So no bonspiel this year
Posted: Saturday 23 January, 2016
The recent dry, cold weather froze everything solid. We could have held a bonspiel on the front paddock. In some places the water was too deep for really thick ice to form but I had to leave the gates on the hen paddocks open at night so that I could be sure of getting in, in the morning. However, it rained on Friday and all the ice has gone – and now we can see that the levels really are dropping. The ditches are down and flowing so if we get a few dry days, things should look a bit better.
The sheep scanner is coming on Wednesday. I always get a bit anxious – well, it’s a performance measure, isn’t it? We’ll fluke the ewes, apart from any that are empty and are to be culled, while they are in, along with the ewe hoggs and the pets. I’ll also be able to plan my sheep timetable once we have the scan results.
I’m still working on the photos; I’ve done all my own and started to delete off the not-so-good ones out of Dan’s 1700. Buoyed up by the cattle website, I made a Powerpoint presentation for a talk that I had been invited to give to a group of vintage tractor enthusiasts. What a fine group of people – I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I hope they did too. And the best bit was that one of them seemed to be interested in buying some Shetland cattle.
The stuff for removing algae form the polytunnel seems to have worked so I’m going to do the hen’s caravan – it’s a disgrace and makes the place look like the Clampetts’.
I’m still working on the polytunnel plan – I will have it finished this week, for almost sure. Dan’s twitching to get out pruning the apple trees and he’s going to move three surplus gooseberry bushes from the fruit garden to the orchard. And bird boxes – he’s still building bird boxes. If we get them up before Smokey and Bug start casting, there will be loads of nice nesting material to fill them too.
