The Idler

A Country Diary 71: A Vandal in the Veg Patch

Monday 7 January 2008

OF ALL THE animals we’ve had here, by far the most useless, costly, time-consuming, toilsome and stressful has been the pony. What an absurd indulgence. We have to rent its field, feed it, give it hay, take it in and out every day. It wears expensive coats and needs a visit from the farrier every few months. It is constantly escaping into the farmer’s fields, causing him a nuisance and us to go wandering around with a bucket of horse nuts, trying to bring it back. It breaks into the dairy and eats things and smashes things up and then looks hurt and affronted when you try and get it out of there. I reckon it costs us about £1,500 a year. Victoria never, ever, rides it. Nor do the children, even though we bought them little riding hats, another great expense. It is too small for me to ride. The most use it gets is perhaps once or twice a year when Victoria gives a bunch of children a pony ride. It also needs a lot of clearing up after, a job which tends to get delayed, resulting in a yard full of horseshit.

But now the pony has done something really inexcusable. Yesterday it broke into the vegetable patch and ate it. Yes, ate every single cabbage (six of them), every single broccoli plant (there were five and they were doing very nicely). All the remaining Brussells sprouts plants, gone. That’s like a year of work and thought and planning all gone to waste. The leek bed is trampled to nothingness. There are giant hoof holes all over the place. I am livid. When I saw the devastation I flung the compost bucket at the fence in a fury. “The pony’s eaten my fucking vegetable patch,” I said to Victoria on returning to the house.

I really can’t see many plus sides. I suppose it’s quite pretty to look at. I suppose also that you could argue that it provides manure, but living on a cow farm, that’s hardly something we’re short of. For what we spend on it, we could employ a gardener to come in one morning a week and do all the vegetables. Instead we have this creature which actively destroys my gardening work. Last year it ate all my carefully pruned roses when Victoria let it into the front garden.

No, it’s been nothing but trouble. Last night we wrote out a list of our annual costs. After rent, council tax and motor cars, I’d say the pony came pretty high. Actually, that’s not quite true. We calculated our annual booze bill at something like £3,500. Surely though, booze is simply not something that can be economised on? Victoria needs good wine and I need a lot of beer. It’s medecine, it’s the stuff of life.

I think one answer would be to brew our own beer. That would save a fortune. We should also use the excess parsnips to make parsnip wine. And maybe then we could buy a cart for the pony and drive round making deliveries and selling our own home-produced alcohol products. That would kill two birds with one stone. Right now that pony is simply not earning its keep.

Well, one easy cost-saver would be to sell my van. That has been another ridiculous indulgence, and costs me something approaching five grand each year. I could get taxis to the station each time I go to London and still save four thousand pounds a year. The van must go.

Another thought for making money out of the pony was to offer horse and cart rides to tourists who are visiting Woody Bay station, but find it a disappointingly long distance from Woody Bay itself. The pony could take them from station to beach car park, and back. Maybe this is an enterprise that Arthur could operate.

Something’s got to change.

ENDS