Portraits of nature: winter :: Country reads

Powys, Welsh countryside in winter - rural reads - country & travel - allaboutyou.com

'On midwinter afternoons, I take my bearings from the lights of surrounding farms: Pantycetris to the north, east to the winking hamlet of Pisgah and those above the village of Talgarreg, while the sun sinks into Cardigan Bay, six miles away to the west. In December, my husband David and I counted down to the shortest day; now, after the equinox, we’re enjoying dusk coming minutes later than the day before.

'My journal reminds me that when autumn met winter in late October, a brief cold spell held back mild, rain-bearing Atlantic fronts; trees glittered with hoar frost under ice-blue skies, and the last leaves showered down their gold. That’s when we put the ram with our ten Beulah Speckled Face ewes. They welcome him with curiosity, frisking to sniff and inspect him. He struts and smells them, too, home with his flock where he belongs. They spend days getting reacquainted before mating. The ewes come into season with diminishing daylight, so we exclude the ram until then – we don’t want lambs in January here. This time of year brings a spell of clear, sharp cold, and the hope of icy weather with its cleansing effect on the soil, and chance for frosty walks across the fields. By Christmas, Atlantic rain returns and I find winter beauty where I can: bare trees with a droplet on every twig, the tapdance of a downpour on our sandstone terrace, a frieze of stark trees bordering the garden against a land lost in mist. The pregnant ewes shelter in the little larch wood, their fleeces darkened and weighed with rain, emerging only to graze on pasture still green. Sheep endure. They stand together, packed close, patient, backs to the weather against the hedge, waiting for spring, new grass and lambs. We wait, too. Fortunately, the cupboards are full, freezer and wood-store stocked, water pump lagged, gas cylinders and oil tank all in order.

'Even when we settle indoors, we can’t resist inviting the outside in. On Christmas Eve, David walks the land to gather ivy so we can ‘deck the halls’ – our glazed, oak-framed room, built onto the end of the old stone building on our smallholding – and boughs of larch for the overhead trusses. The twigs cast lovely shadows on the sloping planes of the ceiling. We bring in branches of witch hazel to open in a vase and fill the house with scent. There is a festival of rain, days of reading, and then we get dressed for the weather to check on the sheep. Overnight, a wren gets in through some nook or cranny of the old house – we don’t know how. It perches on the topmost branch of the tree above the angel. The witch hazel wakes in the warm room, each bloom shaking out a mop of yellow hair. By New Year’s Eve, unusually early, the whole tree is in flower, shining in the rain.

'It begins to snow, seriously, enough to excite the entire nation with talk of closed roads and cancelled trains. The enchantment I feel is firmly rooted in my infancy, in myths, legends and fairy stories: "The Snow Queen", "The Little Match Girl", the poems of Walter de la Mare, and my absolute favourite carol, Christina Rossetti’s In the Bleak Midwinter. “Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago”. I am in thrall to the first few flakes falling like angels’ feathers onto an ordinary world, then its transfiguration into dazzling beauty.

'I love being snowed-in in a room with a view, my books and writing materials about me, and the need to be resourceful. I keep the birds well supplied with nuts, seeds, crumbs, leftovers of cheese and bacon rind. In war time there was nothing left for birds. Now the feeders throng with tits, finches, blackbirds, starlings, robins, jays, a pair of greater spotted woodpeckers and a fierce little nuthatch. The sun has left the garden, but it continues to shine on our white fields and on the far side of the valley where the land rises above the hidden village, and south as far as the rugged landscape of Llanllwni Mountain. When setting, late and low, it casts rosy rectangles on the slopes of the ceiling through two roof windows.

'David carries hay for the sheep. The ram and 10 older ewes dance at his heels and butt him as he crosses the field to the rack – they remember hay and know what a bucket brings. It is the first time they’ve needed the extra feed this winter. When there’s warning of a flurry, we also stock up on sheep nuts, which make up for the deficiencies of winter grass. Hunger tames the sheep, and memory brings them running.

'Inside, the house smells of Seville oranges. Marmalade time, and a year’s supply is simmering away. A neighbour calls, and leaves with a warm jar. Yesterday, it snowed throughout the afternoon; all is white to the far horizon. Now the world is again transformed: dazzling, glorious, as if someone, somewhere, has decreed, “Let there be light.” The room where I write is illuminated, the yellow witch hazel a lamp in the garden. Yesterday’s tracks across the terrace to the bird table, the shed, our land, are erased by a new fall. Fresh prints of fox and rabbit in the field and those of a bird over the frozen pond are lines that tell their own story of one winter night, one frozen dawn.'