Caring for Others Is Caring for Self - Lockdown Visitors

The following share four experiences from the past year and although I fully understand that these were unique to me, the ideas which I used to find an equilibrium are something everyone can adopt in their own individual way, as it's all about shifting the focus. The basic and very simple premise is to forget self and concentrate on something or someone-else.

And..if you think that the following are the kind of experiences that only happen in the countryside, then know that during last year, I received a message from an Italian city in lockdown asking for help in caring for a wounded pigeon which had landed on a high rise balcony. Furthermore, this incredibly caring person had added that in the midst of all this, witnessing the pigeon recover, had given her incredible joy during what were very difficult times.

I draw my strengths from my past. Whatever I have been through in my life, I have been able to call up the experiences of my childhood and use them to see me through. I had a unique and to me idyllic time as a child in that I had a great deal of freedom of space, movement, thought and creativity in 45 acres of old fashioned farmland with the nearest neighbour and nearest road at ¾ of a mile distance. One most important thing about old fashioned farming communities is you help each other and you care deeply for your land and all the creatures, wild or domesticated that live on it.

So around March when we had the first big lockdown here in France, coming back from a gloomy shopping trip, we found a wooden box on the door step, as it had holes drilled in it - I guessed there was something living in it. This turned out to be one of my friend's rabbits, whose foot she had accidentally managed to get mangled when she was moving its run. My friend wasn't sure what to do about it but she hoped I would. The foot once I had taken a look at it seemed manageable but our problem was that having a forest garden with no lawns and not much grass did seem like a big drawback. However, I managed to make an arrangement over the phone with a neighbour, whose holiday home, just up the lane has a field attached. In reality this was an excellent reciprocal exchange because he couldn't get down here to mow his lawn or tend to his field . So I now had a good supply of rabbit food and a way of exercising the rabbit without having to annoy our poultry, who see the garden as essentially theirs.

Apropos of that, at Easter we had a glut of eggs so we were able to share them out with those neighbours who didn't have hens and that too was just a simple way of passing on something good, a fresh-laid organic egg. Easter was a miserable time for some here as usually they buy chocolate eggs/hens/fish/ducks for their visiting grandchildren and of course that didn't happen. It was just a gesture and again a reminder from my past as in old fashioned farming communities people are always leaving excess vegetables, fruits and other goodies on people's doorsteps.

Perhaps spurred on by getting a taste for new-laid eggs, our neighbours to the North side of us went out and bought six hens. Then for a Birthday, their son sent them a cockerel, a Silkie, which is a race I have never owned but have always found fascinating being an ancient breed with 'fur' rather than feathers, black bones, purple skin and bright blue ear covers! It was a very young rooster from a garden center and as such and with no restraint from older and wiser males was suddenly thrust into the lives of six older, wiser and very harmoniously living females. Single sex flocks don't always work, you sometimes or rather often, get a super-dominant hen who will take over the role of both dominant rooster and hen and thus make life exceedingly uncomfortable for the rest. However, this time it was the new rooster who was about to create havoc, so much so that eventually he too, like the rabbit, turned up in a box on our doorstep - this by prior consent and the proviso that I'd try really hard to get him to fit in to what was an established flock. Our forest garden works because we have harmony and I knew his coming had the potential to cause 'waves' to say the least. The other chance at distraction this gave me was to explore another great love of my life which is reading. I was able via the Internet Archive to explore ancient texts in particular: Conrad Gessner's Historiæ animalivm published in 1551, from which I have included the page above and which explained this fabulous creature thus:

'Concerning Wool-bearing Poultry

In the East, fowls are bred as white as snow, covered, not with feathers, but with wool, like sheep and that in the city of Quelinfu, in regno Mangi, M. Paulus Venetus says that hens are to be found which have, instead of feathers, hairs like those of a cat and that in colour they are black, and lay good eggs.'

If you are interested at how this worked out - I go through the various stages in the film. It is not an easy thing to accomplish and it demanded some creativity and a great deal of patience, which took both our minds off missing a visit to and just plain missing, our families in the UK.

I remember back in the Spring my sister telling me over the phone from Scotland, 'It'll all be over by Christmas', an instance of dramatic irony which no doubt struck a chord in us both. It was very easy to feel very lacking in creativity when it came to following our usual traditions particularly when the one of spending Christmas with close family was denied us. I always make my Christmas cards and I know they are kept from year to year by friends, family and neighbours and used both as tree and wall decorations so I decided I wasn't going to be apathetic and carried on the tradition.

The same goes for Christmas lights because our house, an old long house - so with plenty of room for a long line of lights, lies at the start of our lane and those who live further up and still have jobs, have told us that in the Winter it is really cheery to see these little beacons welcoming them home or giving them a positive start to a grey morning.

I don't know if you are aware that it wasn't the Grinch who stole Christmas. Old Christmas ended at Candlemas February 2nd, when the country dweller's working year began again, as it was the earliest time that the soil could be turned and new crops planted. Legend has it that after Candlemas, goblins may infest the Christmas garlands of holly and ivy and this is where the idea of Twelfth Night and bad luck if you keep up your decorations, came from. Well as we no longer have lockdown but still have curfew and the evenings are cold and grey and the mornings more so, this year we decided to defy the goblins and spread a little more cheer, witness the photo above taken this morning!

Five days ago there was a cacophony in the garden which I recognised only to well as a predator attack, as I have small chicks from last year's late hatches and with the reduced foliage on the forest garden, I ran out just in time to see a hawk about to swoop for the kill onto a collared dove, who'd managed to escape from the initial attack. It was a juvenile, one of a pair hatched last year in one of our hedges. I managed to catch her. She was suffering badly from shock and a wound to the neck and in escaping she'd lost many feathers, including most of her tail. We managed to administer home-made electrolyte and calm her down. Over the last few days she has grown to trust us and also importantly with the wound to the neck which has hampered her movement, I have been able to hand-feed her. Finally today she has started to eat on her own and preen her feathers and so she seems to be on the road to recovery.

Although bird rescue is something in which I have experience, each time is new and different but one thing is always the same, the joy you get in return from seeing a bird put trust in you as a human to help them recover. This pays you back tenfold for anything you might have done for them.

So that's my take on whatever happens going forward, you have strengths and skills as an individual to make life better for someone else and give yourself a boost at the same time.