Blog Archives - Slow Life Blog from the Lake District

Waddesdon Manor Aviary

27/1/2010

Wow. This is something else. Philippa is completely dwarfed by the magnificent grandeur of the Aviary at Waddesdon Manor. The House and Grounds of Waddesdon Manor are closed at this time of year but Lord Rothschild has kindly let us visit so that we can look at the finer details of the construction and design of the aviary in preparation for building our own (slightly more modest) building for our Victorian Aviary Garden at Chelsea.

Giving Birth

27/1/2010

Not for the squeamish. These video clips have been taken by Jean who, sometimes with her husband Tony, and sometimes alone, attends the animals on the farm when they give birth. The first part of the video is of Jo-Jo, our Jersey cow giving birth to Jasmine.

All dairy cows have to produce a calf every year if they are to continue producing milk (an obvious fact, but one of which many people are ignorant). The second part is of Pinky Pie, one of our rare breed sows, on her way to producing a litter of 16 multi-coloured piglets.

Here is a picture of Pinky Pie with her full litter of 16.

A Black Swan on Lake Windermere

26/1/2010

A Black Swan is the term which economists use to describe a unexpected and devastating event which scuppers all your plans. The Lake District had its own Black Swan in November when the unprecedented rainfall caused unprecedented floods which frightened away all our tourist trade. This was followed by a family of Black Cygnets when 5 successive snowfalls over as many weeks made certain that the tourists wouldn’t or couldn’t come flooding back.
Some lateral thinking was needed if our businesses were to be saved.

How to Make the Perfect Steak – Part 4

22/1/2010

Here’s a resume of Parts 1 to 3:

Part 1. Put a Cumberland White (Shorthorn) Bull with an Aberdeen Angus cow to make a Cumberland Angus bull calf. Time required: 9 months

Part 2. Fatten the calf outdoors on the grass of the Lake District fells. Time required: 31 months

Philippa’s London Office

19/1/2010

We are in Philippa’s London “office”, which is the South Bank Centre in the Festival Hall, for a meeting with Mark Richardson who has taken on the role of contractor for our Chelsea garden- in other words Mark will build the garden for us. This may seem an unlikely venue for a business meeting but in fact it fits the bill very well- it’s spacious, airy and comfortable- people come here to read, to sleep, to chat and because there’s so much space the noise levels are low so that it’s a congenial place even for an intense two hours of discussion.

The Non-Wimpish Wimps

19/1/2010

You’d have thought that on a bleak Tuesday night in January restaurant tables would be easy to come by- not so in London. Our first choices of Zuma and Scotts were already fully booked when I rang in the morning but fortunately there was a table free at the Ledbury, a small stylish restaurant in Notting Hill which has just been awarded its second Michelin star. The evening was enlivened by the presence of a group who call themselves the “Wimps”, a wine appreciation society whose table is pictured here.

At the BBC with Radio 1

18/1/2010

It’s an uncomfortable truth that almost no new British bands made it big in 2009. The BBC and in particular Radio 1 have received a lot of stick for not giving airplay to new acts. Radio 1 has a playlist of 50 records each week which is dominated by the big three labels, which doesn’t give small outfits such as Northern Music and the Heroes of She a fair chance.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

18/1/2010

“And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.”

From “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by W.B.Yeats

This recording of Yeats reciting “Innisfree” may be old, scratched and barely discernable but it is absolutely wonderful. No poem epitomises the Slow Life better than this.

Maggy Haworth’s Workshop

15/1/2010

Maggy Haworth is simply marvellous. This picture shows Maggy in her workshop with her assistant Mark showing Philippa the astonishingly intricate process involved in making her beautiful mosaics out of pebbles. Her pebble mosaics are to be found in some of the world’s grandest gardens, from Lady Arabella Lennox Boyd’s at Gresgarth to Lord Heseltine’s at Thenford. Now, she has agreed to make one for us for our Chelsea garden.

Pigs on Ice

10/1/2010

The farm is frozen solid, which is not surprising after 20 consecutive days of sub-zero temperatures. Some of the consequences of the cold are serious, not least the fact that there is no running water to the farmhouse as the pipes which run underground from the spring to the farmhouse have frozen.

New Born Cumberland Angus Bull

9/1/2010

Ten days after the magnificent Cumberland Angus Bull was taken to Ayres slaughterhouse to provide the main course for the Slow Food Burns Night dinner, a replacement bull calf has been born. The sire is our Cumberland White Bull (aka Whitebred Shorthorn), the dam one of our Aberdeen Angus cows. The calf, which has the same pure black coat as its sibling, is exceptionally large and promises to be just as magnificent. The mother managed to jump the five bar gate of the barn to get to be with the rest of the herd outside, so we are temporarily feeding the calf by hand, as this video shows.

Paloma Faith “Upside Down”

6/1/2010

‘Sometimes life can taste so sweet
When you slow it down’

From ‘Upside Down’ by Paloma Faith.

It’s not just the Heroes of She who have failed to make it big in 2009, very few British acts broke through last year. Apart from reality TV acts, only Florence + The Machine have surpassed 300,000 sales in the year. 2009’s winner of the BBC’s “Sound Of” poll, Little Boots, was only 120th in the ranking of album sales. The new artist who I adore and who is bound to be a sensation in 2010 is Paloma Faith, whose “Upside Down” from her album “Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beautiful?” is set to become the Slow Life anthem.

Garden in December

5/1/2010

December 2009 began warm and ended with 2 weeks of unremitting cold, with heavy snowfalls on the 20th, 22nd and 24th. Daytime temperatures fell to as low as –7C. The relentless cold may be fatal to our tender exotic plants, but if so they looked lovely in their final moments. This slideshow is accompanied, most appropriately, by the Heroes of She’s haunting ballad “Cold Winds Blow”.

Democracy in Action

4/1/2010

A massive pile of papers from Defra has arrived on my desk with the new rules for the Electronic Identification of Sheep (EID) which has just come into law. When these proposals were first mooted a year ago they were fiercely opposed and their imposition is a bitter blow to sheep farmers. I have 200 Herdwick sheep at High Lowscales, some of them descended from the herd kept by Beatrix Potter. They are “hefted”, which means that they don’t stray from the land on which they were born. The new law means that all sheep born after 1st January this year must be fitted with two identifying tags, one electronic and one non-electronic.

About Slow Life

The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food, which are “good, clean and fair”, and extend them to life in general.

Here in the Lake District, the air is clean, the pace is slow and the atmosphere is calm. If we don’t grow food ourselves, we can buy it in friendly small shops, where you know the quality is going to be the best.

This blog is a celebration of the Slow Life, with forays into the world of design, music, the arts, gardens, and my particular weakness, Japan.

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