Photo-a-Day  (Thursday, 20th October, 2022)

A trip down memory lane for me, grew up in Shevington and walked that way many times, thanks.

Unless you know this area this could be any farm track leading to or from any farm? Nice maintained fences and a lot of the potholes filled in. Nice view of the rolling country side.

I knew straight away this was one of your photos Mick.It's a lovely walk down to the farm especially when the sun is setting over Ashurst beacon.
I've never noticed that the fence has 10 strands of barbed wire, I suppose that's just showing how well kept the farm and fields are.

' A long and Winding Road ' ........

Now this photo  brings back some memories because this road led down to Pat Halls farm in the 60s.
I remember a gang of us were walking along the railway line when a train came round the bend, we all moved over to the side except one lads dog, but then at last minute the dog decided to join us and it got run over by the train.
Its two back legs had been cut off, so after a while me and one of the lads walked up the Pats farm and told her what had happened, and she sent one of her farm hands down with a gun to shoot the dog in the head.

Tore my clothes on those barbs
a hundred times or two,
my mother stitched them back
until we wore them through.

One night we had a scare
a car crashed through our yard,
it took out half our fence
and hit a sheep real hard.

We worked all through the night
to fix that broken fence,
that sheep died the next day
a victim of events.

I grew up and left home
to chase my dreams at last,
I thought I'd not return
to reminisce the past.

Today I'm an old man
who finally did go back,
that great big house I knew
became a run down shack.

The memories were sweet
why did I leave this place?
guess I felt too fenced in
and needed my own space.

I still see old barbed wire
twisted up and busted,
a fence once strong and cruel
beaten down and rusted.

Can't recall the countless
times it ripped through my garb,
but scars will remind me
of that sharp razor barb.

I don't know the path but it looks as if it is a pleasant walk.

We really needed to know that, Lynn! .....NOT! At least you could have said, "put the poor thing out of it's suffering" rather than "shoot the dog in the head"!

It was a mizzly morning. Half misty, half drizzly. So, mizzly. Not quite Chaucer’s April ‘shoures’, but a white veil across the valley and a slippery shaft to the sledgehammer as I bang in chestnut staves to support a fence, it is a fence that requires little explanation or apology just being ten quick and cheap horizontal strands of barbed wire along the side of the cows’ paddocks. Somewhat surprisingly, the Limousins find the spiky barrier the acme of scratching devices, rubbing their 1,500lb bodies along it with total sighing bliss, and once in awhile the fence fails in its heavy-duty beauty provision, and this morning some staves have snapped and a 15-yard stretch is performing a Fosbury flop- hence the sledgehammer - the fresh new staves, and the steady echoing thud of iron on wood. An age-old agricultural sound.

The work is not unpleasant and the weather may well be damp, but it’s warm and the honey scent of the last Blackthorn blossoms can be tasted on the tongue, and from an invisible perch lost in the stratosphere, a skylark pours silver song over me.

Also, I have company — a female blue tit is nest-building in a nearby ancient wild cherry tree, where a broken-off limb has left a deep, shadowed socket. Her favoured material is the cow hair clotted on the barbed wire like ginger musical notes on a stave. So frequent are her flits from tree to fence and back, they’re a diagonal blur on the retina.

John Lewis-Stempel. From his book Woodston.

Irene shooting the dog in the head would have been the best place to stop its suffering.

Nice photo, lovely blue sky. Your right Irene, we really did not need to know about the sad accident with the dog.

Irene and Edna, It wasn't that bad because the farmer didn't use a shotgun, he used a rifle that shoots bullets and it only left a little hole which you could hardly see.

Considering it had just had it's 2 back legs severed, it would have been very satisfied with a small hole in the head. Jest, a very sad occasion for the dog and its owner.

Sounds more like Mick that comment…. Gruesome is just up his street.

A trip down memory lane for me, grew up in Shevington and walked that way many times, thanks.

Apologies to you Sue.