfall, ordered a takeaway dessert of cheese and biscuits to have for lunch this week, and toted my leftovers home to my 1960s cabin to enjoy a comfortable year 2000 bed.