“It’s Gaia.”
“What is?” I ask
“What’s happening at the moment. With the weather.” Robert stares intently between furiously working windscreen wipers as he negotiates a mini flood swooshing across the lower section of our lane.
“How’s that?”
“Well, it’s quite simple really. She, Gaia, knows the planet’s in deep shit with climate change. So she’s rectifying it.”
We skid on a patch of liquid mud; an oozing amoeba from a waterlogged gateway.
“Yes, she thought about it and decided if she rained on the earth continuously she would cool it down, and… as she’d be using the water from the sea to make the rain, so she’d be compensating for the rising sea levels! You see – two birds with one stone.” He grins across at me “Simple.”
I chuckle, “I like that! That actually makes me feel a whole load better. Positively joyful, almost, about rain. No, perhaps that’s gong a bit far, but it’s a good angle!”
It was yesterday evening, and we’d decided on a sudden impulse to drive into Okehampton to see Mamma Mia. It’s been a heck of a week. We needed an injection of pure unadulterated, joyful, feel good nonsense. Sun, colour, beautiful people, singing, dancing and a happy ending.
The best bit of news. The cows went clear on their TB test reading this Thursday. My worst fears were unfounded, and even the vet was overjoyed. She said it’s so unusual to get a clear test nowadays.
The not such good news; we’ve had to bring the cows in. The land gave up. Do you know the herd has only been out for four months this year? I hope that by bringing them in we’ll save the grass and land from being ruined; and maybe, if we have a bit of dry, sunny weather, they will be able to go out and enjoy a mellow autumn.
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September 8, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Alison
So glad to hear that your cows are healthy. And I can appreciate the elegant way you shifted ideas about the weather, I can imagine Big Mama saying to herself “well you seem to have a bit of a fever dear child, so you need a cool-down”, and reaching for her remedies…
September 8, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Lizzy
Yeah – I was taken to see Mama Mia a few days ago. I thought I’d died and gone to, … Okehampton.
September 9, 2008 at 8:27 am
paula
Oh Alison, so am I. It’s a yearly purgatory we have to go through.
I’m holding onto the remedial rain thoughts!
September 9, 2008 at 8:28 am
paula
No lizzy, Okehampton? Not in a million years…to much, well, just too much everything!
September 9, 2008 at 4:24 pm
heidi
Yahhh for the cows!! Iam happy to read that they are clear.
That has to be a big relief!
Come on Sun! Bring on a nice warm fall for Devon!
I like your Gaia theory, but now I’am all freaked out about that super collider thingy in Switzerland..
Dan tells me not to worry, the scientists would never unleash something dangerous on the world…(!) but I keep getting this weird feeling..Won’t be war, famine or global warming that does us all in..but a blackhole some overly curious geek creates in a lab in Switzerland..oh the irony!
September 9, 2008 at 9:16 pm
paula
I can’t tell you how relieved I was – I was going slightly bananas before hand!
I know – a thing of science fiction. Well I guess if we don’t know what’s hit us tomorrow, well we won’t know – see you as an atom somewhere in the big yonder, or are we just going to faf about in a blackhole?
Hear we go…?
September 10, 2008 at 3:37 pm
LittleFfarm Dairy
Thank goodness,
wonderful news about the TB test. Just awful that you’ve had to get the cattle indoors already…using up valuable supplies of feed & costing dear in concentrates. We STILL haven’t got any hay; nor are we likely to get any, this year. And we’re getting desperate – but then I suppose, so is everyone else…..Gaia’s revenge on our poor behaviour.
September 11, 2008 at 7:48 pm
paula
Going clear on TB was the best thing in a long time jo. I fell as light as a feather now.
I don’t know – I think it may be best to be an ostrich. Feed is astronomical – and I can only feed organic – so check this out, the straights for my nuts come from China! Somehow that does not sound very organic to me – but the rules say we are not allowed to use anything that isn’t approved and apparently using straights from China is???
I feel for you and the hay – I walk across and see fields and fields of uncut forage now getting ever more waterlogged. I was lucky and got mine in – just. But a nine month winter? I’m not sure if any of us can sustain that.
But as you say, we’re all in it together…
September 12, 2008 at 3:48 pm
elizabethm
Great news on the TB test and I love Robert’s Gaia theory. I shall think of it whenever it rains although it has been a lovely late summer day here today.
September 19, 2008 at 9:00 pm
sun…at last! « Locks Park Farm
[…] may remember that Robert joked that Gaia was responding to global warming by making it rain more, both to cool the earth and lower the […]
September 20, 2017 at 11:29 pm
Michelle
Who is the artist of this piece is there a fuller image