Autumn'S Fruitfulness

I have spent the morning gathering the first of autumn's fruits, blackberries, plump and delicious. These first early fruits came from alongside an old chicken house at my mum's farm. I guess the roots of the brambles go inside the house and into the old deep litter dung, hence the fruits are huge and will make wonderful Blackberry and Lime Jam (see recipe below). All of the old chicken houses are empty now, the fox having dug its way in and killed our last 19 birds. Rats had been digging along the back of the house and foxes never seem to miss a weak spot!
I do not keep hens or bantams at home these days as the garden seems to be full of foxes. One had the nerve to dig its way under our shed and have cubs there! We were watching Bill Oddie on TV one evening when the vixen came to the bird table and found some old cheese that the birds had dropped. As we watched a little ball of ginger fluff came tumbling out of the bamboos and tried to grab a quick drink from its mum. She did not seem to be a very loving mother, maybe it had been one of those days, as she snapped at it, but it was quite determined and every time it thought she had a mouth full it nipped in for a quick suckle. Much more entertaining than the TV! She was in quite poor condition, thin and with no hair on her tail probably through mange. I think she was finding it hard to provide for even one cub. Vixens usually have 3 to 5 cubs, although more have been recorded. The outside of a fox's earth is usually littered with bits of bone, birds wings and remains of various meals but there was very little of this near our shed so I think they must have survived on small prey; voles and earthworms. Foxes also like blackberries so I won't be the only one picking them! Amazingly next doors hens have survived, so far.
This vixen was quite unusual in that she would bark at us if we took her by surprise. Quite a few times I came across her while trying to get our puppy to "spend a penny" late at night. She would come along, nose to the ground and get quite a shock when she saw me standing quietly under the trees. She would give one bark and then dash off showing me her boney old tail. She moved the cub after a couple of weeks, but we have seen it in the garden quite a few times although we have not seen her for several weeks now. Our puppy's toilet habits have improved a lot now, so maybe I have not been in the right place at the right time. Wendy Bathurst