It’s only a day for scones. Brown ones, fruit ones. The calves have started arriving, en masse. There’s a vet in the yard who may or not come in for tea so it’s only a day for scones. While they’re cooling on the table, I take our littliest for a ‘cycle’ back the road. We walk past the farmyard, all activity, keep rolling back our road and stop to see the donkeys, one brown, one mushroom coloured, and then go on watching my little man as he tries to keep balance to go up the hill to see the chickens in our neighbours’ yard. Aw the little chickens.

The walk back home is a drag, a pull with a promise of some tea and scones. A call to the farmyard to tea, holding a bike and a toddler, I hurry in only to put on the kettle. I notice the raspberry bushes are growing leaves, the daffodils are promising to come up in answer to a very shiny February day. I might plant some broccoli there in a month, some carrots there. A lot to do.

We’ll have the tea first.